The document discusses the concept of the male gaze in film theory. It describes Laura Mulvey's influential 1975 work which argued that women are presented in film as objects of male visual pleasure. Mulvey proposed that films are viewed from the perspective of a heterosexual male gaze and that women are sexualized for male pleasure. The document also reviews other theorists who have expanded on or critiqued Mulvey's ideas, and discusses whether these theories still apply to modern films.

1. The theory of male gaze
By Priscilla Amponsah

2. So what is the male
gaze?
The concept of gaze is
one that deals with
how an audience
views the people
presented.
Feminists have divided
this concept into the
following three
dimensions:
 How men look at
women
 How women look at
themselves
 How women look at
other women

3. Forms of the gaze
 The spectators gaze: this is
whereby the director is viewing the
text.
The Intra-diegetic gaze: when the
character gazes at an object or
another character in the text.
The Extra-diegetic gaze: where the
fourth wall is broken (the character
looks into the camera, looking right
at the viewer.
The camera gaze: this is the
camera editors view
The editorial gaze: emphasised a
textual aspect like the cropping and
caption, which direct the viewers to
that particular character.

4. Laura Mulvey:
 She was a theorist and a
feminist
 Mulvey, came up with the
concept on male gaze in 1975.
Here Mulvey wrote a very
influential essay ‘Visual
pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’. Stating that women
are used for visual pleasure-
women are made to seem like
sexual objects through
voyeurism.
 she argued that women took
the passive part of a film and
that all men played an active
part, in her eye the women
were objects

5. Visual pleasure and
Narrative cinema:
 Women are presented as sexual
spectacle (show) objects of
pleasure for the characters and
audience.
 She believed that in films
audiences have to view characters
from the perspective of a
heterosexual male. Stating that the
way women are viewed in cinema
is ‘unequal’. The camera
necessarily present women as
‘sexualised for the pleasure of
men.
 Men fetishies women which she
referred to as ‘fetishistic
scopophilia.
 Men have this gaze to avoid being
‘castrated’.

6. Additional support
Ann Doane (1982) added that women have a
‘marginal gaze’ within film, just like a patriarchal
society.
Suzanne Moore (1988) added that male bodies
are only on display in certain conditions- they are
always in active poses as if they can walk away
from the woman’s gaze.
Van Zoonen (1994)- stated that‘men look at
women, women watch themselves being looked
at.’

7. Criticism of Mulvey and Gaze theory
Some women enjoy being ‘looked’
at, such example can be seen with
beauty pageants and models who
enjoys the lime light.
The gaze can also be direct towards
members of the same gender for
several reasons, not all of which are
sexual, such as in comparison of body
image or clothing.
She doesn’t consider female
spectators.
Her views are that only
heterosexual male’s are the
spectators.
Since 1980’s there has been a large
increase in sexualisation and display
of the male body.

8. Do these theories still apply in the
1900s and 2000s?
Until the 1990s horror viewing, it had been
argued, was primarily a male please, based on
the lines that ‘attacking’ is an ‘active’ process
and therefore as ascribed by masculine
trait, whilst to be attacked is a passive (weak)
experience, which was traditional viewed to
be a feminine trait. However others have
criticized this, arguing that women can also
enjoy horror films.

9. Mulvey’s three types of
‘looking’
The look of the camera as it records the filmic event.
The look of the audience as it watches the final
product.
The look of the characters at each other in the visual
images of the screen illusion.
She says these looks are linked to the issue of genre
because many relations of looking in the cinema are
informed and disrupted by sexual desire and the
erotic contemplation of the female form.

10. Carl Clover- men, women
and chainsaw (1992)
 Her close analysis of narrative and style in
the horror films led her to conclude that
horror is ‘far more victim- identified than
he standard view would have it’.
 The pleasure of horror are masochistic
(having sexual pleasure from being
abused or dominated), for both males
and females.
 Audience responses involved a wide
spectrum of emotional responses from
laughing, joy in being scared, to white
knuckle terror (experiencing fear and
anxiety).
 States that it’s important in the
promotion in selling such genre- suggests
a fuller knowledge of audience activity is
needed.

11. Trevor Millum’s Theories- male gaze
Trevor Millum has Five main looks which
includes the following:
Seductive
 Carefree
 Practical
Comic
Catalogue
Seductive: When a model is posing in the
seductive look they should have their eyes
slightly closed, the expressions will be
small, but will still show through, they will also
aim to look confident.
Carefree: A Carefree look, can be linked to
sports because it seems as if they are active and
healthy.
Practical: will include a model who seems to be
concentrating something, so their eyes will be
focused whilst their mouth will be closed.
Catalogue: will make the model have their eyes
wide open, with a big smile as if they are not
stupid, but rather dumb.