laura mulvey: the male gaze

laura mulvey: concept 1

• women are sexually objectified

• media is a misogynistic institution

• males are the target viewing audience: their needs and desires are met first

• mulvey believes women are in fact “the bearer of meaning and not the maker of meaning” which suggests the women are not placed in a role where they can take control of a scene, instead are simply put there to be observed from an onjectified point of view

concept 2

• mulvey argues that the watchinmg perspective of media texts never alternated so that the med are in fact the ones who are being viewed in this manner

• inequality enforces the naturalised, but outdated idea of “men do the looking, and women are to be looked at”

the male gaze

• women viewed from eyes of heterosexual man

• women are represented as passive objects of male desire

• audiences are forced to view women from point of view of a heterosexual male

feminist perspetive on theory

1. how men look at women

2. how women look at themselves

3. how women look at other women

examples of male gaze

• medium close up shots of women over a man’s shoulder

• shots of women that pan and fixate on women’s body

• scenes which show a man actively observing a passive women