The Male Gaze – Power is in the eye of the beholder

(This photo was taken from here. I think it is the blog from your previous semesters)

The male gaze is a visual fixation over another being in form of a woman. It is used in order to illustrate the male dominance and possession of their submissive female counterparts. From the beginning of time this has been used, and it is still an important influence in today’s culture. The male gaze also looks at women as a sexual object rather than a human being and productive members of society. In addition, it was also used as an influence of authority and control over women and Blacks. We see great examples of the male gaze of power and oppression in Hollywood films, TV shows, advertisements, and works of art.

(Photo taken from tumblr.com) Here is the direct page.

In Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she states “Pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure…women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Women displayed as sexual objects is the leit-motiff of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip-tease, she holds the hook, plays to signifies male desire.” (Mulvey, 837) Here we see Mulvey describe how women are pretty much just looked upon as a piece of meat and nothing more than that by men. She later goes on to say “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium…a woman performs within the narrative, the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film.” (Mulvey, 838)

Mulvey wrote this article in 1975, and we still see this form of sexual objectification in today’s leading Hollywood films. Since the default target audience is always assumed to be of heterosexual men, the female actress can serve only one role and purpose in the film…and that is to please the eye of the viewer and keep them interested in the film by showing of their attractive physical attributes on their bodies. For instance, when the camera focuses on the voluptuous curves of the female body and zooms in on her lips as she talks seductively to the male protagonist “hero”, these are all prime examples. Also, in most Hollywood films, back then and also today, the protagonists are straight men, and they are used in a way to be able to fully relate to the straight male audience member. The goal of the director was to create a bond with the film’s male protagonist and the audience, by representing identification, admiration or aspiration in their relation to their female counterparts in real life. Mulvey further argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes priority over the female gaze since the power of the male lies within his penis, and the female has no power since she has no penis. “It is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies.” (Mulvey, 833)

John Berger took it to another level when he describes the roles of power as seen in Renaissance European art paintings in his piece “Ways of Seeing”. His analysis on art is similar Mulvey’s analysis on cinema, in the fact that they both describe how the male is always watching the female. In the film that that we saw in class, Berger said “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”. This is such an impactful statement because the woman always has to be conscious of what she does and how she looks at all times, since she is being judged not only on how she appears, but how she acts and appears to be, as she is being looked at from a distance. The female is often put on display directly for the spectator and painter or indirectly through a mirror, thus viewing herself as the painter views her. In the paintings, the mirrors were the female’s best accessory because the mirror was a symbol of their vanity. She has absolutely no personalized traits that makes her unique as an individual…she is solely just a living body.

Bell Hooks talks about the role of a Black female spectator in relation to Hollywood portrayal of them in “The Oppositional Gaze”. Hooks criticizes the lack of more substantial role opportunities for black female actresses. She also calls close attention to the negative aspects of White male supremacy over Black females and the capitalist patriarchy. She describes how Whites were mimicking Black folks in their attempt to be funny and all that did was cause some laughs, but a lot of controversy among blacks. “It was the oppositional black gaze that responded to these looking relations by developing independent black cinema…We laughed at television shows like Our Gang and Amos ‘n’ Andy, at these white representations of blackness, but we also looked at them critically. (Hooks, 117)

Hooks also showed how Black parents would oppress their own children and show their dominance by gazing them, with an evil look of fear. “I remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grownups, looks that were seen as confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority…Imagine the terror felt by the child who has come to understand through repeated punishments that one’s gaze can be dangerous…the child is afraid to look, but fascinated by the gaze. There is power in looking." (Hooks, 115) To me, this shows that the black parents are passing down the negative history of being oppressed themselves by white men down to their own children and thus creating the never ending cycle of fear, hate, and oppression by force and power of the gaze.

Today we still see the male gaze in action in advertisements everywhere whether it is on TV or on huge billboards in Time Square or elsewhere. In order for companies to sell clothing, cars, beer, and other items to males, they need to use ridiculously attractive and sexy women to seduce them in almost a form of hypnosis. When the male see the images before him, he subconsciously says to himself “I want that”, but it is never really the item. It is the woman that he really wants, so he goes out and buys whatever the item was that the female was next to in hopes of actually impressing a woman in real life by having that item in his possession. The male gaze can be of both a power struggle and a point of view of lust from the male spectator. Women of today would consider men who use the male gaze to gain power or advantages over them as chauvinistic pigs, sexist creeps, Neanderthals and so on. I think that the power of the male gaze is still present, but the influence is fading since women are becoming more and more independent and not caring of what men say or think of them as much anymore.