The cinema perverts the scopohilia (pleasure in looking) of its participants by isolating them from each other in the darkness and directing, controlling there gazes to the screen and the actors displayed on it (234).
“it is an image that constitutes the matrix of the imaginary, of recognition/miser cognition and identification, and hence of the first articulation of the I, of subjectivity” (235).
“the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing it” (235).
“The determining male gaze projects it’s fantasy onto the female figure […] the appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness […] the leitmotif of erotic spectacle” (236).
Women function as the “erotic object” for both characters and spectators, collapsing the “renaissance space” of the projected image (236).
“A male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror” (237).