Let’s face it the male gaze has been a pervasive form of vision in popular culture because in my opinion sex sells. And, as our own Professor Caro said in a recent class discussion “we all consume media with a white cisgender male in mind.” With that said the male gaze has been around for a long time and has taken its place in many media outlets in popular culture, whether it’s been displayed in traditional art forms i.e. paintings and sculptures, or more modern art forms like film and television, video games, advertisements, even in comic book storylines. The male gaze in essence is the act of depicting or objectifying women in all media outlets as a sexual object.
In Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema she postulates that in cinema, the male gaze has deep roots in voyeurism or more specifically scopophilia, the “pleasure of using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight” (Mulvey 836). My first visual reference highlights many of Mulvey’s and Berger’s key points and can be seen in the image below by French artist Gustave Courbet. His painting The Origin of the World is a classic example of the male gaze. Here we see clear evidence of sexual innuendo, a portrait that centers its focal point on the female genitalia of its model/subject. We are given the tell-tale signs that this is a representation of the male gaze not only because of the subject itself but, also from Courbet’s selective “cropping” of his model/subject — no other part of this woman matters in the context of this painting.
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| Courbet's The Origin of the World |
The painting also explores another topic that is mentioned in Berger’s essay The Ways of Seeing, in which Berger states that the framing of a nude painting was meant to “appeal to his [the man’s] sexuality, and had nothing to do with her [the models] sexuality” (Berger 55). Berger goes on to say that the nude also is there to benefit multiple parties, first the male owner who likely commissioned the painting, second is the producer/artist themselves who were typically male, and finally to the spectator who views the artwork, again a targeted male audience.
Now, what I also found interesting in my research are the final comments of Berger’s essay in which he claims for us the reader to conduct a simple experiment and to switch the perspective of the spectator and “notice the violence of the transformation” (Berger 64) if the model/subject was male as opposed to female. A perfect example that rebels against the male gaze pictured below is the 1989 feminist painting by Orlan titled, The Origin of War, which is a loose representation of Courbet’s painting but, this time the female model/subject is replaced with a male model torso and focuses directly on his aggressive erected penis. The context suggests that Courbet’s painting is a symbolic representation of women giving birth and continuing to nurture in the survival of the human race whereas Orlan’s painting flips it on its head and says that men destroy it.
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| Orlan's The Origin of War |
Now, if you’re not into paintings of male and female genitalia and need a more simple modern day example my wife and I recently have been indulging ourselves in the new Lifetime series, You starring Penn Badgley. This show is yet another example of the male gaze. The basic plot of the show is about a creepy, bookstore clerk who goes online to stalk a female customer hoping to get her to fall in love with him. Random side note here if you haven’t watched the series, the lead female character, Guinevere Beck has the Instagram handle @Beckdeltest which I thought was quite ironic from our previous class discussions.
Getting back on topic, both Mulvey and Berger narrow in on similar themes but, it’s bell hooks who has a different take on the subject matter. In her essay The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, hooks examines how black female spectators don’t see true representations of themselves on screen. She writes how black female characters are portrayed in one of three categories: the Mammy, the Sapphire and finally the Jezebel. These roles were primarily used to reproduce “and maintain white supremacy” (hooks 117) and not directed as models for sexual gratification.
Reflecting on how these structures have impacted my views towards certain media, it has become more and more shocking that even though our culture has evolved to have conversations about inequity we still continue to perpetuate seemingly prehistoric views toward anyone who is not a cisgender white male. I find myself looking for better ways and more opportunities to be an ally. That said I do think some progress is being made, I hope that with more cisgender white males advocating for equality for all, progress will be faster.
Works Cited:
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Michael Berger, The Ways of Seeing
bell hooks, The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators
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