In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze)
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze)
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze)
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze)
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MALE GAZE to a deep-seated drive known as
“scopophilia”: the sexual pleasure
The “gaze” is a term that describes involved in looking. Mulvey argued how viewers engage with visual that most popular movies are filmed media. Originating in film theory in ways that satisfy masculine and criticism in the 1970s, the gaze scopophilia. refers to how we look at visual representations. These include ad- Although sometimes described as vertisements, television programs the “male gaze”, Mulvey’s concept and cinema. is more accurately described as a heterosexual, masculine gaze. The male gaze describes a way of portraying and looking at women Visual media that respond to that empowers men while masculine voyeurism tends to sexualizing and diminishing women. sexualise women for a male viewer. While biologically, from early As Mulvey wrote, women are adolescence on, we are driven to characterised by their “to-be-looked- look at and evaluate each other as at-ness” in cinema. Woman is potential mates, the male gaze twists “spectacle”, and man is “the bearer this natural urge, turning the women of the look”. into passive items to possess and use as props. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) offers a famous The “male gaze” invokes the sexual example of the male gaze. In the politics of the gaze and suggests a scene below, the audience is sexualised way of looking that introduced to Cora Smith, the film’s empowers men and objectifies lead female character. Using close- women. In the male gaze, woman is ups, the camera forces the viewer to visually positioned as an “object” of stare at Cora’s body. It creates a heterosexual male desire. Her mode of looking that is sexual, feelings, thoughts and her own voyeuristic, and associated with the sexual drives are less important than male protagonist’s point-of-view. her being “framed” by male desire. It also establishes some important A key idea of feminist film theory, plot points: that the hero desires the concept of the male gaze was Cora, and that Cora recognises his introduced by scholar and lust. But the strongest message is filmmaker Laura Mulvey in her now that Cora is sexy. Indeed, the viewer famous 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure learns that Cora is sexy before they and Narrative Cinema. even learn her name. Even if a viewer isn’t attracted to women in Adopting the language of “real life”, the scene still makes psychoanalysis, Mulvey argued that sense. A lifetime of seeing women traditional Hollywood films respond sexualised in television, music Rises (2012) has significant personal videos and advertisements has made motivations, yet she is still clearly us very comfortable with assuming there to be looked at. the male gaze. Source : The male gaze takes many forms, but can be identified by situations https://theconversation.com/e where female characters are xplainer-what-does-the-male- controlled by, and mostly exist in gaze-mean-and-what-about-a- terms of what they represent to, the female-gaze-52486 hero. As Budd Boetticher, who Szczuka JM, Krämer directed classic Westerns during the NC. There's More to 1950s, put it: Humanity Than Meets the Eye: Differences in Gaze “What counts is what the heroine Behavior Toward Women and provokes, or rather what she Gynoid Robots. Front represents. She is the one, or rather Psychol. 2019;10:693. the love or fear she inspires in the Published 2019 Apr 24. hero, or else the concern he feels for doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0069 her, who makes him act the way he 3 does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”
This can be see in the different ways
the camera repeatedly positions us to look at women’s bodies. Think of Rear Win-dow (1954), for a literal framing of women’s bodies, or She’s All That (1999), which revolves around a make-over. For a modern example, the Transformers film series (2006- 2014) presents women as sexual objects to be desired.
Filmmakers often attempt to avoid
presenting female characters as “mere” sexual objects by giving them complex back stories, strong motivations and an active role in the plot of their story. Yet the masculine gaze is still commonplace. Catwoman in The Dark Knight