Laura Mulvey Male Gaze – Ella McLeod

Concept of Gaze

• The gaze deals with how an audience views the people presented.• For feminists it is often thought of in 3 ways…1. How Men look at women2. How women look at themselves3. How women look at other women• Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘male gaze’ om 1975. In films, she

believed, audiences had to view characters from the perspective of a hetrosexual male.

Features of the Male Gaze

• The camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events.

• Reduces women to the status of objects, experiencing the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

Use of the Male Gaze in everyday life.

• Some theorists also have noted the sexualizing of the female body even in situations where female sexiness has nothing to do with the product nor narrative…

• Critisisms of Mulvey’s theory is that some women enjoy being looked at, as it is seen as empowering and therefore the theory shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a way of reducing females.

• Also the gaze can also be directed towards members of the same gender for multiple reasons, not all of which may be sexual – for example it could be due to the choice of clothing or makeup.