This paper begins from the ways in which ‘Video Replay’ provided a conceptual bridge between the idea of the textually constructed ‘spectator’ in film studies and that of the socially constructed ‘audience’ in media and cultural studies. It was, however, what ‘Video Replay’ suggested about the organisation of fantasy structures within power relations that proved to be most important for the author. Walkerdine's argument that women's unconscious fantasies, and the cultural narratives through which they are regulated and find expression, are constructed in relation to a dominant masculine narrative has proved crucial in understanding cultural texts by women.