Fetishism and Curiosity (Perspectives (Bloomington, Ind.).)

Rating:
Summary: Fetishism haunts cinematic apparatus, then and now,
Review: and this lucid and caustic study gets fetishism just right, in revealing close studies of works like Citizen Kane and Imitation of Life, revealing the cover up of labor and the will to domination, as well as the pleasures in the narrative drive to see/not see. Curious spectacles that allow the cinema-goer to keep going, even as the US power of fetish covers up exploitation with glamour and sheen and fashion and sublimity, not to mention the recent drive to romanticize imperial fascism in works like Hero. Gladiator, and The Last Samurai. Laura Mulvey is necessary reading, still.

Rating:
Summary: Inspirational Sparks
Review: One should read this collection of essays, not for answers to the great philosophical questions in art, but for inspiration. Mulvey's polemics, filled with unsupported assertions and often strange conclusions, are not philosophically sound. These essays, however, are provocative and one cannot help but respond, either in sympathy or in rejection to her works. A risk taker, she gives birth to ideas that have transcended the boundaries of third-wave feminist criticism and have found their way into mainstream theory. Mulvey is a must read for feminist theorists and critics in the visual, literary, theatrical and filmic arts.