Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44. (2017)

Fig 1. Installation image of photographs paired with text excerpt written on mylar. 

Fig 1. Installation image of photographs paired with text excerpt written on mylar. 

Fig 2. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 2. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 3. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 3. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 4. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 4. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 5. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 5. Photograph of part of series titled "Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44."

Fig 6. Installation image of photographs paired with text excerpt written on mylar. 

Fig 6. Installation image of photographs paired with text excerpt written on mylar. 

"The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image if the castrated woman to give order and meaning to the world. An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the systems : it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies." 

- Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.

In looking at the text by Laura Mulvey and her analysis of phallocentrism in relation to the consumption of the female image, the drag persona subverts its authority of the 'lack'. Through the drag and the blurring of photographing a body standing behind a sheet of mylar it takes on the challenge of performing gender in ambiguity as an escape from binary limitations.