The male gaze is the ability to take erotic pleasure in looking at and/or turning someone, mainly women, into objects (Mulvey 835). It is the ability for patriarchal men to “live out [their] phantasies and obsessions through… command by imposing them on [to]...women still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Mulvey 834). It is rooted in the belief that men act and women appear, thus turned into an object of sight. “Men look at women [while] women watch themselves being looked at” (Berger 47). It is about power, domination and ownership that affirm men. They are surveyors of women and to be a surveyor is to be an owner.
In Berger’s Ways of Seeing, he states that in Eurocentric paintings of the 15th into the 19th century, nude images of (white) women were displayed in passive, docile and full frontal poses, either laying down, sitting, bent over slightly, and looking at the male protagonist/spectator-owner, as “a sign of her submission to the owner’s feelings or demands” (52). These passive poses indicate to viewers looking at them that they are available, that they also take pleasure in being looked at. Women who are “beautiful” by these Eurocentric standards get the “prize” to be owned or taken. They are there “to appeal to his sexuality…to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own” (55). European and western art are one example of old institutions that have constructed frigid gender roles, narrow ways of self-actualization, and unequal power relationships between men (active, surveyor, protagonist, and spectator-owners) and women (passive, surveyed, subordinate, objects, property). “This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it is still structures the consciousness of many women”, says Berger (63). “They do to themselves what men do to them”, either sub- and/or unconsciously, by viewing or surveying their own femininity and sexuality through the eyes of patriarchy, rather than on their own terms (63).
The male gaze is so pervasive in our visual pop culture because much of mainstream mass media, like that of western and European art, is still dominated by a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (to borrow the term of bell hooks). Thus, it continues to propagate white supremacist and patriarchal values/ ideals and dominant/colonized ways of knowing and looking onto all women and men. For example, in our class discussion, the well-known filmmaker Tyler Perry came up. In the her new book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (appropriately subtitled “for colored girls who’ve considered politics when being strong isn’t enough), author Melissa Harris-Perry critiques Perry’s films. His films center on female characters and are a favorite among a certain demographic of black viewers: overwhelmingly black, female, Christian and over 30 (259). She explains that each of his films advances nearly the same message: “be demure. Be strong but not too strong. Too much ambition is a detriment to your ability to find a partner and spiritual health. Female beauty can be dangerous. Let a man be a ‘man’. True female fulfillment is found in the role of wife and/or mother” (259). The messages from these films influence cultural attitudes among the black community and reinforce the maintenance of sexism/patriarchy. It also reinforces the assumption that marriage and motherhood (and compulsory heterosexuality) are “universal goals for women and that any failure to achieve it must therefore be pathological” (291). She goes on to explain that, because of the commercial success of Perry’s films and the rise of Michelle Obama, “black women… are encouraged to embrace traditional models of family” and to “conform to a sanitized ideal of femininity that doesn’t compete with socially sanctioned definitions of masculinity” (291-292). Harris-Perry illustrates that “the gaze of black men can be just as crooked as that of white Americans when viewing African-American women” (261). If one does not fit neatly into these prescribe roles, then one is somehow deficient. This is where the oppositional gaze comes in.
The oppositional gaze, as bell hooks defines, is the ability "to look a certain way in order to resist" (116). In regards to images on women in mainstream films, the oppositional gaze developed out of a need to respond to the complete absence and/or erasure of images of black people, specifically black women, on screen. Hooks addresses that staring at mainstream television, films or advertisements was an act of "engage[ing in] its negation of black representation" (117). Hooks goes on to say that black women have had to "develop looking relations… that construct[ed] our presence as absence" to maintain white supremacy and its system of reproducing power (118). There are several examples of oppositional gazes that hooks mentions.
First, is to look the other way by shutting out the image, placing no importance of cinema in our lives, or by closing down critical analysis by forgetting about racism. Because "conventional representations of black women have done violence to our image" and in order to fully gain pleasure in cinema, this is one approach black women have employed (120).
Second is to consciously resisted identification with the white women on screen. To identify with the subject was to engage in the negation of self, which was disenabling. Unlike the character of Pauline Breedlove from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, who “imagines herself transformed, turned into the white women portrayed on the screen”, in order for black women to gain pleasure, lessen the tension and pain, and reject their negation or violating representations on screen, they chose to not “submit to th[e] spectacle of regression through identification” either stop looking, reject, or "not look too deep" as a form of resistance (121).
Third is to "cultivate a way to look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language" by interrogating the work (122). In conventional narrative films of white womanhood, one can "choose not to identify with either the victim (female/passive) or perpetrator (male/active)" (122). The oppositional gaze offers viewers “who refuse to identify with white womanhood [or] take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession” to critically assess beyond the binary of “women as image [and] man as bearer of the look” and to deconstruct why the category of “women” always defaults to that of white women.
I have come to understand the male gaze as a form of power to dominate women and reduce them to one thing; to strip them away of their own. I understand it to be a very ancient practice developed by patriarchy. According to bell hooks and other research, “patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak…” It is a centuries-old and the first system of oppression and the root cause of sexism. It privileges male culture and male-oriented roles, hence the concept “male privilege”. Patriarchy also elevates men into positions of authority and “earns” them decision-making power while devaluing or diminishing the contribution of or role of women. It also intersects with other systems of oppression: white supremacy, classism and heterosexism that oppress women of color and LGBTQ people of all races. Because of its age, patriarchy is embedded in much of our mass media that shapes pop culture because much of it is created, owned and dominated by men. It is what has allowed the male gaze to influence our ways of seeing ‘til this day.
I understand the oppositional gaze to be a new practice of viewing someone or something through a decolonized lens by employing critical thinking. It allows us to deconstruct how we as women see ourselves and others around us. As a result of coming to understand these structures, when I do watch, I have a heighten awareness of the lack of women like me and the women/people in my life portrayed in media. I question and critique it a lot more. I don’t care much for television or go to mainstream movies much. (I watch some cable channels and indie movies). Instead, I read a lot.
My identity as a black female is no longer shaped by the media as it used to be; it hasn’t been for the past decade. As an American and global citizen, of course I’m going to consume some aspect of media. But since my introduction to Women’s Studies, I am a much smarter consumer. I’ve subscribed to feminist and alternative media and literature. I look for grassroots activism that appeal to my concerns as a woman, and engaged in feminist and/or socially-conscious activities. My awareness and identity are ever-growing and expanding. They are still a work in progress.
This photo is from: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/m/
One of Vermeer’s most famous paintings is “Head of a Girl (Girl with a Pearl Earring)” from:
http://raggedclothcafe.com/2007/08/12/the-male-gaze-terry-barrett-chapter-5-interpreting-art-by-jeanne-behttp://raggedclothcafe.com/2007/08/12/the-male-gaze-terry-barrett-chapter-5-interpreting-art-by-jeanne-beck/ck/
http://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/cndls/applications/postertool/index.cfm?fuseaction=poster.display&posterID=http://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/cndls/applications/postertool/index.cfm?fuseaction=poster.display&posterID=29702970
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