Representation - The Gaze
Look at the images below. These are the sort of images we're used to seeing in advertising.
But what happens when these images feature men rather than women?
Chances are, your reaction to these images was to laugh. Why
should it seem funny to see a picture of adult men striking a pose when the
same pose seems normal or charming to us in pictures of adult women?
Why does it strike us as odd, bizarre or humorous when roles are reversed?
And most importantly, what does this tell us about the cultural construction of gender – of the qualities are associated with images of masculinity and femininity and the accepted boundaries between them?
Why does it strike us as odd, bizarre or humorous when roles are reversed?
And most importantly, what does this tell us about the cultural construction of gender – of the qualities are associated with images of masculinity and femininity and the accepted boundaries between them?
These poses are not based in actual behaviour. In ordinary life, neither adult men nor adult women commonly strike poses like those we see regularly in fashion magazines.
Yet for some reason it seems normal to display pictures of women striking poses that would seem funny or strange when struck by men. Erving Goffman's study called “Gender Advertisements” is useful here because he focused on, among other things, poses common to magazine advertisements. "Commercial photographs," Goffman points out, "involve carefully performed poses presented in the style of being 'only natural'."
Are these poses more natural for one gender over another? Are they natural at all?
How natural do these poses seem now?
According to Kilbourne, women are more often shown “dismembered” (just parts of their bodies shown), associated with products, shown as smaller than a man, engaged in various forms of ritualized subordination, prostrate or recumbent, bent or leaning back, infantilized (with finger coyly in their mouth, standing pigeon-toed, wearing little girl clothes, sucking on lollipops, etc.), looking dreamy and introverted, overcome with emotions, or symbolically silenced with hand over the mouth.
Thinking about what we’ve just found out, what are the connotations of ‘the gaze’ of these women?
According to Kilbourne, women are more often shown “dismembered” (just parts of their bodies shown), associated with products, shown as smaller than a man, engaged in various forms of ritualized subordination, prostrate or recumbent, bent or leaning back, infantilized (with finger coyly in their mouth, standing pigeon-toed, wearing little girl clothes, sucking on lollipops, etc.), looking dreamy and introverted, overcome with emotions, or symbolically silenced with hand over the mouth.
Thinking about what we’ve just found out, what are the connotations of ‘the gaze’ of these women?
Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. In her 1973 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema she argued that classic Hollywood cinema puts the spectator in a masculine position, with the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire.
Because the viewer is gendered as male (even if she’s a woman!) the woman on the screen is ‘controlled’ and made an ‘object’ of male desire.
WHY IS THE AUDIENCE MALE?
"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female"
1. Historic power roles: directors tend to be male, thus presenting a ‘male’ representation of their subject. Therefore, even if you’re a woman, you’re seeing the world of the film through a man’s eyes.
2. Viewers are encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film who, more often than not, is a man. Therefore, even if you’re a woman, you’re identifying with a man’s view of the cinematic world.
In both these examples, the ‘male’ is active (the one doing the looking) and the ‘female’ is passive (the one being looked at). Male characters may also be looked at, but it is still a male viewpoint.
In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey argues for the concept of a “male gaze”. The audience is required to see the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Mulvey argues that the male gaze relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer experiences the text secondarily, by identification with the male.
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. In her 1973 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema she argued that classic Hollywood cinema puts the spectator in a masculine position, with the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire.
Because the viewer is gendered as male (even if she’s a woman!) the woman on the screen is ‘controlled’ and made an ‘object’ of male desire.
WHY IS THE AUDIENCE MALE?
"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female"
1. Historic power roles: directors tend to be male, thus presenting a ‘male’ representation of their subject. Therefore, even if you’re a woman, you’re seeing the world of the film through a man’s eyes.
2. Viewers are encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film who, more often than not, is a man. Therefore, even if you’re a woman, you’re identifying with a man’s view of the cinematic world.
In both these examples, the ‘male’ is active (the one doing the looking) and the ‘female’ is passive (the one being looked at). Male characters may also be looked at, but it is still a male viewpoint.
In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey argues for the concept of a “male gaze”. The audience is required to see the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Mulvey argues that the male gaze relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer experiences the text secondarily, by identification with the male.
“The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role 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. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leading-motif of erotic spectacle... she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.”
In other words:
• Women are objectified for male viewing pleasure
• In films, they have little to do with the progression of the plot but actually slow it down as the viewer pauses to look at them
• Events which occur to women on screen are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events
Here is a good blog which expands on the subject a little more: http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/male-gaze/
Look at the images below.
1) How is the gaze of the audience gendered?
2) How is the audience positioned in relation to the female figure in the image?
3) What representation of the women in the images is present?
• Women are objectified for male viewing pleasure
• In films, they have little to do with the progression of the plot but actually slow it down as the viewer pauses to look at them
• Events which occur to women on screen are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events
Here is a good blog which expands on the subject a little more: http://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/male-gaze/
Look at the images below.
1) How is the gaze of the audience gendered?
2) How is the audience positioned in relation to the female figure in the image?
3) What representation of the women in the images is present?
HORROR movie posters in the 1950s regularly focus on a scene of attack, with a woman in peril. The posters put the viewers in the position where they are asked to take action and to imagine themselves doing something to save the woman. The main scene in each poster spills over the edge of the poster, making it seem as if we, the audience, are there in the frame – we are incited to act. For example, in the creature from black lagoon poster, the rescuers are far away – “we” are closer. Conversely, women always are always victims and powerless. If they have any power, this is demonized.
Take a look at the posters below. How do they reflect the above statement? Has anything changed in modern film posters?
Take a look at the posters below. How do they reflect the above statement? Has anything changed in modern film posters?
But what about adverts aimed at women? Look at the texts below, both of which advertise products for women: bras and perfume. How is their gaze gendered?
So, that's the male gaze. But what about the female gaze? Can women look at things in a way that objectifies them? Mulvey
believes that women take on the male gaze because they view media from the
perspective of men – they then view other women the way men would and objectify
them in the same way. She
thinks that the female gaze is negated, or ‘drowned out’ by the dominant male
gaze.
Mulvey would argue that because such a huge proportion of popular culture is represented from the male point of view and for a male audience women have by now totally internalised male standards of beauty. As a result, women look at other women through male eyes, or by utilising the male gaze.
Who is looking at what? Whose eyes do you follow? Whose gaze dominates? What are you looking at?
The photograph above exemplifies Mulvey’s ideas about the gaze.
• We can’t see what the woman is looking at (so it’s not the focus of the photograph)
• She and the object of her gaze are framed by the man and by what he is looking at – the painting of a nude woman
• We follow the gaze of the man and look at what he’s looking at, identifying with him; we see what he sees
• Both women are ‘passive’; the man is ‘active’
• The female gaze is ‘negated’ and she is thus ‘controlled’
• The dominant gaze is masculine
The female gaze, then, is negated, or cancelled out, by the male gaze.
But what about films like Magic Mike? A film about male strippers is surely constructed to enable the female gaze, right? Wrong. (Maybe.) Here are some blogs on the very subject:
http://hyperallergic.com/54444/magic-mike/
http://toesinthecheese.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/the-gaze-of-magic-mike/
http://weallscreen.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/magic-mike/
So, what does this have to do with representation? How does it affect our way of understanding women and men in moving media texts? If men looking at women is the ‘norm’ then what happens when a woman looks at a man? Or when a man looks at a man?
In class, we looked at clips from Spartacus (1960) and Gladiator (2000). Both films deal with the idea of spectacle - men fighting for the viewing pleasure of others.
Clip 1 from each film shows a woman gazing at a man. What sort of character is this woman? How does she relate to the men around her? What are the connotations of the way she looks at the man? Is she a positive or negative figure? Is she stereotypically masculine or feminine? Is she active or passive?
The Spartacus clip isn't available on YT: it's the scene where the Roman women choose which gladiators they'd like to fight in the arena. Ask me to view it.
Again, the Gladiator clip isn't on YT (we could make an interesting observation about the importance of the female characters in these films, could we not?) but the entire film is online here: http://viooz.co/movies/1478-gladiator-2000.html The clip you're after is from 20.11-22.36. Listen carefully to how Lucilla's father greets her.
Clip 2 from each film shows a man being gazed at by other men. How does he react? How does it affect his ‘masculine’ status? Is he in an active or passive role?
Who is looking at what? Whose eyes do you follow? Whose gaze dominates? What are you looking at?
The photograph above exemplifies Mulvey’s ideas about the gaze.
• We can’t see what the woman is looking at (so it’s not the focus of the photograph)
• She and the object of her gaze are framed by the man and by what he is looking at – the painting of a nude woman
• We follow the gaze of the man and look at what he’s looking at, identifying with him; we see what he sees
• Both women are ‘passive’; the man is ‘active’
• The female gaze is ‘negated’ and she is thus ‘controlled’
• The dominant gaze is masculine
The female gaze, then, is negated, or cancelled out, by the male gaze.
But what about films like Magic Mike? A film about male strippers is surely constructed to enable the female gaze, right? Wrong. (Maybe.) Here are some blogs on the very subject:
http://hyperallergic.com/54444/magic-mike/
http://toesinthecheese.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/the-gaze-of-magic-mike/
http://weallscreen.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/magic-mike/
So, what does this have to do with representation? How does it affect our way of understanding women and men in moving media texts? If men looking at women is the ‘norm’ then what happens when a woman looks at a man? Or when a man looks at a man?
In class, we looked at clips from Spartacus (1960) and Gladiator (2000). Both films deal with the idea of spectacle - men fighting for the viewing pleasure of others.
Clip 1 from each film shows a woman gazing at a man. What sort of character is this woman? How does she relate to the men around her? What are the connotations of the way she looks at the man? Is she a positive or negative figure? Is she stereotypically masculine or feminine? Is she active or passive?
The Spartacus clip isn't available on YT: it's the scene where the Roman women choose which gladiators they'd like to fight in the arena. Ask me to view it.
Again, the Gladiator clip isn't on YT (we could make an interesting observation about the importance of the female characters in these films, could we not?) but the entire film is online here: http://viooz.co/movies/1478-gladiator-2000.html The clip you're after is from 20.11-22.36. Listen carefully to how Lucilla's father greets her.
Clip 2 from each film shows a man being gazed at by other men. How does he react? How does it affect his ‘masculine’ status? Is he in an active or passive role?
Who looks at whom is vitally important in working out power relationships in film (or TV, of course) and therefore is worth considering when looking at representation, especially of gender. Who is the object? Who is dominant? Whose point of view do we identify with?
Think about modern films which claim to be feminist in essence, or which are reclaiming ‘girl power’ – for example, Charlie’s Angels. They play with the gaze and use it for their own means, with some success. Think carefully, however – who is the object in the film? Whose gaze dominates? Is the gaze we as the viewer experience, masculine or feminine?
http://www.genderads.com/
Think about modern films which claim to be feminist in essence, or which are reclaiming ‘girl power’ – for example, Charlie’s Angels. They play with the gaze and use it for their own means, with some success. Think carefully, however – who is the object in the film? Whose gaze dominates? Is the gaze we as the viewer experience, masculine or feminine?
http://www.genderads.com/