Sunday, 16 December 2012

The Male Gaze Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey

Her theory about the male gaze:
The concept of gaze is one that deals with how audience views the people presented.
For feminist it can be thought of in 3 ways:

  • How men look at women
  • How women look at themselves
  • How women look at other women
Laura Mulvey coined the term "Male gaze" in 1975. She believes that in film, audiences have to "view" characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.
Features of the Male gaze - the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events that occur to women and presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events.
Relegates women to the status of objects, the female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily  by identification of the male.