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By Marisa Pjerrou

In her pivotal 1974 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, " Laura Mulvey described how classical Hollywood film constructed excessively sexualized and fetishized images of women for the sole pleasure of the male gaze. In

Mulvey's application of Freudian theory, fetishization is described as serving the purpose of disguising the female lack of a penis, or as "other" (non-male); hence male castration anxiety is ostensibly avoided by adornment of the female image. Gaps and biases in Freudian psychoanalytic theory have certainly not gone unchallenged in academia, and Mulvey's extensive use of Lacanian, and especially Freudian-driven theories have often been called into question. Nonetheless, her study remains a seminal piece in feminist

film theory for attempting to deconstruct the act of looking - or more specifically for being the first of its kind to examine the cultural signifiers produced by the interactions of gender, sexuality and cinematic visual pleasure.

The passage of time since the publication of "Visual Pleasure" has seen the emergence of more visible and vocal communities of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, and hence the need for more inclusiveness than just what is provided by the heterosexual paradigm. The Internet has allowed for a proliferation of new and refreshing perspectives to occur - ones that challenge assumptions held as truths by hegemonic theories, such as in the writings of Freud. "Kiss" digital paper doll art is one such type of collaborative, grassroots creativity made possible by the Internet, with users often appropriating and redesigning copyrighted images of popular cartoon, game or anime characters to their own liking. It's name derived from the Japanese phrase kisekae ningyou - "dolls for changing clothes" - the Kiss digital paper doll movement started out in Japan as an online version of girls' traditional activity of paper doll-playing, which gradually included anime -style art, and then sexual themes when Japanese teenage boys became interested participants. Now apparently passé in Japan, the Kiss doll movement has picked up speed with Western audiences and evolved into something even wilder with the integrated perspectives of different sexual orientations. Not all Kiss dolls have sexual content; at Otaku World one can still find the cute girls' dress-up variety. Nor do all Kiss dolls necessarily disrupt patriarchal constructs of visual pleasure. Mulvey describes a dynamic common to this construct, which posits the female as a creature basking in her "to-be-looked-at-ness" and the male as the "bearer of the gaze." The T & A variety of doll, which reinforces this dynamic, are also downloadable from the adult section of Otaku World's Kiss collection.

What makes the showcase of dolls different at Luckykiss_xxx is the digression from, disruption to, or questioning of assumptions involved in the expectation of visual pleasure. The artists who created these dolls seem to be encouraging their audience into alternative modes of looking, and asking rather than assuming, who is the bearer of the gaze? They also provide a space for adults to role-play in creative scenarios. Asia de Guarde's Girl Paradox has an androgynous-looking female character with interchangeable outfits, while Dov Sherman's Gally features an equally androgynous-looking female cyborg musician as its main character. Going one step further is Gyldon's X, which somehow manages to elegantly combine a stylish black and white art deco design with images of

large penises decorated with ribbons; its transgender doll comes with either male or female genitalia, depending on the user's preference. Another Kiss doll set by Glyndon, Team Rocket depicts the evil antagonists of the Pokemon cartoon series in an S & M dungeon, along with their Pokemon pet in crime, Meowth. The more sexually graphic Kiss doll sets, Godella, by Marco,

Virtual Nobuko, by Gudruk, and Nadia, by Jack Kammerer offer less critical versions of viewing pleasure; they are constructed more or less for the male gaze. Yet something slightly off-kilter about them doesn't quite put them in the category of porn, either. In Nadia, the jarring image of a rat with a penis stares at the viewer, as if to challenge the gaze. The repetitive sound loop of a woman moaning in Godella has a strange mechanical quality to it, like that of a battery-operated toy. And in Virtual Nobuko, the most sexually graphic Kiss doll set at Luckykiss_xxx, if the user guesses correctly on which hot spots to click in order to "score" with Nobuko, a disembodied penis with a hand may appear. Like regular paper dolls with accessory-type props such as scarves or jewelry, the unattached penis in Virtual Nobuko seems to strangely serve as visual prop as well.

Questions that Mulvey brought up over 25 years ago in "Visual Pleasure" are still amazingly relevant, especially when one considers the frequency with which popular images of women appear on the Internet. Porn is designed almost exclusively for the male gaze, and the Internet is full of such stuff. The creative use of either self-designed or appropriated cartoon characters allow for interesting explorations in gender and sexuality. The Kiss digital doll sets at Luckykiss_xxx are both intelligent and fun to use.