The Male Gaze Laura Mulvey 1975

"Visual Pleasure and narrative cinema"

What is the Gaze?

The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people is presented. But with this one it concentrates on how men look at women in the media.

Feminists view this in 3 different ways :

- How men look at women 

- How women look at themselves 

- How women look at other women

Laura Mulver invented the term 'The Male Gaze' in 1975 and she believes that media is produced in the view from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

Features of the Male Gaze

Camera lingers on the curves if the female’s body and events that follow a presented based on the males reaction to these events.

Use of the theory in everyday life

Some theorists have noticed the sexualizing of the female body even in situations where the sexualizing of females has nothing to do with the product being advertised.

Criticism of Theory 

- Beauty Pageants 

- Can be directed towards members of the same gender, such as comparison of body image and/or clothing. 

Categorizing Facial Expressions 

Women 

- Chocolate Box (Giving expression)

- Invitational (Welcoming)

- Super Smiler 

- Romantic/Sexual

Majorie Fegurson (1980)

Men 

- Carefree

- Practical 

- Seductive 

- Comic 

- Catalogue (blank expression)

Trevor Millum (1975)

Key Theorists beliefs 

Jonathon Schroeder (1998) "To gaze implies more than a look - it signifies psychological relationship of power in which the gaze is superior to the object of the gaze

Homework

The reason why we couldn't answer all the questions after we watched the video is because the video was so focused on the girl, we didn't notice anything to do with the male singer. Even when an close up of the man singing appeared it made him look rough and focused on his flaws so he didn’t as attractive, we were focused on the lyrics about the girl we didn't seem to notice the little things such as what bowling alley they were playing on or the colour of the man’s shoes. 


Acting on Feedback:

This theory is shown in the task by all the men looking at the one girl in the music video, because of this the audience only looks at the girl, and that’s why we could only answer questions about the girl. This proves the theory because it’s showing that the audience only sees women as an object, that’s how it’s related.  

A beauty pageant is a criticism to the theory because girl’s enter things like this because they want to be looked at by other people and show off what they have. This is going against the theory because it says that women do want to be looked at that way, unlike the theory because that is telling us that girls don’t want to be looked at like that.

I think men and women are represented differently when looking at their facial expression because, in the media they want to appeal to the opposite sex. This means that men want to look differently so they will be more attractive to girls and the same for women. Also you could take it the other way because men want to be represented manly when looking at his facial expression.

Use of the theory in everyday life

For example to sell a certain product they might use a woman who is acting very provocatively, so the men or target audience will buy that product. This mainly happens with perfume, for example there is an advert where she is ripping her clothes off. This is unnecessary to what they are trying to sell, because it has nothing to do with the product. 

Categorizing facial expressions

From comparing the men and the women’s facial expression, the men’s is much more laid back and isn’t as provocative as the women. This helps proves the theory because it show that people will only look at women if they are doing these faces. This makes other women look at themselves and become self conscious because they feel pressured look like this to get attention.