"Cinema doesn’t invite women to desire men’s bodies. Rather, female viewers are positioned to identify with a heroine who is herself desired by a man."
If you have a social media account or is up to date in social discussions, you probably came across the term called "male gaze." It has been widely used around cinephiles and young people around the world lately, but what does it actually mean? And if the male gaze is real, perhaps there is also a "female gaze"?
What Exactly is the Male Gaze
Directly connected to the way we look at visual representations in film and TV, originated in film theory and criticism in the 1970s, the 'male gaze' refers to the sexualized and rather misogynistic way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, women are seen as "objects" of the heterosexual male desire. Her other human aspects, such as her feelings, thoughts and desires are less important or not really portrayed.
The term was first used by the filmmaker and theorist Laura Mulvey in her seminal 1973 paper Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. She argues that traditional Hollywood films respond to a deep-seated drive known as "scopophilia": the sexual pleasure involved in looking. Mulvey argued that most popular movies were filmed with the purpose of satisfying heterosexual white men. As Mulvey wrote, women are characterised by their "to-be-looked-at-ness" in cinema. Woman is "spectacle", and man is "the bearer of the look".
Finding the Male Gaze
We already know what the male gaze generally represents, but it can be found in many situations that also reaffirm the power of the Patriarchy to use women as a prop to the male character, the hero. Budd Boetticher, who directed classics during the 1950s, once said:
What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.
This shows that women don't always need to be explicitly sexualized to be a victim of the male gaze. If she is present in the story just to show the main character how he could take action to achieve his ultimate goal. A passive character inciting action from another one.
It is also possible that the writers made a detailed background story for the female, with struggles and aspirations. Yet, they are still showed as just a feast to the eyes, not developing her own story completely.
Examples of the Male Gaze in Movies
Even though Mulvey wrote her essay more than 50 years ago, her words can still be applied to the mainstream media nowadays. Let's take a look at a few examples:
Transformers:
Michael Bay's Transformers franchise is a clear example of how the male gaze is shown in the big screen. The movies have a wide difference between the male/female character ratio, and all the women Bay cast in the franchise are sexualized and have no relevance to the storyline. It is just to please the heterosexual male, rendering it a movie with touches of irrelevant objectification and misogyny, as Mulvey would say. All the women included in his franchise are deemded stereotypically attractive.
Megan Fox in Transformers (2007) - Source: Paramount Pictures
Disney Princesses:
In this case, the male gaze is more implicit, which can make people believe there is none of it. Firstly, the design of the princesses are made to satisfy the male eye. Some stories are placed around the princess being saved by the "prince charming" or having a sort of powerlessness, making them need a stronger figure to save them or to bring meaning to their story.
Ariel sacrificed her beautiful voice and being a princess of the ocean to be with a man she met just once. Belle played the role of "fixing the broken man" - which is already problematic by itself - and transformed the Beast into a human again. Cinderella got married as her "happily ever after". Aurora and Snow White woke up from a deep sleep/death with a true love's kiss. Jasmine was seen as a "trophy" for men to win in the "Aladdin" movie; her father only cared about her marrying a rich and powerful man instead of litening to Jasmine's aspirations to explore the world.
The list of examples like those could go on almost forever, and expand it outside the Disney franchises. On the other hand, it is a good thing to see the latest princess movies being more about their own journeys of self discovery, talking about family issues and love that is not just with another man. Great examples of those are Brave, Frozen, and Moana.
In Aladdin, Jasmine is seen with very revealing outfits and her entire existence is reduced to being a trophy for men to win.
Bombshell:
The 2019 drama film recounts the story of how multiple female employees at Fox News stepped forward to share their stories of being sexually harassed by sexual predator Roger Ailes. On a specific scene in the film, the character Kayla (Margot Robbie) is being asked to raise her skirt until the audience can see her underwear. The camera placement, instead of making the audience see Kayla's face, has us identifying with the sexual predator instead, with the frame being just from her waist down.
Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie in Bombshell (2019).
Although there are many examples of male gaze still present in the mainstream media, Mulvey has helped create a more modern and truthful version of cinema, with more realistic portrayals of women. Films like Spy (2015) and the Hunger Games franchise (2012-2015) show the audience a refreshing look on women in powerful positions without needing a man to reach those places. It shows that women don't need to be sexualized or seen as just objects. They are characters which every person, no matter the gender, can identify with and feel inspired by, and this is how it should have been since the beginning.
The Female Gaze
There are more than enough examples that show how the male gaze is constantly present in film and TV worldwide. However, there is an emerging fight from female filmmakers to tell stories coming from the female point of view. This phenomenon has its own theoretical term: the female gaze.
In contemporary usage, the female gaze has been used to refer to the perspective a female filmmaker (screenwriter/director/producer) brings to a film that would be different from a male view of the subject. We are seeing the world and the stories from the eyes of women. It is about making the audience feel and understand what women see and experience.
The female gaze seeks to empathize rather than objectify. It's respectful, technical, it involves psychological work to bring each character's importance and emotions to the screen. Even though it is still pretty recent, more women are taking charge of telling stories and showing what great storytelling can look like.
Take as an example Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the 2019 period drama from the French filmmaker Céline Sciamma. The film shows a prohibited lesbian relationship of a painter and a noblewoman that was forcefully getting married. It shows the progress of their relationship and the painful ending where they have to separate, but the feelings they had for each other still linger in their hearts.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma.
According to Ginette Vincendeaum a professor of film studies at King's College London, Sciamma's picture is a good example of "the reciprocity of the female gaze" - or how it can counter the imbalance that is thought to corrupt the male gaze.
Another great example of the female gaze is how Phoebe Waller-Bridge's "Fleabag" offers a unique take on women's physical experiences. One of the most talked-about scenes is when Fleabag's sister suffers a miscarriage in a restaurant toilet cubicle while their relatives are having an engagement dinner. It shows a private moment of pain that leads into an episode of family warfare. It's rare to show baby loss on screen, especially the way it was shown in Waller-Bridge's show, which makes it even more groundbreaking.
Although it fights the stereotypes portrayed by the male gaze, we cannot say that the female gaze is the exact opposite of the male gaze. Films that centre women's experiences are deeply subversive, while the one directed for the male spectators supports a patriarchal status quo and objectification. Many times it is also shown that films exploring women's sexuality are often rated R or NC-17, unlike many films with sex scenes that were made for the male pleasure only.
The female gaze exists to challenge the enduring dominance of masculine worldview in film and media, and it is only a matter of time for people to see films being more loyal to the true nature and point of view of women's lives and bodies.
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