During the emergence of cinema in the early 20th century, the landscape of material culture became a more widespread phenomenon and film productions became a profound artifact because of the information it provides about the culture of users and creators. Driven by the growth of the Hollywood media industry, films began to explore a range of cultural concepts and draw on social structures in their plots. Certainly, the explosion of the film industry has had positive impacts in terms of its association with leisure, but its negative connotations come from the way films reflect several social issues and, in some ways, encourage them. Specifically, the film "The Wolf of Wall Street" is a cultural artifact that particularly draws on this concept, and in this essay I will focus on how this film relates to the methodology surrounding the visual pleasure of cinematic experience. My goal is to observe and analyze how this particular film relates to the methodologies proposed by Laura Mulvey and Roland Barthes, and furthermore, to address the works of other psychoanalytic researchers, such as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, in order to to analyze how 'The Wolf of Wall Street' relates to their theories. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay “The Wolf of Wall Street” by Martin Scorsese depicts the real-life journey of Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo Di Caprio who portrays the famous swindling financier, and his rise to fortune through money laundering and stock manipulation. This film can be considered a cultural artifact due to both the widespread appreciation and condemnation it received in response to its unrelenting portrayal of the cultural connotations involved. Although the main storyline concerns Belfort's involvement in the stock market, the fundamentals of the story are slightly overshadowed by the eccentric lifestyle associated with it. The films that depict Belfort's reckless antics, however, present a very accurate depiction of societal structures and gender differentiation, making it culturally relevant. Despite its popularity, the film received negative publicity "for glorifying the exploitative and hedonistic lifestyle it depicts" and this is linked to the film's depiction of Belfort's heavy indulgence in alcohol, drugs and of sexual behavior. Laura Mulvey examines cinema and its relationship to phallocentrism in terms of the symbolic representation of women and the meaning of the "male gaze", which is the main point of her methodology. Here, her analysis is relevant because it provides insight into the exploitation of women in cinema, an aspect of “The Wolf of Wall Street” that has drawn heavy criticism. This particular film features an abundance of sexualized women and various women purely objectified for the pleasure of the male characters, which ties in with Mulvey's theory of "woman as image and man as bearer of gaze." Within this framework, she observes ideas of the “male gaze” and how women are demoted to only having two functions; being “an erotic object for the characters in the cinematic story and an erotic object for the viewer in the theater.” Ideological fundamentals have led to this theory that male figures cannot be subject to sexual objectification, which is why naturally the woman is forced to bear the burden when she is exploited both in the film itself by the characters and by theconsumers who watch the film. This is evident in “The Wolf of Wall Street” as there is a clear division between male and female roles and the respect their characters have; statistically, women have considerably less dialogic input and their physical representation is done purely for the pleasure of male actors and viewers, given the fact that women are often presented in suggestive clothing or are naked. It is undeniably a concept designed with the desired aim of stimulating the visual pleasure of male audiences, thereby further succumbing to the notion of female exploitation in cinema. This idea of ​​the domination of the male gaze is linked to the ideas defended by Jacques Lacan on the concept of the mirror image associated with film. His predominant argument is that when you look in the mirror, the "other" you see as yourself is actually more powerful and accomplished than you actually are because your body is not fully equipped to do the things you want to do. . Here, the relevance comes from the fact that Mulvey considers Lacan's theory within the comparable framework of cinema; she observes how "the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his gaze onto that of his fellow man, his substitute on the screen", which means that male spectators look at the male characters in films like "The Wolf of Wall Street,” and establish comparable connections between the two parties. They experience a “moment of recognition in front of the mirror” that is the cinema screen, and as a result, this promotes the exploitation of women because the spectators also assume this patriarchal and superior position which demeans women. Additionally, Mulvey draws on Freudian theory by using the castration complex in his analysis. She proposes how women, like those depicted in this cultural artifact, symbolize the threat of castration due to their lack of male genitalia and thereby “raise their child in the symbolic.” This means, in semiological terms, that the woman "makes her child the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis", which means that women believe that they are not full human beings because they do not possess not the same biological conditions as men. This therefore means that in today's patriarchal culture, women are only a "signifier for the other male" and are silenced when subjected to male desires. This theory is particularly prevalent in "The Wolf of Wall Street" due to the fact that women are presented solely as sexualized objects belonging to men's possession and Mulvey expresses how this is the "leitmotif of erotic spectacle". Throughout the film, women are both underrepresented and marginalized, which is more reflective of the film industry as a whole. Irrefutably, there is a strong male domination of the industry and a study on this subject carried out by Stacey Smith recognizes the extent to which women are a minority in cinema and furthermore, the women who appeared in the film are "largely majority white, capable, heterosexual, skinny and partially nude.” ". “The Wolf of Wall Street” is a prime example of this, as evidenced by the fact that the few women allowed screen time are always accompanied by male characters and objectified by those men. Closely related to this are ideas of eroticism. The film in question is filled with erotic connotations and Roland Barthes explores this concept through his theory of the "cinematic situation" and the importance of the cinema environment in relation to these cultural ideas. He calls the cinema “The Cube”, which accurately describes the cinema and the strange environment it represents. Even before watching a film like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the consumer enters a pre-hypnotic situation due to the darkness of the cinema. Barthes expands on this by describing how black is the "color of diffuse eroticism", and this concept develops as the film progresses, particularly for this film due to the heavy focus on eroticism and sexual encounters. He discusses how the fascination of film is illustrated by the cinematic experience which creates a greater intensity between the film/characters and the viewer, which also relates to Lacan's mirror theory. Barthes takes up Lacan's analysis and considers it in ideological terms; he says “How to remove yourself from the mirror?” I complicate a relationship with a situation” and here he expands on his observation that spectators become “glued to the ideological discourses” embedded in the films. For "The Wolf of Wall Street", in particular, this is relevant because the concept of cultural patriarchy and female inferiority is also extremely prevalent in this film, and what Barthes is insinuating is that this ideology is deeply rooted in material culture, so its effects are much harder to escape, because society is so consumed by it. Here he identifies the difficulties of “detaching” oneself from such prejudiced ideology which highlights the pervasive nature of visual pleasure in the cinematic experience. In expanding ideas about the concept of visual pleasure, Mulvey examines two theories that inclusively present all of the ideas I have already drawn on. The first is the idea of ​​"scopophilic" pleasure which arises from the use of sight to use "another person as an object of sexual stimulation" and the second is the "ego libido" which is formed from the identification of oneself in a character presented in the film. . Both pursue an “eroticized phantasmagoria,” which is particularly relevant to “The Wolf of Wall Street” because there is a clear intention behind the storyline and depiction of the story to stimulate eroticized visual pleasure. Although the film is primarily based on a much broader context, the recurring theme throughout the film always returns to an erotic and sexually motivated connotation with the aim of satisfying these two modes of pleasure. Mulvey examines this through his analysis of how viewers construct their gaze. As stated previously, there is the concept of the male gaze, but to explore this theory further, Mulvey examines the “three different gazes associated with cinema; that of the camera when it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience when it watches the final product and that of the characters against each other in the illusion of the screen. She observes how the complex relationship between these aspects is very unique to cinema and the development of this is why cinema was able to move away from the traditional monolithic system in which it began, to become a more radical cultural artifact and facilitates films like "The Wolf of Wall Street" which encourage this concept. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay To conclude, when analyzing a cultural artifact like "The Wolf of Wall Street" with respect to the analytical methodology, presented by people such as Roland Barthes and Laura Mulvey, the psychoanalytic connotations are deeply rooted in the material culture become predominant. This film and many others clearly show how the film industry.