Lacans Theory

 Lacan's theory is effectively never being satisfied with things. This then creates a vicious cycle of trying to get something and when getting it immediately losing interest and moving on. It plays into the idea that we need dreams and aspirations because they give us a purpose and a sense of self-worth in order to achieve something. Therefore Lacan is seen in any film because someone always has a purpose and something they are trying to achieve and as a result as often seen as a good thing.

                                                                                                                                                                                       Although Lacan is often as a concept itself is explored in film and the problems its embedded ideologies in society can cause individuals. For example, often in films that tell stories of murderers and serial killers, present the individual killing people that becomes an obsession and more frequent because they can't find satisfaction. The idea originates from the idea that between 6 and 18 months of a child's development, it begins to distinguish itself between it and its reflection in the mirror then developing a sense of self-identity.

Lacan can be applied to the 2001 animated classic which is of course Shrek. It is a film about self-worth and never feeling good enough as we meet Shrek, an ogre who people perceive him negatively from how he looks and he acts content with his life but as the film moves on we see Shrek confide in donkey, someone who views it from how he is on the inside and he admits that he isn't content with his life of isolation and being hated. He realises he and Fiona have a lot in common and finds someone who could potentially love him after years of feeling that he is unworthy of love. He doesn't confess his feelings due to mishearing a conversation between Fiona and Donkey and lets his insecurities get the better of him. This leads to the Hallelujah scene which is a montage of Shrek and Fiona getting ready to live the lives they are expected to live but do not want to. When the song starts playing we see Shrek walk back to his empty swamp in a panning establishing shot to which we are then shown a reaction shot of him sighing with disappointment. This tells us that even though the whole movie to this point has revolved around him wanting to live alone in his swamp, he's finally here and unsatisfied because of the glimpse he had at the life he could've lived. The next shot of him reinforces this as we see him walking through the swamp where he steps on a broken mirror in which he sees his reflection. He sees himself as he is through the shards of broken glass which are symbolic of the fact that he not only feels ugly but also that even though he had everyone including himself he didn't care that people hated him and he lived this toxic and isolated life, he actually does care. So the glass shards are not broken because he's ugly but because he is looking at his life which he had previously looked at with happiness and content but now sees it for how isolated it really is and this idea he had of it being his perfect life is now broken. This shot is bridged over by a dissolving transition from Shreks reflection in the broken shards of glass to fionas reflection in the glass of a chandelier with the same look of disappointment that Shrek has because she too is unhappy with the life she dreamed of having. It also mirrors how they both want each other's lives as they are stood on opposite sides of their reflection and colours reinforce this idea because in Shreks reflection they are green and earthy like him which isn't very appealing, while fionas is contrastingly bright and white making it look much more appealing and desirable. Another shot we see is him tidying his house which is dimly lit. He picks up the only things that brighten up the room which is sunflowers, in a reaction shot we see him smiling as he reminisces on the time he and Fiona spent together, his sombre smile soon turns to a frown filled with anger and frustration as he throws the flower into his fire which symbolises the fact he is leaving that life he could've happily lived away and along with that his only chance of true happiness. The shot of the fire then pans out to a shot of Fiona getting ready to marry Farquad. The non-diegetic lyrics are very symbolic of what is occurring on-screen at this moment as he picks up the sun-flower they read "Well people I've been here before" as he is reminiscing on his and Fiona's relationship and then "I know this room and I've walked this floor" as he throws the flower to establish the idea that he doesn't want to open himself up for people to accept him because he only gets hurt. Then when it pans to Fiona "I used to live alone before I knew you" which is speaking for Shrek subconscious mind telling himself he doesn't need Fiona or the life she could've given him because he likes living alone when really he doesn't anymore and he never really did despite what he had convinced himself for years.

Mulveys Theory

The male gaze is a theory created by Laura Mulvey. It is the idea that in media, (predominantly film) women are sexualised through objectification for the pleasure of heterosexual men. It is the fragmentation of women as it only views them as parts and not as a whole individual person. Mulvey believes that traditional Hollywood films respond to a deep-seated drive known as scopophilia. Which is the sexual pleasure involved in looking. as the audience are encouraged to sexualise and objectify women on screen as if we were men looking at them. This is supported by the idea that there is a much higher percentage of men in positions of power in Hollywood that are controlling the content and henceforth the portrayal and objectification of women in media. 

Mulvey believes that while women are objectified in a sexual manner for the benefit and pleasure of men, men in media are shown as the spectacle and even though men are and can be heavily sexualised in media like women, the difference is with women it is degrading sexualisation while men are sexualised it's uplifting and to glorify them as powerful individuals because the people presenting this representation is. Mulvey makes a noticeable point that men in films are almost always at the centre of the action and narrative while also being presented as powerful and dominant playing an active role in the main plot. While on the other hand, women are presented very passively as they usually play minor roles in the narrative. Things usually happen to them rather than actually doing something themselves that affects the main plot of the film.

So to conclude she believes that the action and narrative in films are very much gendered in a binary manner, with men almost always playing the active role as the hero, while women typically are there to act as decorations and act as the damsels.

Mulvey can be applied to the representation of Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in 2010s Iron Man 2. Over the years since the film was released, Johanson has been very outspoken about the fact that she had problems with how her character was overly sexualised in this film and given no personality whatsoever. A scene that very clearly shows her through the male gaze is her first scene in which she enters a room with Tony practising boxing in his gym while Natasha is applying for a job under his company to assist him. While she is talking to another female character, Tony keeps staring at her and then he calls her over to him while he is shown through a low angle mid-shot making him look powerful in the situation which supports Mulveys claims that men and women are shown to us through the perspective of men as the men directing the film are making the characters that represent them better and more powerful than the women in this scene. We then are shown a low angle close up shot of her ducking to walk into the boxing ring and then slowly lifting her upper body back up to Tony's eye level. This shot in particular is very elongated when it didn't have to be in order to make it sexual for the pleasure of heterosexual men watching. It's very degrading because not only is she sercomming to what a man with no respect for her tells her to do it's done to make her look like a disposable object man can use. The following shots are them both looking at each other but Tony is straight-faced while Natasha is slightly smiling, there is no diegetic or non-diegetic sound which makes it feel even longer and as a whole creates sexual tension. Some would argue men are shown shirtless and sexualised too but through the 'female gaze' but this isn't degrading dehumanising like Natasha is in this scene. Later on in the film she has a fight scene where she takes on a dozen security guards. She constantly poses and looks at the camera while doing this

Freuds theory

 Sigmund Freud was a well-known psychologist who came up with many theories we still use for analysis today. One of his most well-known theories was his psychoanalytic theory which was the first to discuss the unconscious human mind and the importance it has on human behaviour and it is based on Freud's suggestion that there are three parts to the conscious mind. The first is the unconscious mind which is in constant existence outside your awareness, then the precocious mind which is all information that your brain isn't always aware of but can be recalled and finally the conscious mind which is your current state of awareness. Now, these come into play when Freud talks about his ideologies and theories on personality and how it is constructed.

Freud believes there are three parts to personality. These include the Id, which is the first to develop in humans and the biological part of personality in which we act upon instinct through it while it operates in one unconscious mind. Examples of the Id are desires and selfish wants as it operates according to the pleasure principle which is the idea that all of one's needs should be met immediately hence why Freud believes this develops first because we see this in babies as they don't know right from wrong and what is acceptable and unacceptable so when they need or want something their instinct is to cry and they get it because that's the only way it can communicate.

The second part of personality and the third to develop is the superego. The superego is the opposite of the id and exists in all three levels of consciousness. It maintains the idea of not what you as an individual wants but what is socially acceptable and the right thing to do as it pushes you towards one ego ideal, which is one view of what is right and along with that it also represents your conscious which is ones view of what is wrong.

And the final part of personality and the second to develop is the ego. The ego is the part of the personality that evaluates and balances the id and superego out and makes a decision from them and operates in one conscious and preconscious mind. If there was a person with a devil and an angel on each shoulder, the ego would be the person in the middle of them making the decision and the one left to deal with the consequences of it and operates in the alignment of the reality principle which is the idea that the desires and wants of the id must be met and satisfied through a way that the superego would deem socially acceptable while being realistic. Again we can see why this would be the second to develop because as a child grows, while still not being able to comprehend the superego yet of what is deemed socially acceptable, its mind is growing and can perceive things like emotions from others allowing them to make decisions that aren't just the id. For example, a toddler begins to understand the difference between happiness and sadness in others and as a result, wants to make people around it happy so will begin to communicate through other ways than just crying as it learns that you don't need to do that.

Freud's Psychoanalysis theory on personality can be applied to Mean girls a film about Teenage and high school drama.

Kady, the main character represents the ego, as she is the one making decisions that the film follows that are questionably morally right or wrong. As Kady has never been to school before, she doesn't really have an opinion or bias on what is happening at the start of the film. She ends up sercomming to the id as she is desperate to make friends even though she is tricking Regina and her plastics because her newfound friends convince her it will be funny even though she knows it is morally wrong therefore she justifies it through the fact she has been told Regina isn't a nice person. As the film continues her motives change and she gives in to her id as we see at the Halloween party Regina teased her with the boy she liked so now Kady has a personal motive causing her to want to 'take her down from her school social status. Towards the final act of the film, we see Kady's id become more and more present as her motives become even more selfish when we see her want to become Regina and take her place even though she despised her earlier in the film and knows she isn't a good person.

The Id is sometimes represented by people in the film for example in the first part of the film her friends Dameon and Janis as they want her to do things that Kady knows is wrong but she does it because she wants friends. In the 'Burn Book scene,' we see Kady being shown the burn book, you can tell by her expressions she is very uncomfortable with what the girls have written in the book however kady wants them to accept her. She is shown through a low angle close up looking at the book while non-diegetic intense music builds up to reinforce the fact she as the ego is deciding how to react and at this moment she has the power to call them out but she doesn't. The fact the book is shown through a high angle shows tells the spectator that they look down on everyone and think they are superior to everyone and untouchable. The 

page turns to her friends and she doesn't stick up for them and when they ask who Dameon is she says "he's almost too gay to function" as Janis had said as a joke previously and Regina tells her to write it down because it's funny. Then we hear Kadys superego kick in through the non-diegetic voice-over of her saying "maybe that was only okay when Janis said it"but instead of correcting herself she gives in to the id which is the influence of the girls and wants to fit in with them even though it's not the right thing to do as her superego pointed out. I believe the id is more like that want than the people specifically and the film creates a visual metaphor in Kady's mind which is her seeing the characters adopt animal-like behaviours and often fighting as she is from Africa and her VoiceOver explains how this is what would happen if they were animals through instinct. But as Kady says, in the girl world the fighting has to be sneaky so instead of acting immediately upon her id she has to be smart through her ego and think strategically about how to satisfy her selfish needs.

The superego, like the id, can be seen represented and symbolised through characters like her parents and Mrs Norbury and even her friends at times but overall I would argue the non-diegetic voiceover of Kady is representing the superego. Similarly to how the superego is active on all three conscious mind types, the voiceover is always there whenever kady makes a decision or has to validate something. It is her conscience. And as the superego is the last to develop, we see it take action and come into play in the final act of the film. In the 'girl on girl crime scene,' Miss Norbery is volunteering the girls to own up for their reactions and when picking the next girl, it is obvious to the audience it will be kady as we see a long shot of the girls sat on the benches of the gym and kady sticks out with her bright blue top on and she is positioned centre screen.
When she is asked if she has anything that she wants to own up to we hear her voice-over say yes while she says no. This continues two more times and is shown through a close-up shot on the same level as miss Norbery which conveys that she is being directly confronted with the option to tell the truth, but she doesn't as the voice-over explains she can't apologise to her teacher without getting the blame for the burn book even though she knows it is the right thing to do so what her ego does is respond with no and ignores her superego. When she finally takes responsibility for her actions things she would have previously said through VoiceOver now becomes what she says in person. Specifically in her Prom Queen speech.