Laura Mulvey and The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey wrote the essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' which coined the term 'male gaze' which soon went on to become a vey well known theory. In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired sole for their physical appearance. he theory suggests women can more often than no only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only see themselves through the eyes of a man.

The presence of a woman in a mainstream film is something that is vital. Often a female character has no real importance herself, it is her interaction with males that is important, the concern, love or lust the male feels for the female that results in him acting the way he does. The male gaze leads to hegemonic ideologies within our patriarchal society. Mulvey argues, "the eyes are female, but the gaze is male", the result of media being presented from the perspective of men and through the male gaze, women find themselves, at times, taking on the male gaze. Women then gaze at other women in the same way a man would and thus end up objectifying women too.

"The determined male gaze projects it's fantasy onto the female figure, which styled accordingly." Mulvey argues that the beauty of females is that they are objects, a perfect product, whose body is stylised and fragmented by close-ups. The magic of the Hollywood style at it's best arose, not exclusively, from it's skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure.