The Difference Between Pleasure and Beauty

Something I wanted to talk about in class recently but didn't get the chance to.

A quote by Laura Mulvey that began an essay of hers stated that some say analysis kills pleasure and beauty. I would like to argue against that. Analysis kills pleasure, but not beauty.

Beauty, as I see it, is a quality of a thing. Pleasure is an acknowledgment of that quality. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which implies that it needs an observer to exist, but the pleasure brought from that beauty is different from the beauty itself.

Analyzing beauty is something that many of us do every single day. When a musician sings a song about their lover and describes their face or demeanor, they're analyzing that person's beauty, and it doesn't kill the beauty. Just writing about it or talking about it doesn't destroy it, it often accentuates the beauty and allows others to appreciate it as you do. If I described my partner's laugh to someone, they might understand the reason I like their laugh and recognize the beauty in my description. 

Analyzing pleasure, on the other hand, does often kill it. Pleasure is a sensation and is, in many cases, a fleeting one. Analyzing the feeling of pleasure ruins the mood or the moment, and thus the pleasure goes away. This is especially true if the pleasure is unwarranted or unwanted. Pleasure is non-consensual. You can't help what you like, and if what you like is a person they have no control over whether you like them or not. Because of this, if someone does not appreciate you gaining pleasure from their existence, acknowledging your own pleasure or having it acknowledged to you despite that person's objections should destroy it. 

In addition, thinking not only about why but also how you like something can kill the pleasure as well. What do you feel in response to seeing this thing? What do you think about how you feel? Asking yourself these questions can often lead to you getting uncomfortable. It feels invasive, even though it's you analyzing your own feelings.

Mulvey was right that, on the topic of the male gaze, we should be seeking to analyze and thus destroy the sick pleasure of the gaze, but we should not be seeking to destroy the beauty that is admired by it. We should simply be viewing it in a different way.

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