Rachel Rose Reimagines Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure’ in New Afterall Publication

Afterall has released a publication pairing Laura Mulvey’s seminal 1975 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ with a newly commissioned work by artist Rachel Rose. Mulvey’s text, first published in Screen, has remained a key reference for artists, filmmakers, and theorists, offering a polemical analysis of visual pleasure in cinema. Rose’s contribution draws on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fairy tales, noting how their flat narratives mirrored their flat depictions, and connects this to Mulvey’s argument that cinema flattens sexuality into visuality. The result is an intricately layered work that mixes genres and histories, forming a complex and playful reformation of the essay’s framework. The book is available for purchase via After8Books and Koenig.