Playing the Role - Post #2

The male gaze is the lens through which men see women.  Since we live in a patriarchal society, the way that society is shaped follows the male gaze. Women are seen as objects whose function is to please men. Berger simplifies it as “men act and women appear” (Berger, 47). This means that men are dominant figures in society who have the pleasure of acting independently and in their sole interest while women are the submissive figures that depend on men to give them a sense of purpose. A woman is expected to keep up her appearance so that she can be considered attractive to men. Mulvey mentions that the male gaze projects its fantasy on the female figure making them the bearers of the look and women as the image to be looked at (Mulvey, 837).

Movie: Pretty Woman

The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in pop culture because most of what see in the media is a direct reflection of it. Female tropes in television display women as more passive than active. Finding films that pass the Bechdel test proves to be increasingly difficult. Television shows like The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men show men as dominant and women as meant for the sexual and/or visual pleasure of men. In Big Bang theory, the main female lead is a pretty blonde who is not as bright as the men while in Two and a Half Men, the women are only there for sexual gratification but don’t hold any substance. There is a show on Netflix called Insatiable, where a teenage girl who was fat loses over 70 pounds and is instantly seen as attractive with the hopes of becoming a pageant queen – a dream that the character did not believe to be attainable had she been 70 pounds heavier. The stereotypical attractive sought woman is usually white, feminine, blonde with straight-haired, skinny.

The oppositional gaze is a response to lack of representation of black people in media where black people began making independent films, “black viewers of mainstream cinema and television could chart the progress of political movements for racial equality via the construction of images, and did so.” (Hooks, 117). Hooks said that the oppositional gaze developed from slaves not being able to look slave owners in the eye, thus denying their right to gaze (115). Minstrelsy was the only kind of representation of black America before the oppositional gaze translated into film. Minstrelsy did nothing but reinforce negative stereotypes of black people by exaggerating their features and mimicking their dialect. Hooks points out that one of the most famous examples of this was Amos & Andy. Even today we still have tropes that date back to minstrelsy. With the advent of the oppositional gaze came representation but that doesn’t mean it gave appropriate or accurate representation to the black woman who have “been so abused by the gaze” and forced to be spectators (Hooks, 125). 

Shuri from the movie, The Black Panther

Slowly, we are starting to see more representation of black women due to the increase of black women entering the cinematic field as writers and directors such as Shonda Rhimes, Issa Rae, Ava DuVernay, Mara Brock Akil and Lena Waithe. Most recently, Black Panther was considered revolutionary it had record box office numbers and showcased black women as dominant figures in Wakanda on an even, if not higher, playing field as men. 

The oppositional gaze and being a black female spectator is something I know all too well (being a black woman and all). Growing up, my parents were big advocates for black films. However, I found myself trying to make a lot of the movies I saw make sense for my own life. While I saw faces that looked like mine, I often saw attitudes that didn’t match mine or my mother’s. I saw exaggerated, comedic elements of the black experience and often had friends who would imitate some of the ignorance we’d seen on big screen. That feeling of “being abused by the gaze” is my own experience. 

The lack of accurate representation annoys me to my core and there is that feeling of having to settle. Women have been often objectified and had to play dumb in many of tv shows that I enjoyed – even those with black actors like Martin and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Female characters usually made dumb decisions and were the cause of a man’s downfall and I grow tired of only seeing black representation on the big screen being a reenactment of slavery or displaying the “coon” trope. I understand that the male gaze isn’t something that is just going to go away. It has a firm hold on the way that society is organized but it can be combated with more representation and inclusion in film. The awareness of actors who have been typecast into roles helps ease my mind because awareness is the first step. Even when we try to curate our film choices we have to be critical of what we are absorbing from them and try not to fall victim to some of its devices.