Languid, passive, erotic, and there "to feed an appetite"; to male voyeurs, these are the characteristics that define the women presented in the media (Berger 55). The male gaze is a sense of ownership and supremacy over women, essentially objects to be looked at and displayed (Mulvey 837). A woman watches herself being watched by a man, she is the object, he is the owner (Berger 46). This relationship imposes a standard whereby women define themselves by the male perspective- to be beautiful or sexy in a woman's mind is what she would assume a male's definition of beautiful and sexy is. This form of vision is highlighted through various forms of media throughout time. Subjected to the creator's perspective, women are meant to be erotic exhibits and of no substantial value to the surrounding content. In nude European oil paintings, women are "seen and judged as sights" (Berger 47). Naked for the artist, and specifically the male audience (within the painting itself or the painting's spectators), women are positioned in a manner for a male's gaze to consume and control. Following this notion, films have also represented women in this manner. Her erotic presence often times "work against the development of the story, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation" (Mulvey 837). This sense of objectifying women is also seen throughout the music industry as well. Raps and ballads alike addressing a woman's form such as: Brick House by The Commodores, Super Freak by Rick James, and "you remind me of my jeep, I wanna ride it" from R. Kelly's You Remind Me of Something.
To be able to survey, gaze, and watch is a sense of empowerment. John Berger, Laura Mulvey, and Bell Hooks all made a point to describe a male's gaze of women as a form of voyeurism, scopophilia, and dominance. In Bell Hook's case, she endeavors into the fellow subcategory of race. The oppositional gaze according to Bell Hook is a rebellious desire to look at those who are repressing them, it's a drive for freedom and inspiration to "change reality" (Hooks 116). In real life situations, that means directly looking at your captor's eyes- in the media, that means critically analyzing and observing representations of yourself. To passively sit and watch is to consume content the creator wrongfully pushes in society. To acknowledge the representations of yourself and differentiate between that and reality, grants power and the ability to track progress, if any.
The oppositional gaze has developed where spectators being misrepresented in film can choose not to identify with the film's subject (Hooks 122). This means confidently knowing who you are despise the fact that the person on the screen has the same skin color as you, or is of the same gender and age. With such a large variation of characters being represented on screen nowadays, the oppositional gaze is stronger than it used to be back when only white film makers were presenting films that reinforced racist perspectives. From Amos 'n' Andy to Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, variation of representation over time is clear. However, it's also slow- Lee's film empowered blacks, but still objectified women. It was sort of a typical white movie dipped in chocolate if you will: a step up for black representation, but still at square one for women.
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| Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It- of course she's GOTTA be in a silhouette. -Credits: IMDb |
Understanding the fact that there are different lenses and gazes to look at media with, consequently means realizing the fact that there is no definite meaning to be conveyed by stories, pictures, and films. Everything is subjected to the creator, and then to the surveyor. Having looked at several media forms through the male gaze and oppositional gaze infuriates me. It has made me realize how passively I've been when accepting these images and depictions of some people in society through media. It's difficult when audiences don't have figures in the main stream media that accurately represents oneself- in the end that character will never represent one accurately since every individual is different. However, being misrepresented is the damaging prospect that can change and wrongfully educate an audience to have these wrong preconceptions. Not actively thinking while consuming media can have dangerous effects where one identifies with the misrepresented character.
I've always been a skeptic when reading books or watching novels. Identifying myself with females or Asians was never a real dilemma for me because I identified myself with characters of similar personality traits rather than physical traits. To be given this lens to look at the same media as a man, a feminist, and a different race makes me realize how demeaning some categories are represented. In popular movies and music especially. Music we blindly love is songs putting women as sexual objects. Movies we blindly watch have us wanting men to save the day and the women to get out of the way (well, this isn't always true, but I'm sure some people have thought that). Why can't the well built black actors be the scientists in a film instead of the club bouncer? Why can't the Hispanic woman be the heroine instead of the maid? It's stereotypes and gender roles society has to change, in order for the media creators to change.
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| I'm inviting you in to check out my latest break through with the epidemic virus that's killing everyone. Credits: Random Night Club Ad |
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| Pouring a cup of CHANGE. I want the next action flick with her as the star. Credits: Superstock |
Your point about the oppositional gaze being a means of measuring progress is great and something I missed in Hooks. Thanks.
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