The 'Male Gaze'

The 'Male Gaze' is a theory by Laura Mulvey in 1975 who wrote an essay called 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. This was to evaluate a specific type of editing and she concluded from this theory that there is an 'unequal' representation of the way women are viewed where they are seen as sexualised for the pleasure of men.

This video following shows the 'Male Gaze' being put into action in a compilation of teen movies.

 Mulvey created a triangle which explained the 3 areas of the 'Male Gaze':

1) The look of the camera as it records the filmic event 

2) The look of the audience as it watches the final film product 

3) The look of the characters at each other in the visual images of the screen illusions 

Many aspects of the media use the 'Male Gaze' as it audience seem to have a large response when it includes sexualised scenes. Media uses techniques like voyeurism as a way to give an insight it what we may not really see in reality, for example scenes in the bathroom where women are seen to be quite vulnerable are exploited to concentrate on their body and movements.

The following is a scene from 'Carrie' which uses voyeurism to portray a sense of innocence by using an idea usually carrying sensual connotations by allowing her oblivious, timid state to counteract that.

Most of the time when women are viewing images in the media we don't tend to realise the perspective we are looking at it in, just what we are looking at. When you focus on who you are seeing, you notice that you are observing  a women the way a man would and subconsciously start believing that it is the way a woman should look and behave. This is very misleading representation for a woman to interpret as we don't have control over how we see another woman, we just know that we don't look like 'them' having us believe that this is what men want us to look like.

Although the 'Male Gaze' is widely popular in the media there is also a theory called the 'Female Gaze'. This idea is similar - if not a parallel similarity, in the perspective of a woman where they see men in a sexualised manner, typically with their shirt off and very toned muscles. If the media is trying to target a female audience they will attempt to use the 'Female Gaze' to attract us. The only difference you could say which creates a gap between the two theories is that a major part of the media industry is ran by men leaving us with the question, is it really the 'Female Gaze'.If mainly men are creating the 'Female Gaze' then they can easily construct an ideal viewpoint on their own gender and what us women should be attracted to.

Films like 'Magic Mike' and music videos like 'Call Me Maybe' act as evidence to support this theory of there being a 'Female Gaze'. Another example would be 'Twilight' where it contains many shirtless scenes, and the fact that there is a compilation of them all supports this point further.

Overall, what I've learnt so far about the male and female gaze is that editing is important, but what we take is far more important. We should really think about what we view and not let it just sweep our minds because someone else's perspective can really become our own if we let it.