The Male Gaze Theory

The male gaze theory

What is the male gaze?

The gaze is how the audience view the people that are presented in a certain scenario.


For females it can be thought of in 3 ways

• how men look at women
• how women look at their selves
• how women look at other women

Laura Mulver thought of the term 'the male gaze' in 1975. she believed that the view of the audience about the characters come from a heterosexual male perspective

Features of the male gaze

The camera lingers on the attributes of the females body, and the event which may occur to the women are presented in the context of the mans.

The male gaze relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative in a different view, by identification with the male.

Criticism of the mulvery and male gaze theory

Some criticism may be that some women actually like being looked at because it makes them happy E.G, beauty pageants.

The gaze can also be directed at people of the same gender, not all of which are sexual, some may be because of the clothes someone is wearing or through body image.

Categorising facial expressions-

Women                                                      

• chocolate box
• invitational
• super smiler
• romantic or sexual

Majorie Ferguson (1980)

Men

• carefree
• practical
• seductive
• comic
• catalogue

Trevor Millum (1975)

Key Theorists beliefs

Johnathon 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

Us as an audience couldn't complete the questions answered because we were to busy staring at the woman. this is because most of the camera shots were highlighting her body parts out which took our mind of the questions that we were meant to answer. many of the time even though some of the shots were going to the lead singer who is a man, we were still intrigued by the woman in the video.