Linda Williams, "Power, Pleasure and the 'Frenzy of the Visible"

Linda Williams, in her article Power, Pleasure and the“Frenzy of the Visible”, discusses the "stag film" and the history behind it. Stag films are usually represented and constructed for male audiences. They focus on the "fellatio" (the stimulation of the penis). Williams talked about the position that women take and how the phallus is a form of fetish. Marx defined fetish as "a mysterious thing", and in the movie Deep Throat, a woman is viewed as the other because she lacks sexuality. She was portrayed as a woman who does not enjoy sex very much and did not come; she went to the doctor and found out that the clitoris was in her throat. The doctor than instructs her how to penetrate herself, etc. As women have become the unknowing subject, "fetishization is an obvious way for the male subject to maintain the phallic economy of the one. Freudian fetishist attempts to preserve his own humanity at the expense of stressing the freakish inhumanity – the "horror" – of the female other" (Williams 114). Williams argues that the subjects of stag film are often women, and she explains how they are constructed in a way for the viewers to view the male penis and to make women invisible as a form of fetishism.