The Camera and Voyeurism
The camera is central to cinematic production, and Mulvey notes that it is the camera that explicitly creates the cinematic environment—or rather, the camera is manipulated to create the cinematic environment. In this sense, the camera is a symbol of the human eye, particularly the look of the male who operates it (indirectly referring to the director of the film). The camera is also indelibly linked, Mulvey suggests, to the concept of scopophilia and more specifically to voyeurism, as it is manipulated to produce the illusion of the "fourth wall"—that is, that those on the screen are unaware they are being watched by an audience of spectators. Mulvey argues that a future "feminist" genre of film will break the camera free of this markedly male form of looking.
Castration
For those those unfamiliar with the symbolic connotation of “castration,” Mulvey’s use of the word may appear confusing and unsettling. When Mulvey speaks of women that have been castrated she refers to the work of psychologists Sigmund Freud and Jaques Lacan, who used "castration" to denote the unconscious realization of difference between the sexes—that is, women are without a phallus. Psychoanalysts also suggested that an unconscious anxiety develops in males as they encounter this "lack," which Mulvey uses to explain some of the narrative choices made in Hollywood cinema.
Marilyn Monroe
Mentioned in numerous instances throughout the essay, Marilyn Monroe is the hallmark symbol of Mulvey’s theorization of the female character. Renowned for her beauty, Monroe became an international sex symbol. This reputation was fostered in part by film directors who sought to display her body in a way that would attract film viewers. In doing so, they created flat, passive, characters for Monroe that would act primarily as recipients for male characters' (and male spectators') desires. As a result, Mulvey argues that Monroe became a festishized object as spectators bought into the "over-valuation, the cult of the female star" (811).
