LAURA MULVEY‘Male Gaze’

In the essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’

Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of The Male

Gaze as an aspect of power. It shows how it creates

an uneven perspective between Males and Females.

The Male Gaze occurs in the film industry, when we

see a perspective from a heterosexual Males point of

view.

As we can see in the previous image, an example of

the male gaze includes a scene which may linger

on the curves of a woman's body. Feminists would

argue that these instances happen to replicate the

pleasures and thoughts of the male brain, engaging

men because of their appeal to objectify women,

hence its referral to being the Male Gaze. Here are

some example images which are created for the

Male Gaze:

The theory suggests that male gaze denies women human agency, therefore objectifying them, hence, the woman reader and the woman viewer must experience the text's narrative secondarily, this is done by identifying with a man's perspective. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” suggests that exism exists, not only by the content of text but also by how the text is presented. For example through its implications about its expected audience

Theorists note the degree to which people gaze at women in advertisements that "sexualizes" a woman's body even when the woman's body is unrelated to the advertised product

"In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness," and as a result contends that in film a woman is the "bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning."

Mulvey argues that Freud's psychoanalytic theory is the key to understanding how film creates such a space for female sexual objectification and exploitation through the combination of the patriarchal order of society. We can see within the text that it is a norm for Women of our society to be objectified for the purpose of the Male Gaze. However, there are some women who disapprove of this theory, and mock the Male Gaze. This can be seen below in Lily Allen’s ‘Hard out here’ music video, whereby she shows reality that women are objectified to a fanatic extent, knowing as a women, that perfection is a fantasy which is encouraged through the Male Gaze.