Scribes on Screen: Irene Dobson

Armstrong focuses on the work of Irene Dobson, pointing out that: 'adopting a range of identifications and enthusiasms in regard to female characters and archetypes she enjoyed, Dobson's writings revel in interpretations unbound by Freud and Lacan. She echoes Jackie Stacey's heterogeneous theorization of female spectatorship. While in Mulvey the woman had to identify either with the object of the male gaze, the passive woman, or, if she was to identify actively, the male agent in the scenario, Stacey and others suggest that female viewing pleasure had other avenues open to it.' He emphasises that Dobson's 'technique reminds us of those moments when, as a child, we were forbidden to watch a film with excessive violence or sex; a jumble of libidinous imagery glimpsed just as we are ushered off to bed.'