David Fincher's Use Of Ideology In Se7en

David Fincher’s Se7en is an American thriller/horror film directed in 1995. The film follows the investigation of two detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) through the series of murderers based on the seven deadly sins found in the Christian Bible. A puzzle film is designed so that every piece functions toward the overall plot of the film; everything falls into place. Through the graphic scenes of these murders, Se7en’s central idea focuses on the artful killing of John Doe’s master plan to force society to evaluate and shift its ideology.
Ideology is the relationship between the real and the imaginary. It is through ideology that individuals formulate their understanding of themselves and the world around them. Louis
The main character, Detective Mills, first looks at himself in the mirror giving himself the gaze, the visual presentation of self, of the “I”, the ego for “It is the birth of the long love affair/despair between image and self-image which has found such intensity of expression in film and such joyous recognition in the cinema audience” (Mulvey, 840). Because Mills has gained his ego from the gaze of identification and the environment that surrounds him, Se7en narrative becomes his, for we, as audience, follow his view, his guidance till the end of the maze. Mulvey describes, “The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form. Scale, space, stories are all anthropomorphic. Here, curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the person in the world” (840). By reviewing the mise-en-sene of the scenes with Detective Mills, it is evident that his character embodies this concept. Throughout the film, all the scenes with Mills have three-point lighting and he wears light colored clothes to depict him as heroic and pure-hearted. Additionally, the camera typically views him from a lower angle up, in cinematic term, the hero shot. This supports Mulvey’s theory of the two gazes: camera and spectators gaze; therefore, it develops the protagonist hero in Se7en to gain audiences’ empathy. “As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of