While the overarching theme of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is the oppression of women; the essay’s particular interest is how the conventions of classic narrative film reinforce woman’s objectification by exploiting psychical structures socially conditioned to privilege masculinity. When published in 1975, Mulvey’s essay was groundbreaking, launching a new line of thinking in feminist film theory about the “male gaze” as a medium of fantasized pleasure for film spectators. Notably, when Mulvey was formulating her ideas in the early 1970s, film studies was not a well-developed academic discipline in England, where she lived. To pursue her interest in the subject, she read film journals like Screen and discussed ideas with other cinema enthusiasts.

Mulvey was also active in the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s. Second wave feminism first surfaced in America and gained momentum following the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. While first wave feminism was primarily centered on the struggle to achieve women’s suffrage (the right to vote), the ambitions of second wave feminism were more wide-ranging, but generally expressed women’s frustrations with gender stereotypes that consigned them to the domestic sphere. Women across the world were soon calling for greater gender equality.