The theory of male gaze

The theory of male gaze

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What is the male gaze?The concept of gaze = how an audience views the people presented. The concept divides into three dimensions:How men look at womenHow women look at themselves How women look at other women

Forms of the gazeThe spectators gaze: the directors over the whole text.The Intra-diegetic gaze: when the character gazes at an object or another character in the text. The Extra-diegetic gaze: where the fourth wall is broken (the character looks into the camera, looking right at the viewer.The camera gaze: this is the camera operators view. The editorial gaze: emphasised a textual aspect like the cropping and caption, which direct the viewers to that particular character.

Laura Mulvey:A theorist and a feministShe introduced a theory of male gaze in her essay Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975).Her thinking revolved around the pleasure of looking and of being looked at known as scopophilia.She argued that women are used for visual pleasure- women are made to seem like sexual objects through voyeurism. Like McRobbie, she also argued that women took the passive part of a film and that all men played an active part, in her eye the women were objects

Visual pleasure and Narrative cinema:Women are presented as sexual objects of pleasure for the characters and audience. The camera presents women as sexualised for the pleasure of men. This is voyeuristic scopophilia. Film audiences are forced to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Men are not viewed this way for the female audience (except in Magic Mike).Men fetishize women i.e., watching as they are receiving pleasure or pain - which she referred to as fetishistic scopophilia.

Scopophilia at work: PsychoThe shower scene works as a demonstration of both types of scopophilia: the male audience starts by voyeuristically watching an attractive woman (Janet Leigh was a major sex symbol at the time) showering naked, then fetishistically watches her being attacked. How do the spectators and cameras gazes work in the scene?

Why is seeing someone being murdered fetishistic? In psychological terms, seeing a woman stabbed symbolises penetration and is therefore erotic. Seeing a woman strangled could also symbolise an erotic/intimate act. A female character being shot would not have this effect.Bear in mind a fetish is something weird/deviant!

Mulveys three types of lookingThe look of the camera as it records the filmic event.The look of the audience as it watches the final product.The look of the characters at each other in the visual images of the screen illusion.She says these looks are linked to the issue of genre because looking in this cinematic sense is informed and disrupted by sexual desire and the erotic contemplation of the female form.

Produced by degree students:Video explanation analysis of the 3 modes of looking

Additional support for MulveyDoane (1982): women have a marginal gaze within film, just like in a patriarchal society.Moore (1988): male bodies are only on display in certain conditions - they are always in active poses as if they can walk away from the womans gaze. Van Zoonen (1994): men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at.

Deconstruct this clip using the theory (in the usual four areas).Practice piece