This document summarizes the work of several theorists on gender and cinema. Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the male gaze in film and how it reduces women to objects. John Berger discussed how women are aware they are being looked at, affecting their behavior. Steve Neale and Bracha Ettinger explored the concepts of the gay male gaze and female gaze in reversing gender roles. Carol J Clover analyzed the final girl character in slasher films who defeats the killer by remaining pure and abstaining from sex.

1. Laura Mulvey, John Berger, Carol J
Clover and Steve Neale & Bracha L
Ettinger.

2. Laura Mulvey
 Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
 Audience put into position of heterosexual
male, focusing on curves of a woman’s body
(use slow motion, deliberate camera moves
and cut aways etc)
 Female reduces to an object in relation to
male – to make him feel or act in a certain
way
 Leads to hegemonic ideologies – women can
begin to objectify other women.
 (Paul Messaris suggests that female models
are targeted at women but suggest a male

3. Laura Mulvey
 Woman an erotic object for either characters or
spectators
 Male tend to be active role
 Female passive role to encourage male
 Women only stereotypes (bimbo, easy, mother etc)
 Socophilia (love of watching) – we watch passively
those who don’t know that they are being watched
 Patriachy – a passive audience will be influenced by
this society and perpetuate it

4. Steve Neale & Bracha L Ettinger
 The ‘gay male gaze’ – men shown as submissive
/ non threatening but also suggestive of sexuality.
 Also men as objects because of…
 The ‘female gaze’ – men become sexual objects
of muscle and a means to sex (Coca Cola advert,
Magic Mike etc.)
 Leading to higher expectations from men as well
as women.

5. John Berger
 “Men look, women appear”
 Women are solely for objectification
 “Women watch themselves being looked at”
 They know that they are being watch so they
subconsciously act in a certain way.
 “women were depicted in a different way to men –
because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed
to be male and the images of the woman is
designed to flatter him.”

6. Carol J Clover
 In ‘Slasher’ movies the killer typically stopped
by the ‘final girl’.
 Final Girl tends to be pure, innocent, abstains
from sex and is typically less attractive than
the other female characters.
 For women in movies: SEX=DEATH