Laura Mulvey’s TheoryMALE GAZE

The Gaze

The idea of a gaze is one that explains how an audience views the people and characters represented in media (especially music videos). It can be split into three categories:

How men look at women How women look at themselves How women look at other women

The Male Gaze

The male gaze occurs when the viewers of a film are placed into the perspective of a heterosexual male. For example the camera may give prolonged screen time to the female figure.

Women are commonly displayed in two different ways: The Virgin: An innocent character, commonly in the sidelines with no

association to a man. The Whore: An eroticised object, subject to the desire and gaze of both

the characters and viewers of the film.

The Virgin

Adele in her video for “Rolling in the Deep” is repeatedly captured with wide shots, in order to make sure no part of her body is sexualised by the viewers. She’s also sat in a very contained pose with a full body of clothes. Mulvey would consider this an example of the portrayal of The Virgin. Though she’s not in the background of the video, she holds no attachment to a male character and gives no signs of eroticism.

The Whore

In Jason Derulo’s video for “Wiggle feat. Snoop Dogg” the female actors could all be considered to fit into Mulvey’s idea of The Whore. Dressed skimpily with extremely erotic choreography, the females are the eye candy of both the audience and the males within the clip. Not only do the visuals prove this but also the song is about the wiggling of the female posterior and many of the lyrics are incredibly sexual.

Relating To Our Work

Our music video has a female protagonist who is not going to be sexualised. This goes against the Virgin/Whore theories as it is an independent character, on whom the focus is on, who is not going to be displayed as a sexual item. Though this could increase the number of hits our video receives (evidence shows that this occurs with other media e.g. increased album sales for artists such as Taylor Swift and Kesha) we have decided against the sexualisation of any characters in our film. We thought it disrespectful to do so but also the song has no relation to any kind of sexual ideas and so it would simply not fit. Furthermore I don’t think we’d be able to find an actor willing to be displayed in such ways.