The point of destruction of Visual Pleasure.

Laura Mulvey’s essay struck an odd chord with me the first time I read it in my “Women in Film Noir” class. Revisiting this piece unfortunately has not helped me understand Mulvey’s aim in writing it. The snag in the essay, in my opinion, is the entire idea of the piece as stated by the author herself: to “discuss the interweaving of that erotic pleasure in film, its meaning, and in particular the central place of the image of woman. It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article.(204)”
I try not to ask this question on a daily basis in our class, but what is the point of this? Why destroy something like this visual pleasure we get from cinema? It is as though Mulvey holds the belief that the erotic gaze with which the viewer views a film is immoral or incorrect, though she goes on without making this sort of value judgment about the subject. This intent to destroy something that gives us pleasure, so clearly and almost brashly stated is sort of a challenge to me: “try to understand the point of this destruction, and if you can’t you are clearly not intelligent enough to grasp the intention.” I do understand, because the intention is stated in black and white. Mulvey tries to offer some sort of replacement for the loss of pleasure from film: “The alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, or daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire. (204)” However, would conceiving a new language of desire eventually result in the same way of gaining pleasure from watching women and men on the screen? Unfortunately what would replace the current language of desire is not explored in the essay, and the reader is left wondering if anything would replace it at all. The themes that Mulvey explores are deeply entrenched in the human psyche, and removing them would take considerable effort on the part of the reader/viewer. I can attest to the fact that I have made no effort to remove these ideas from my mind after reading Mulvey’s essay, and I know for a fact that humans in general are more likely to oppose change and live a comfortable static existence. And so I return to my original query: “Why?” What do we achieve by dismantling and destroying the ways that people think? I cannot, at this time, come to a conclusion, and it is my hope that someone will offer their opinion in an effort to help me understand, if not agree.