Male Gaze

We looked at the male gaze during 'theory tuesday' with Mr Smith it was actually really interesting and so very true in many ways!!

Basically the male gaze is the way men see women!
 so its how men look at women, how women look at themselves and how women look at other women and this is shown throught the camera shots. the camera lingers on the curves of the female body and event which occurs to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events.

Relegates woman to the status of objectives. the female viewer must experince the narrative secondarily, by undertification with the male.

To show how the male gaze worked, as a bit of an experiment we looked at the scouting for girls video-she's so lovely >>



After watching the video we were asked to answer the following:

what colour top where she and he wearing?
What number bowling lane where they using?
Wahat colour belt where she and he wearing?
What colour shoes where she and he wearing?
What colour eyes did she and he have?

The majority of the boys in the class wouldn't have been able to answer any of the questions as they would have just been focusing on the females assets where as the the majority of the girls in the class would have been able to answer the questions as they wouldn't have been focusing on the female assets. This is what the males gaze is about looking at the way in which men perseeve and look at women, so they wouldn't include a fat ugly women in the video because men wouldn't be interested.

Theorys:
Criticism of mulvey and gaze theory- Some women enjoy being looked at e.g beauty pageants!
The gaze can also be directed towards members of the smae gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or clothing.

Jonathoan Schroeder (1998)- To gaze implies more than to look at- it signifies a phsycological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.

Robyn x