Tom Ranocchia

Media 384

Prof. Caçoilo

2/24/17

The male gaze is a concept that was introduced by Laura Mulvey in 1975 in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey’s attention was specifically focused on movies, the structure of which she viewed as offering an unparalleled opportunity for voyeurism. She wrote, “the cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking” (Mulvey, 834). What Mulvey saw in her study of the male-dominated movie industry, existing within the patriarchal society, was that film is a medium where women are typically exhibited, so that they may be gazed upon or viewed from a masculine perspective as an object of desire. Mulvey termed this “the male gaze”. While men in film are active, the presence of women is simply to provide a catalyst for the actions of those men. Mulvey quotes Budd Boetticher who wrote “In herself the woman has not the slightest importance” (837).

Male gaze theory posits that there are three “looking” perspectives associated with films. The first is that of the camera, which really represents the view of the movie producer. As producers are most often men, the camera lens will typically reflect a masculine viewpoint, often lingering on the female form. The second look associated with film is that of the audience. Mulvey links this to Freud’s concept of scopophilia, the pleasure that is derived by looking, which he associated with “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (835). This is a primal desire and is played up by Hollywood, which is aware that movie watching “satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking” (836) and exhibits women as erotic objects for the audience.  The third look is that which occurs between the characters within the “screen illusion” and here we see that “passive” women are frequently displayed as erotic objects, for their “to-be-looked-at-ness” rather than as real participants in the action or the development of the story line.

In Mulvey’s view, given that men are most often controlling the production and the characterization of films, they have power over women and they use this to promote images of the female form that serve men for visual pleasure. Men decide how women are viewed in film, and in doing so they reinforce the patriarchal society. What of women watching films? Mulvey’s position is that women also view films with a male gaze. The structure of movies means that they have no choice but to watch with a masculine perspective and in doing so, they help to normalize the objectification of the females onscreen. In a chapter titled “Understanding Patriarchy” in her book The Will to Change, bell hooks makes a point that shows Mulvey’s view to be unsurprising. Hooks writes that “women can be as wedded to patriarchal thinking and action as men” (hooks, 23) and she believes that both women and men are socialized into the system.

It is apparent that the concept of the male gaze has application in the wider realm of visual arts. John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing about the objectification of women in European oil painting. He noted, “in the art form of the European nude the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects usually women” (Berger 63). Like both Mulvey and hooks, Berger considers that the unequal relationship between men and women is deeply embedded in our culture and that “[women] do to themselves what men do to them. They survey, like men, their own femininity” (63). Berger suggests that today, “the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed” (64) and this is supported by any number of current texts across a broad range of media types which show that the male gaze is pervasive in popular culture. From video games, to comics, to music videos, images of women depicted as simply objects of desire abound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU

The music industry's view of women - 2013.

One of the world's most popular video games with over 12 million subscribers at its peak.

The oppositional gaze is a term coined by bell hooks and comes out of her studies and contemplation of black female spectatorship. Hooks begins by reflecting on the term “gaze” and the connotations that it has for her as a black woman whose right to gaze has been repressed with the result that she has “an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze” (hooks 116). This oppositional gaze is a critical look at media that interrogates and challenges the male gaze, linking it with white domination. She notes that when black people in America first looked at film and television, “they did so fully aware that mass media was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy” (117). Watching its images “was to engage its negation of black representation” (117). She adds, “it was the oppositional black gaze that responded to these looking relations by developing independent black cinema” (117). Hooks writes that black women in particular have been largely silent as spectators and critics of film because of “cinematic negation” (118). Black women have been barely present in film, other than being there “to serve – to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze” (119). The consequence for hooks of this negation has been to feel isolated by the media and, in fact, by mainstream feminist film criticism which does not recognize race and does not acknowledge black female spectatorship. In response, hooks considers that “critical black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation” (126).

The readings on both the male and oppositional gazes gave me much greater insight into how the tentacles of the patriarchal society spread throughout our culture, constantly reinforcing the existing system. My first reaction was to want to diminish the impact of the readings by declaring them “dated”, however, my knowledge of media today forces me to be realistic. While clearly progress has been made and we are living in a time when there are more female producers and more strong female lead roles (the current success “Hidden Figures” comes to mind), there is no doubt that the objectification of women still dominates popular media. As I reflect, though, on my relationship to the current media structure, I would note that I don’t believe that all men look at the images of women with feelings of power and domination. For some, and I would include myself in this group, the act of looking is one that is accompanied by feelings of intimidation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM6Yg6ZVIL8

A new release in 2017...

Note: the following appears on the cast list from the film's Wiki page:

Dwayne Johnson as Mitch Buchannon, the no-nonsense leader of an elite team of lifeguards.

Zac Efron as Matt Brody, a disgraced former Olympian turned lifeguard used as a PR opportunity to restore the team brand.

Alexandra Daddario as Summer Quinn, one of the new recruits along with Matt & Ronnie, tough, brainy, a skilled surfer and the love interest of Matt who will stir him to the right direction.

...Summer Quinn, who is tough and brainy, yet still - in 2017 - is simply described as a love interest who will stir the hero to the right direction.

The good news: Marvel Comics apologized for this cover when it was met with largely negative reaction that condemned it as overly sexualized.

Works Cited

Berger, John. Chapters 2, 3. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972.

hooks, bell. In Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992: 115-131.

hooks, bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria Books, 2004: 17-33.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.

Images from Google Images