The Male Gaze vs. The Female “Gaze”

The Male Gaze vs. The Female “Gaze”

As applied in film and visual studies, the “gaze” is a conception that describes viewers’ perception of and engagement with media. Emerging in in the 1960s in film theory and criticism, in other words, the “gaze” refers to how the audiences look at visual representations: TV, cinema, and online content (Chuk, 32). For decades, the “male gaze,” arguably, has been known as the principal and only type of gaze. Hence, film critics have been using the concept of the “gaze” to denote directly to the “male gaze.” However, it would later turn out that there is also the “female gaze.” The male gaze and the female gaze are grounded on masculine and feminist thinking, respectively. Feminist thought has been part of society for decades; however, the coining of the female gaze has delayed because of the robust cinematic depictions of females as males’ subordinates in gender roles. Manifested in Hollywood 2.0 films, this idea portrays the male gaze and the female gaze as the dominant and recessive players respectively throwing in doubt the notion that the male gaze and the female gaze are equivalents.

The male gaze school of thought was advanced by Laura Mulvey—a scholar and filmmaker—in her today eminent 1975 dissertation, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” From a psychoanalysis perspective, Mulvey contended that traditional Hollywood pictures “react to an engrained drive called ‘scopophilia:’ the looking-based sexual pleasure (11). According to this theorist, popular films tend to be videoed in frames that gratify masculine scopophilia. Thus, all visuals that are inclined to responding to masculine voyeurism tend to sexualize women for male viewers. By Mulvey’s own words, in these pictures, women are the “spectators” and men the “look bearers (Chuk, 32). Hence, women are characterized by their “to-be-looked-at-ness.” Accordingly, the male gaze is also referred to as masculine or heterosexual gaze.

The Postman Always Ri.

ngs Twice (1946) is a good case of the male gaze. In scene (III), while introducing Caro Smith, “the picture’s lead female character to the viewers, the camera angles are manipulated to portray her bodies provocatively” (Chuk, 50). Using close-up shots, the camera forces the audience into staring at Carol’s body, thereby creating a looking mode that is sexual, seductive, voyeuristic, and concurrent with the male protagonist’s viewpoint. “Rear Window” (1954) and She’s All That (1999) are other classical examples of male maze films as seen in their literal framing of women’s bodies, while Transformers film series (2006-2014) is an excellent modern example (Engström, 16). In all these visuals, the camera angles are repeatedly positioned and manipulated to portray womens’ bodies provocatively; hence, presenting females as sexual objects to be desired.

The “female gaze,” on the contrary, while it lacks a definitive definition and meaning, is thought as the audience’s perception of masculinity from a feminine perspective, with a particular focus on emotions. According to Engström, female gaze cinemas “hardly invite females to desire males’ bodies; instead, females are situated to identify with a heroine who is herself desired by a man” (13). In this logic, it is not Fitzwilliam the wet undershirt of Darcy that inflames the female viewer in Pride and Prejudice, but it is Darcy’s desire for Elizabeth that truly appeals. Thus, while the male gaze portrays women as men’s sexual objects through looks, the female gaze portrays men as females’ sexual objects through emotions. For example, Campion’s The Piano (1993) expresses the heroine’s passionate nature through its famous score. Furthermore, Engström observes that Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides (1999)” “expresses female experience through sound and visual aesthetics, portraying the teenage protagonists’ inner life. The scenes use a combination of warm tones: yellow, salmon, feminine symbols: flowers, unicorns, and music to express female adolescence.”

The bottom line is that while men’s desire in the male gaze is visual, women’s desire in the female gaze is sensory. Accordingly, the female gaze is noticeable; however, from this analysis, it is perceptible the female maze is not a direct equivalent of the male gaze. The male gaze fashions a supremacy discrepancy supporting a patriarchal status quo disseminating the real-life sexual objectification of women. Accordingly, the female gaze cannot be “like” the male gaze as the former is recessive and the latter dominant.

 

 

Works Cited

Chuk, Natasha. “A Gaze of Cruelty, Deferred: Actualizing the Female Gaze in Cate Shortland’s Berlin Syndrome (2017).”

Engström, Susanna. “Kvinnliga blickar och musikvideor: En semiotisk studie av fyra musikvideor utifrån begreppet the female gaze.” (2020).

Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ 1975. , 2016. Print.