...During the 15th-19th centuries, art was considered to be a subject of superiority and was generally created by men. Because of this, stereotypes and social norms in regards to women were inferred and asserted. The art created during this period was affected by a phenomenon known as the ‘male gaze’, which is paramount in constructing ideal portrayals of women. With reference to the male gaze, women are depicted through these paintings as entirely existing to be viewed by men. On the topic of the male gaze, John Berger (cited in Ways of Seeing, p. 64) states that ’the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’. Not only was art in this time primarily created by men, it was also created...
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...theorises that visual pleasure in the mainstream cinema is largely founded upon a male gaze that fetishises the female body and positions the male spectator voyeuristically in relation to the film. To what extent you agree with this hypothesis? The ‘Male Gaze’ is a term that refers to instances in film, where the audience view a scene through the perspective of a heterosexual man. For example, a scene that focuses on a woman’s curves and these features are accentuated in some way, such as, purposeful camera movements or through the use of slow motion and/or cut-aways. The term was first coined by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual pleasure and Narrative cinema”. In this article, Mulvey advocates that the use of the Male Gaze in films, causes women to only be admired for their physical appearance and therefore relegates women to the stature of objects, refusing them human identity. She demonstrates this by using film examples that infer a female’s existence in the film world is only in relation to the male, that she has no real importance, besides how she makes the male feel or act. Mulvey states female characters only serve two roles in a narrative: 1) As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view, and 2) As an erotic object for the spectators with the cinema to view. They tend to slow the narrative down; they give men inspiration to act, they are considered passive. Where as male characters push the narrative forwards making events happen, they are seen...
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...Intro New media platforms and the success and popularity of television in modern society allow for comedians to have much more self-directed approach to reach their audience the way in which they want at the volume that they choose. The two case studies featured in this essay are Frankie Boyle’s twitter activity and television shows in relation to son of Katie Price, Harvey. Twitter is increasingly widespread and debatably the most interactive form of social media available. Twitter’s main significance comes through user’s ability to communicate freely with each other and the retweet system allows for content to spread on a much larger, faster scale than social media sites like Facebook. These retweets basically have the likely ability to snowball if found popular enough to the public and celebrity side of Twitter, and from this comes the chance interaction between both members of the public as well as some of the most world renown celebrities. However as I am going to explore Twitter can often act as a dangerous tool and because of the nature of social networking it can be difficult to maintain efficiently and at an effective enough speed. The potential for pervasive offence to be spread via television seems much less likely due to the non-live nature and ambience that it possesses. Ofcom regulators are expected to cut anything from television shows that is deemed too offensive and unwatchable for general audiences prior to the show being aired. However this is not always...
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...film, Taxi Driver, seen through the maladjusted protagonist, Travis Brickle, is both of seeing and of being. Taxi Driver affirms Laura Mulvey’s idea of the “male gaze,” a combination of the interaction of looks, fetishism, voyeurism, and pleasure in (Hollywood) cinema. Mulvey outlines three different looks within film: of the director and camera, of the spectator, and of the male protagonist. Film, as Mulvey argued, perpetuates the “male gaze.” In the film, emblematic of the “male gaze,” Travis is presented as the dominant male while most female characters are treated and seen as objects of sex and desire—cheapened, eroticized, submissive—though he one female, Betsy, is treated and seen with reverent affection. In addition,...
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...The Ways of Seeing What is the male gaze? The male gaze is defined as how men perceive women. It is when you are looking at an object and you begin to see something more than just the thing itself, this is when you see a relation between the object and yourself. This is what men related too. Referring to an article by Berger, Ways of Seeing, male gaze is seeing through the eyes of men. Berger states, “ Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” (47). This statement explains how women became not only became an object but, “an object of vision: a sight” (47). Basing this among the subject of European oil painting, the nude oil paintings were the mostly focused on this subject. The main idea of the nude oil painting was to define the difference between naked and nudity. According to Berger, “ Naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen by others and yet not recognized for oneself “ (54). These nudes were made to attract viewers, especially men. Even till this day in the modern society, there are many ways that women are being looked at. It is seen in modern day television, fashion, and photography that these women are a sight for men too look at and see women as an appetite. Berger states, “ A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her- her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste” (46). Even these examples that inquire the same...
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...The author’s motivation for writing, “Chick Flicks” as Feminist texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma & Lousie, is to inform us on how the explanation for the movie’s wide appeal among women spectators. “The film's female gazes undercut and appropriate the dominant male gazes typical of mainstream Hollywood cinema by using mockery as a narrative device to illustrate the sexism inherent in the male gaze, and it is precisely this appropriation of patriarchal construction that offers pleasure to women spectators” (Cooper). The movie Thelma & Lousie caused so much controversy that she wanted to inform us on the topic, and explain how, “a conceptual framework for explicating these subversive gazes within film narratives” (Cooper)....
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...analysis of desire structures and the formation of subjectivity. The semiotic end of Mulvey's analysis enables the deciphering of how films produce the meanings they produce, while the psychoanalytic side of the article provides the link between the cinematic text and the viewer and explains his fascination through the way cinematic representations interact with his (culturally determined) subconscious. Mulvey's main argument in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is that Hollywood narrative films use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men. The narrative film structures its gaze as masculine. The woman is always the object of the reifying gaze, not the bearer of it (this has something reminiscent of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing") The cinematic gaze is always produced a masculine both by means of the identification produced with the male hero and through the use of the camera. Mulvey identifies two manners in which Hollywood cinema produces pleasure, manners which arise from different mental mechanisms. The first involves the objectification of the image, and the second one the identification with it. Both...
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...Persepolis is a movie about girl, Marjane and her struggle to identify her true identity within the confines of eastern and western views. Marjane and her family’s lifestyle in this film are seen to be challenging the dynamics of orientalism. Their progressive, educated and liberal outlook builds the foundation of breaking down Western’s pre conceived notions about the people of Iran. It is evidently proven by the perception, style and actions of Marjane and her family’s that the orientalist view of Iran being backwards, restricted and dogmatic is not entirely true. This film presents a convincing challenge to the concept of orientalism and it showed how the stereotypical images set by the western of the orient are not entirely correct. This is evident through the scene when Marjane is about to marry, her mother is found crying the bathroom because she is upset over the fact that her daughter is giving her life away when she wanted her to be liberated, literate and independent. This shows that even though Marjane was in an Iranian society and was forced to veil herself and follow the set of Islamic rules, the film challenges the orientalist impression of Marjane being completely suppressed or controlled in the society, which would be expected by the western audience. In fact, Marjane is seen to have a liberal and supportive family, her mother and grandmother at several instances are seen to encourage her to stand up for herself and make a future for herself by being...
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...in Western culture are taught that it is their birthright to do while women remain relatively immobile in order to be the object of the male gaze.” This ideology is commonly seen in most media texts where males are typically seen in lead roles where they are depicted as functional compared to females who are represented as distracted and dependent on men. Whilst this argument is widely seen throughout studies about gender roles in media, it functions as the center of my argument about the depiction of women in the music videos of “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell Williams and “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel. Both videos revolve around the acquisition of female attention, which supports...
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...“Defeating the Male Monster in Halloween and Halloween H2O” wrote by Kelly Connelly, introduces a new idea about women in slasher films. In the article, Connelly states that women in films dealing with slashing, will have to learn and be able to face the masculine traits of the killer to be able to surive and be the “Final Girl” (13). Kelly uses the movies Halloween, Halloween 2, and Halloween H2O to describe the relationship that is used in each of these movies. The relationship she describes is the female-male relationship, which would be considered the male killer and the Final Girl (13, 14). A few traits that Connelly describes that the “final girl” has is that she is never sexually active and she often acts more like a boy than a woman. If she sees something that is not normal or is out of the ordinary then she is automatically assured to go check to see what it is which causes her to receive the traits of being smart and attentive of her surroundings (14). Clover has come to see that Laurie achieves empowerment as the final girl based on her ability to stay alive long enough to be rescued in the first film, Halloween (14). But twenty years later in Halloween H2O Laurie had become of age as the true final girl” by assuming the male characteristics of her attacker, which would be a necessary step in defeating the slasher film monster. The lessons Laurie learned in Halloween and Halloween 2 will permit her to finally triumph as the final girl by defeating the male monster in...
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...It is imperial that we understand how the representation of women in film is wholly based on a male perspective. Throughout the history of film, we should acknowledge that the classical studio system in Hollywood has provided audiences with a patriarchal notion of society. Nowadays directors form their films around an institution that best suits the script and therefore, constructing the film. It is not uncommon for films to take advantage of the female body to an extent in which it gains a sexual aspect for the film thus producing a male stance on the matter. Furthermore, the use of women in films has been for the most part “an indispensable element of spectacle… yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a storyline, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (Mulvey, 346). The film industry has continuously managed to restrict women’s freedom and thus encouraging male dominance in society. Because “cinema’s identity lays in its ability to record reality” (Manovich, 2), then how gender is represented in films alludes to our understanding of set roles in society. Nevertheless, we also need to recognize that there is notion of change relating to gender stereotypes within the film industry. There are countless movies starring women as lead characters who epitomize...
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...empathy and anger. There were also times of discomfort. Discomfort because I am not used to seeing naked males, kissing and showing affection toward each other. Therefore the screening really got me out of my comfort zone. The scene of the naked male in the bath tub was especially disturbing. I did not expect that level of nudity so it took me by surprise. What confused and resonated with me is how much homosexuality is frowned upon just because a 2000 year old outdated bible said so. I truly felt sorry and empathized for the characters. I could not imagine being hated by so many people for simply being me. The screening showed me how isolated and marginalized homosexual individuals/couples must feel in daily life. I therefore had an emotional and visceral engagement with the screening. I wanted to jump into the film and some points and tell other characters to mind their own business and to not worry what goes on in others’ private life. Some of the ideas explored in this screening are romance, betrayal, tragedy, morality and religion. This screening reminds me of the daily discrimination and hatred that homosexuals experience daily, especially in the southern United Sates. Thankfully, due to education a more open society, homosexuals are finally starting to gain peace of mind. In this concept response, I will be connecting elements of this week’s screening to the Gaze concept. There is a spectator through character point of view in the film. The main characters are objects...
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...Gender, sexuality and visual representation Introduction Artist Mary Stevenson Cassatt, who shared the revolutionary ideas of artists such as Degas and Monet, was born on 22 May 1844 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although women were not encouraged to pursue a career, Mary enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of sixteen. She quickly felt frustrated by the male faculty and students who were patronising and resentful of her attendance. Regardless of these obstacles and her father’s disapproval of her career choice, she continued to pursue art and painting. Cassatt, an impressionist painter, did not conform to standard male images of women and therefore her paintings differ from the more general male representations, especially of women readers during the Victorian period. Cassatt expresses her world through women and therefore “…offers a new vision of the unconsidered facts of everyday bourgeois life…” (Yeh, 1976:359). Cassatt’s work is regarded by Yeh (1976:359) as women-centred art as she regards women as complete within themselves. In her work she represents women as independent, pursuing interests which are not necessarily directed toward the need of her family. Reading women, portraying the reader’s inner strength often occur as a theme in her paintings. Femininity in the Victorian era In the latter Victorian period women artists and their work were considered inferior. In an attempt to overcome the stereotypical female image their...
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...look into how popular fashion media is portraying traditional male misogynist values in its advertising. ‘Violence in [the media] demonstrates power. It is portrays victims as well as the victimisers. It intimidates more than it incites. It paralyses than it incites. It defines majority might and minority risk. It shows one’s place in the ‘pecking order’ that runes society’ (Nacy Snow 2001:24) In a 21st century we believe that gender equality is widely accepted belief in the public conscience however popular fashion media is generally lead by patriarchal agenda to promote violence against women and male dominance in it advertising. The case studies of focus for this essay are the 2010 Calvin Klein and 2007 Dolce and Gabbana advertising campaigns. Both adverts display extreme sexualised violence against women by a group of men. The adverts show a women who is being held down by a oppressive male hand, while four men gaze at her. The same gaze at which English aristocrats would look at the the exotic women of Turkey in oil painting or how 21st century men look at women in internet pornography. The idea of wealth and sexual violence being linked in popular culture is a common place and I will also explore how the idea of wealthy is linked to women and their sexuality. Throughout art history women have been depicted from male perspective as weaker, passive receivers of violence and object of a sexual gaze. This can be seen up to the modern day with the movie such as ‘Fifty...
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...subaltern are not uniform and universal. The problem with the "burden of representation" is to determine who is the voice of the subaltern and how to infuse it in with mainstream culture. In their essays, Mercer and hooks explore the perspective of gay black men and women, respectively, as spectators whose view has been shaped by their marginalized status and provide a context to tackle the problem of representation. Mercer and hooks use aesthetic and spectatorial strategies, such as oppositional gaze, in their attempt to provide these oft ignored spectators with an empowering perspective that will enable them to transform the film experience. ------------------------------------------------- The ‘gaze’, as described by hooks, is a powerful mechanism among blacks, who have long been discouraged from the act of looking, a tradition passed down from slavery. The television provided blacks with a means to look at white people from the safety of their home. In her essay “The Oppositional Gaze”, bell hooks...
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