Passionate Detachment

Abstract

In section two of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s 1977 film Riddles of the Sphinx, entitled ‘Laura speaking’, Mulvey is filmed in a static shot, sitting on a white chair in front of a black background, at a desk covered in objects, facing the camera (Fig. 1). It is a kind of self-portrait, elaborated with Wollen and the film’s crew. The objects include technologies of recording and playback (a microphone and a tape recorder), of reading and writing (a felt-tip pen, a highlighter, notebooks, and a pencil sharpener shaped like a tiny globe), and of vision (a pair of glasses). The mise en scène seems designed to be read, a space of signification, and is suggestive of Wollen’s earlier interest in iconography.1 In this modest – one might say austere, if it wasn’t slightly curious and playful – scenography, periodically meeting the viewer’s gaze, Mulvey delivers...