Principal among these [levels of regulation] is the regulation of the erotic, both in the specific sense of the regulation of sexuality, and in the more generalized notion that the very act of looking at cinema depends on the scopophilic instinct: that is, the eroticized love of looking which specatcle plays upon and satisfies, very often through the display of the human body.

from Maltby and Craven, Hollywood Cinema 340.