The Male GazeLaura Mulvey – ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema’

What Is The ‘Male Gaze’? The Male Gaze is a theory based on how women

are presented in media through a heterosexual male viewpoint. The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. The theory suggests that the idea of the Male Gaze has become a social acceptability, or the norm, within the media world.

Feminists can analyse media use the Male Gaze in three ways: how man look at women, how women look at themselves and how women look at other women.

Main Features Of The ‘Male Gaze’ Theory

1. The representation of women as sexual objects/fantasies from a heterosexual male view.

2. Scopophilia – the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies (a voyeuristic representation of women).

3. A patriarchal society (in which men dominate society).4. Objectification of female characters.5. Active male roles and passive female roles.6. Men being controlling subjects/ men controlling women.7. Women as an image – just something to be looked at.8. Men do the looking at women and women are just there to be

looked at.9. The needs of the male ego.

Mulvey believes that in film, audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of an heterosexual male.

Features Of The Male Gaze The camera lingers on the curves of a

female body, and events which occur to women are presently largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events.

Relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male

Use Of The Male Gaze In Everyday Life

Some theorists also have noted that sexualizing of the female body even in situations where female sexiness has nothing to do with the narrative or with the product being advertised.

Criticism Of Mulvey And The Male Gaze Theory

Some women enjoy being ‘looked’ at e.g. beauty pageants (extreme)

The Gaze can also be directed towards members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing.

‘Blurred Lines’ Robin Thicke

Thicke is shown to be laid in bed bedside a naked woman. Thicke’s arm is across the women in a ‘protective’ gesture. This makes the women seem inferior and the man as controlling, which conforms to the ideas that the males are presented as controlling.

Thicke’s name is huge bold letters across the screen. This makes him appear important and so conforms to boosting his male ego.

This close up emphasises how little make up other than the bold lipstick. This makes her appear very plain but still feminine and attractive. This therefore suggests attraction from a heterosexual male’s point of view.

Her intense gaze at the camera indicates that she is sexualised and an image to look at. This complies to the Male Gaze theory.

In this shot the male is dominant as he is staring at her body, rendering her just and image to be looked at. The woman’s bright lipstick enforces her femininity and sexuality. The woman’s facial expression is bland indicating that she is the most passive. Her facial expression could alternatively indicate that she has no interest in the male and that he cannot dominate her. This is going against the idea of a male dominated, patriarchal society that is suggested by the Male Gaze theory.