On ways of seeing/viewing

The male gaze is the concept that viewing/looking/seeing between the male and the female is saturated with an unevenness of power. This concept has two parts: the active male viewer and the passive female who is viewed. Any action by the female is simply a reaction to, or even a mirror of, the male's longings. In addition, there is an element of eroticism and voyeurism that is part of the male gaze. According to Laura Mulvey in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, "The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female who is styled accordingly" (837). The male desires and the female desires. While Mulvey describes this concept in the context of American cinema, John Berger, in Ways of Seeing, uses certain kinds of European art as demonstrative of the male gaze. He states, "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at" (47). Like Mulvey, Berger makes the connection between this power dynamic of seeing with sex and sexuality. His focus is the nude female figure and he notes the ways in which these images minimize female sexual power and appetite. 

Both Mulvey and Berger describe the media's role in the pervasiveness of the male gaze. Berger says that the male gaze is not just present in the media of academic painting; he notes, "Today the attitudes and values which informed that tradition are expressed through other more widely diffused media--advertising, journalism, television" (63). Mulvey's article is focused on cinema but she does explore the possible impact of cinema, and in particular, the male gaze in cinema. In her conclusion, Mulvey states, "Going far beyond highlighting a woman's to-be-looked-at-ness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself." She also notes, "…cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire" (843). Here Mulvey explores the impact of form on culture, recognizing that content itself is not alone in promoting the male gaze.

While there are more and more examples of media that contains images of women as empowered with the ability and will to take action, the concept of the male gaze still permeates today's media. Often this is hidden behind the illusion of a powerful female. One example is the book and film series that begins with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In these stories, the main character is a rightfully angry, rebellious, and resistant woman who can only truly make change with the assistance of the fatherly male journalist. In many video games, women or girls are an archetype, rather than actors. With unrealistically large breasts, Barbie-level proportions, outfits reminiscent of lingerie, and hair that could not survive humidity, much less a battle. This trailer for the video game Soul Calibur V is one example.

The oppositional gaze is a way of viewing/looking/seeing that is against, defiant and rebellious. Bell Hooks, in The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, describes her personal experiences and the definition of this type of gaze. Like the male gaze, the oppositional gaze is one of action and power. But only with the history of not having power can the opposition gaze exist. Hooks describes the oppositional gaze as a "site of resistance for colonized black people globally" (116). Unlike the male gaze, the oppositional gaze does not result in domination; its result is resistance. Hooks describes the culture of oppression in America that created an environment where black viewers "experienced visual pleasure in a context where looking was also about contestation and confrontation" (117). She also calls this way of seeing as "critical" and "interrogating" (117). This is thoughtfulness is also quite different than the male gaze in that we think of the male gaze (and the female participation in this construct) as often existing without awareness, as a place of fantasy. The oppositional gaze, on the other hand, is a state of seeing reality.

My understanding of the male gaze has changed how I perceive certain media. But like the woman that Hooks writes about in relation to the oppositional gaze, I too can enjoy certain media as long as I don't "look too deep" (121). The conflation of violence and sex is one of the most extreme ways in which the power imbalance of the male gaze is present in media. I often wonder about the long-term impact of viewing a television program like Law and Order: SVU. The majority of survivors of rape and sexual assault are women and children. Does this imagery reinforce this manifestation of the male gaze? Or, does the realism of these images expose the horror of violence against women? Hooks writes of enjoying "alternative texts" (128) where in which she does not need to resist. In relation to my own identities that aren't represented in popular media, I also find certain relaxing when they provide a space where I don't have to resist, where the oppositional gaze isn't so oppositional.