The male gaze is the depiction of women as objects for the heterosexual male viewers. Laura Mulvey discussed the term the ‘male gaze’ in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she states “The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly.” (Mulvey, 837); I think she is saying the male gaze forces women to appear as what men would want. In Ways of Seeing John Berger describes the male and female presence, which is similar to the way Laura Mulvey describes the male gaze. Berger states “the males presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies” (Berger, 45), I think he means men are viewed based on how powerful they are or act like they are; whereas Berger describes a woman’s presence as “her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.” (Berger, 46) which I think he is saying a woman is viewed based on how she appears and expresses herself.
The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture because it has been around since the beginning of media, in old films, ads, TV shows when women’s roles were as sexual objects, this has formed the idea of what the ‘perfect woman’ has to be. Media has always portrayed a skinny, tall, flawless woman as ‘perfect’ because that is what the men always seemed to like, this idea has carried out throughout many generations because of the male gaze which still causes woman to always have the thought in the back of their mind about their appearance and if it is good enough. No matter how self aware we are today about this idea of the male gaze, I feel like it will always be relevant in media and have an effect on every woman’s life because there is always the idea of what the male gaze sees as the ‘perfect woman’, for example, today the Victoria Secret super models or even the instagram models we see on our feeds every day.
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| Victoria Secret Angel's (some may say a 'perfect woman') |
The oppositional gaze is the resistance against the male gaze and the whiteness that surrounds it. Bell Hooks in The Oppositional Gaze, discusses the lack of black women in media and the small amount of black women in cinema being false representation. Hooks states “Even when representation of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve—to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze” (Hooks, 119), Hooks is trying to describe the way film uses the false representation of black women to enhance the white women, which is one example why the oppositional gaze rejects the male gaze because the male gaze emphasizes white womanhood.
Reading about both the male gaze and oppositional gaze they have definitely effected the way I view media. I have always thought about these topics because they are commonly talked about today and I feel like there are steps being taken to get the right representation of women, especially black women in film and media; but with that being said I do not think there is enough being done. These problems have become very mainstream and it has become a part of normal media, it is often looked over and pushed away because many people do not like change, especially the rich white men in power.
As a female reading about the male gaze I felt like I could relate to a lot of the ways they were describing a woman’s presence and role, it was things I thought and felt before but never saw it put into words. I notice more now the amount of times I think about what people are thinking when they see me and how they view me. Then when I got to reading about the oppositional gaze, as a white female, it made me take a step back and really think about all the horrible stereotypes and misrepresentation of black women in media especially in older movies; I feel like I fell into the trap of it being normalized and seeing it get a little better made me overlook the past, but this reading made me understand the severity of the oppositional gaze and how important it is. Learning about both gazes and their importance will effect the way I view media for the rest of my life.
Mulvey, Laura (1999) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford UP: Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen.
Berger, John, Dibb (1972). “Ways of Seeing.” London: BBC Enterprises
Hooks, Bell (1992). “The Oppositional Gaze.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press
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