Male Gaze and Oppositional Gaze

After reading Berger, hooks, and Mulvey my understanding of how women are seen though the media and film has completely changed. Of course, I knew that men look at women to fulfill this wanting desire. Women are the same as well. Although its not entirely men’s fault, they were just taught over the years of what to see and desire. However I never knew that people coined the term ‘male gaze’ to describe how men, or others spectators, see and view women. It is true, men do see women as some type of object for sexual pleasure. But through different forms of media, women are misrepresented and are objectified in the eyes of the surveyor.

The way women reveal themselves to the public also determines how the male gaze dictates over them. Everyday, women are put in this position where they have to decide how they must dress to be accepted and to be noticed by others and by themselves. “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men..”(Berger, 46) Subconsciously women always have to watch how they dress in public, because of how much people judge them. A majority of women are very insecure about themselves, however women wouldn’t be so self-conscious of themselves if it wasn’t for the how media portrayed them.

“She turns herself into an object and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”(Berger, 47) Women do have a part in making themselves into an object, but media and film has a big part to it. For example, music videos like Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, Anaconda by Nicki Minaj, Booty by J-Lo, Work by Iggy, and Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus show how women become this erotic vision and object. Through Blurred Lines you see how the camera frames them, how these women are posed as in front of camera, and what they are treating themselves as. It sad to say that these music video are created to not only satisfy these spectator desires, and males fantasies, but to profit from it. Through John Berger's Ways of Seeing, we read how nudes "have been and judged as sights." But what’s interesting about this, is that the woman who is being painted knows is aware of being seen. "She is not naked as she is. She is naked the spectator sees her."(Berger, 50) The way women have been explicitly presented comes from how media identifies them.

In the movie The Other Women, we are aware of how Kate Upton is displayed. Through one of the scenes, as Kate Upton gets up from her beach chair and runs down the beach we see how Upton is sexualized as the camera focus on certain parts of her body. In addition, this always shows how the audience and the other cast members spectate Upton. Just like this scene, there are other movies that show scenes of women being presented as erotic objects, for example The Blue Angel. The leading women character of The Blue Angel, Lola Lola, was not only depicted as this erotic object for her appearance but even shows her awareness of men watching her, too.

“.. mass of mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic phantasy.“(Mulvey,835) In other words, these films have an influence on the audience by giving them the power of seeing these women characters as just objects. The impact "subjects them to a controlling and curious gaze", and by indirectly possessing them. In movies, we projects ourselves on certain characters that show certain traits that we associate with. However males tend to identify themselves with the main character, usually, and by doing so they feels as though they has some control and some sense of omnipotence over the erotic look.Thats why the male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture, because it encourages spectators to fantasize and highly eroticized women. This why we must start have deeper understanding of media towards women and end these associations with the erotic visualizations. By “..analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.”(Mulvey, 835)

“That all attempts to repress our/black peoples’ right to gaze had produced in us an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze”(hooks, 116)

Through bell hooks reading, we understand that black women aren't fully represented in the cinema. We notice that black women in particular, are considered as spectator because of how they were seen within society as well as in film. This is why the male gaze is the challenged by the oppositional gaze. The oppositional gaze is basically a form of resistance, of rebellion. “The extent to which black women feel devalued, objectified, dehumanized in this society determines the scope and texture of their looking relations. Those black women whose identities were constructed in resistance, by practices that oppose the dominated, were most inclined to develop an oppositional gaze.”(hooks, 127) This idea oppositional gaze that hooks discusses throughout her book, indicates that black women spectators should understand how they are neglected and misrepresented within the media and in the cinema. However, as indicated in hooks's book their was this "prolong silence of black women as spectators" who had no response to this to "cinematic negation”. They never bothered to question the fact certain films stereotyped them, or that they weren't enough films to represent them. “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) This is true, because usually white women were always subjected to be seen as a object of the surveyor.

Work Cited:
• Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
• hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 “The Oppositional Gaze”
• Mulvey, Laura (1975) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism

Who I Think I Am.

During the course of a given day I seek out media with the voracity of a bloodhound and the precision of the dewy decimal system.  I love to read, mostly fiction, but anything will often do.  When not engulfed in fiction I lean toward the sciences, I'm intensely interested in the current state of space travel and maintain a half dozen sources to see which direction progress is headed.  It's an interesting thing for NASA to make the switch to privatized travel.  For now Space X leads the pack, sending a little over a ton of cargo to the International Space Station, there's a time line for manned travel but I'm not holding my breath.

    Majority of my grey matter goes toward the production and performance of music.  As that's what brought me to this grand City.  For 17 years I've been playing bass in one or more bands.  It was through this medium that media ensnared me.  As different aspects of a functioning band are assigned, various aspects of media are employed.  From a logo/merchandise graphic design is employed,  to garner support is unknown territories social media is blown up, to keep everyone interested web design comes into play so one has a home base.  Then there's recording, the slow grind that is.  Needless to say is dabbling with these aspects made me realize the power of media, and instilled the want to study it seriously.  In efforts of full disclosure here's the passion.  Still finding time for my preferred media.
http://hoseymusic.com/

The Male Gaze / Oppositional Gaze

  The Male Gaze / Oppositional Gaze 

Compare the two bottom images below and ask yourself the following question. Which are you most most likely to see in a film or television show of car wash scene? Will you find yourself seeing something similar to Jessica Simpson or more like someone who looked like Alan Garner? Unless we are watching the Hangover, most will end up seeing and enjoying the light skin, blond, almost naked, flirtatious girl in a scene that is often in slow motion to dramatize the moment. The message in hand is very clear, sex certainly sells. The constant bombarding of this type of images are forcing us to think that this is the conventional way of portraying females in a way that it is more visually engaging for men but more frustrating for women who are constantly under the scope and scrutiny. Because of this kind of issues the concept of the Male Gaze comes to life which in short terms can be seen as the power men have and the use of that power to portray images of the opposite sex in desirable and demeaning manner. 

                          Jessica Simpson 

                              

                                     Alan Garner lookalike

Before discussing the male gaze concept in the area of film and television, I would like to bring to light the earliest form of objectification that existed. In "Ways of Seeing" we discover that back in history during the Renaissance in numerous  European oil paintings women were portrayed in the nude and were there "to feed an appetite, [and] not to have any of their own" (55)  What does a female painting have to do with the male gaze? To every painting there is a perspective and to that perspective there is an artist and because we find out that during that time most of these painters were men, in result women were victims of their subjectivity. This was of seeing women has not changed much today, lets explore more familiar grounds. 

When film was first introduced, females behind the camera lens were being portrayed in ways in which only men desired to see a woman; for instance scenes when a woman entered the room would often start with a slow motion panning up her body showing off her figure, and in some films a romantic tune would start playing to set the moment of fantasy not only within the movie but also for the audience member. The trend became that men were being portrayed in very heroic forms while women would have to stand there and look sexy as an object of admiration, the idea was that men were generally admired and woman were desired. Bell Hooks mentions in her book as she speaks about her students, that we "learn more about race, sex, and class from movies than from theoretical literature" (3) Essentially we learn how to act, behave and talk based on what we see on film, and this is why the male gaze is an issue at hand that needs to be resolved for the sake of treating women with the respect that they deserve. 

                                                                                                             

The Male Gaze: Camera lens panning up and down on Megan Fox's body. 

The Oppositional Gaze 

"Not only will I stare. I want my look to change reality" (Hooks 116)

Different mechanisms  of oppression have emerged primarily by man who from the beginning of media have had a powerful and dominant influence mainly because they own and hold the big title positions in corporate media. We learned that because of the Male Gaze consumer perceptions are shifted to form, define and confine a specific gender or race. The oppositional gaze is somewhat similar to this idea but instead of dealing solely with gender we start to deal with race and representation of African Americans in popular media. 

For African American culture the lack of representation and misrepresentation in media was a rough start, and to an extent they still have a negative representation today in popular films like The Hunger Games, where all black characters are present to serve the white female protagonist in some type of way and in cases resulting in their death. In response to this form of portrayal, the oppositional gaze formed as a vehicle of change in attempt to resist the negative and ugly images that were being shown in the media. For African Americans looking became more than just a gaze, It was a form of rebellion against those who oppressed them and made them feel inferior. Hooks mentions that "When black people in the United States first had the opportunity to look at film, they did so fully aware that mass media was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy" (117). They were fully aware of the power television had and its ability to shape public opinion, and they knew that this mass machine worked in their disadvantage, in the same reading we discover that one of the ways for African American men rebelled against this was by engaging in "phallocentric politics of spectatorship" (118). The consequences they suffered for simply staring were grave and as a result attending films in these dark show rooms they had the ability to unleash the repressed gaze,in the  same reading we learn that "In their role as spectators, black men could enter an imaginative space of phallocentric power that mediated racial negation"  (118). 

For African American women they had to come to an understating that in media the desired feminine image was that of a white female, In the chapter of race and representation, we learn that most black women went to see films without high expectations of being represented acutely to the while female image.  In the Oppositional Gaze, Black Female Spectators Bell Hooks states that when representation of black woman were present in film, they bodies and beings were present to maintain white womanhood. The only way to avoid these messages Hooks says that woman should not identity with any of the characters and to shut down any critique.  All I know is that if it had been me watching these films I would probably would have gotten up and reacted just as Tasha from Orange is the New Black did in this scene. 

The two videos below show a perfect example of 

African American representation in media back then and today. 

Example of how very little their representation has changed. 

       

Oppositional Gaze : African American women were mostly represented

 as servants also know as "the help". Tasha stands up for herself in this scene.

Works Cited


Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze

Ways of Seeing & Resistance

[Brave] Disney

click above link to watch the movie.

"Men act. Women appear." Unfortunately, this is the overall common message we get from most of what we see in popular culture and by extension, throughout everyday interactions. John Berger was correct in his observations when he said that the social presence of a man and a woman are entirely different and depend on power. “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping . From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.” Boys and men don't really have this profound anxiety lingering over them all of the time. Since the beginning (or so we have been told), one group has always been in control so the “ideal” viewer or spectator is them, men. As a consequence of this, women have often been portrayed through the filter of a man. This is what the male gaze means. It's 2014 these days and this overwhelmingly inaccurate narrative still can be found and identified all over traditional and popular culture alike.

     Laura Mulvey attempts to break down how and why women appeared the way they did in movies, through psychoanalytic theory and refers to some of Freud's findings. Mainly investigating the correlation of desire and reality with emphasis on camera techniques and its relationship with the audience. Viewing it this way serves as a political weapon because it allows one to figure out how the unconscious of patriarchal society influenced even the very inner workings of film. A 1950's film director named Budd Boetticher said “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.” Mulvey notes that “Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” She explains how the image of women in film has been hijacked and misappropriated and ultimately how these mechanisms are reinforced within society.

     By examining black female spectators specifically, bell hook's piece is the only one which observes more closely the intersection of race and gender but especially highlighting the negation of black female representation in cinema. Because black people (especially black women) were in so many ways left out, they were constantly “on guard” when at the movies. It was there where they could confront and interrogate what was supposedly representations of themselves. From here, came the idea of the oppositional gaze. hooks believes, and I strongly agree, that there is a sort of power in looking. She remembers that because so many slaves were denied the right to look, those experiences resulted in an immense longing and desire to look. Revoking their ability to look kept them powerless. The oppositional gaze is one of the best ways to resist and understand the way the world is, I think. hooks references the French philosopher Foucault, recalling that he “insists on describing domination in terms of 'relations of power' as part of an effort to challenge the assumption that 'power is a system of domination which controls everything and which leaves no room for freedom.' Emphatically adding “there is necessarily the possibility of resistance” in all relations of power and “invites the critical thinker to search those margins, gaps, and locations on and through the body where agency can be found.” hooks also acknowledges how violent and damaging these images were. For black female spectators, looking too deep hurt so turning away or not even participating in looking was “a gesture of resistance, a way to protest, to reject negation.” I also hear and understand her frustration with conventional feminist theorists, who don't even try to discuss or bring up race. This denial clearly contributes to the psychological terrorism that is patriarchy.

“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within: strength, courage, dignity.” — Ruby Dee

     As little kids (especially young girls), if you don't have people around you to consistently help you break down these images and messages, it only gets worse as you grow up. Luckily for me, I was always asking questions (to myself) because my family never really talked about these things. The TV and culture was always seen as a destructive force. Being captain of the varsity girls soccer and basketball teams, I never really internalized all the negativity I witnessed around me. Women's rights and where we fit in the world is an overwhelming subject and it still bothers me on a day to day basis. No matter how many different ways or angles I try to consider what's happening, I can not understand why we (human beings, members of different communities, Americans) accept, allow and worst of all, sometimes even justify and defend such cruelty. It seems as though you can get away with almost anything under the banner of "free speech" and making profits or going along with the status quo — something I find incredibly irritating and shameful. Just hearing and finding out what's happening to women across the globe and certainly in our inner circles, is very dispiriting.

An insightful South American girl adopts the oppositional gaze. She's reacting here to Disney princesses (video is in Spanish but you can tell how she feels by how she's saying it). She believes that almost all the Disney princesses are "stupid" because they are waiting to be rescued or are following the guy around and not doing anything on their own, with the exception of the character of Mulan, who she really admires and describes as "very strong." It's true, Mulan is a very good character, the sort we rarely find.

References:
1. Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
2. Mulvey, Laura (1975 article)  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism

3. hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze

Who I think I am?

I am a huge media consumer (mainly Facebook, Instagram, twitter and Youtube)  my  days revolve around school, work , dance and social media. With the help of newer media outlets sharing my ideas and thoughts through video, image, and sound  has been easier and more accessible. I remember the simpler days before the newer and more sophisticated media was introduced when there was AOL instant messenger.  At the time my life revolved around posting away messages that expressed my feelings, thoughts and emotions and from time to time deliberately posting messages just to get attention (#thirsty).  Overtime I realized this was becoming a huge distraction and I forced myself to slow down as I was becoming more concerned with instant messaging  than other priorities. After stopping for some time,  I imagined this feeling of wanting to stay connected with the outside world via instant messenger would fade. However, just when I had learned to become less dependent on this, Facebook appeared on the social media radar.

***this is not an actual away message from me, but if I had posted this "so mad, don't IM me" message, chances are I  probably wanted to someone to message me back asking if I was ok, sort of like reverse psychology.

At First like many of my friends  I was skeptical about creating a Facebook account  because I wanted to avoid yet another distraction, but little did I know after shifting my attention over to Facebook, this gave life to a new way  in how I would interact with the world and how the world  would interact with me.  I became obsessed with Facebook because having the ability to stay connected with friends and family from around the world was a commodity I never imagined having. I love sharing different aspects of my life on social media particularly because of those friends with whom I like to share my NYC experiences as they often share their own experiences from their own native countries.

**These are actual photos I posted on my account and the majority of likes have come from friends outside of NYC. 

             

                

What I appreciate about media in general is that it works as an archival system where everything that goes live is stored and available for someone to revisit at a later time unless otherwise deleted by the user or author. Other reasons social media is so convenient is because as an users I can track a current event as it's happening in real time and have the ability bring awareness in a matter of minutes by simply clicking the share bottom. I feel like my attention is always shifting from one event to the next because someone is constantly bombarding my news feed with things that are happening in the world, and I love it!!!  Another element of social media I find fascinating is my ability to control what goes out, as a consumer its a good feeling having the ability to control who I  follow, block and comment, and what I share.   I know there are many other media outlets I've yet to learn about, but that is definitely one of my goals this semester.  #mediaconsumerontherise 

ways of seeing/viewing

Surveyor/surveyed relationship being established between the art piece and the viewer.

The male gaze is the relationship that cultures have adopted between a subject and a surveyor. It was established in European art when the woman or subject of the painting were placed in a role only to be viewed and for the viewer to get a response from this interaction. This role was rarely reversed and the subject was usually placed in this limited role by affixing a gaze onto her. She would usually be looking at herself or looking back at the surveyor to acknowledge and reinforce the surveyor's role and her own as well. Berger writes "we join the Elders to spy on Susannah taking her bath. She looks back at us looking at her" (Berger, 50). In that example, all those involved in the painting have a role or job, but Susannah being the subject, "breaks" this rhetoric by looking back at the viewer to involve him. Her role now is now strictly as the subject of the viewer. Laura Mulvey discusses this phenomena in the world of movies as well in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". She uses Marilyn Monroe as an example of the male gaze in movies. "As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence" (Mulvey, 838). In both the art and cinema world, the male gaze gets its power and pleasure from looking and in a sense, being God of those worlds. 

The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in our popular culture because it has been with us for so long. The western world prides itself in its influence and retains much of the old ways. Certain cultures and traditions have been carried over to the new world of the Americas and now as a major world influence, we stay instilling these values into our culture, and affecting those who are part of our world as well. Berger uses an example of how little things have changed on this respect. He asks us to compare the facial expression between two women; one from a famous painting and the other from a girlie magazine. "Is not the expression remarkably similar in each case? It is the expression of a woman responding with calculated charm to the man whom she imagines looking at her". It brings to mind that famous phrase "sex sells".  Who can argue with this phenomena? It's been working since the renaissance.

To me, the oppositional gaze is a reaction to the suppression of black society. Bell Hooks describes "being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grown-ups, looks that were seen as confrontational" (hooks, 115) and relating this to a challenge of authority. This challenge of authority would later extend to slavery, where slaves were punished for looking, as a way to strongly reinforce the absolute role the master had to his slaves. Even after slavery, the role of white supremacy was still present, and the new oppositional gaze most people developed was against the representation of blacks in society and culture. Bell hooks would talk about trying to address the oppositional gaze instead of ignoring the content and attempting to receive the superficial pleasure of what was being presented on the screens and in society. She says "I interrogated the work, cultivated a way to look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language." Using this oppositional gaze allowed critical assessment of the content and "black women looked from a location that disrupted".

Understanding the male gaze made sense to me. I'm not a very analytical person and I only took in the superficial qualities of a painting. It makes sense to me why so many renaissance paintings have such odd looks and off direction stares. As a male, it is difficult to see the constructs that were built simply because they are designed to cater to us, and it's designed in such an effective way that no man will seem to object to it. Overall the whole thing makes sense, especially the bible explanation since most of those stories do seem one sided about who is to blame about several of man's shortcomings.

Understanding the oppositional gaze was a lot more difficult. Growing up, everything I've watched in any kind of media has not been objectionable to me and was always in some form of way, relatable to me. The idea that there was a demographic wholly ignored and this system of an opposing gaze being the consequence was a little hard to wrap my head around at first. This new insight on the subject is something that I want to be more aware of since our goal as a society should be to wholly encompass and embrace all and not shun and ignore those we can't represent or understand. Bell Hooks explains the how's and why's but for me it's still hard to envision or comprehend the extent of its effects.

Find out more about bell hooks on her wikipedia page!

Works Cited

Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
Mulvey, Laura (1975 article)  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism
hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze

Post # 2

Laura Mulvey brought the concept of the male gaze to the forefront. From her 1975 essay  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Mulvey explains the male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. We’ve created images of women being objectified for a man’s fantasy and enjoyment.

“The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to be looked-at- ness….she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.”

The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision and popular culture because mainstream entertainment has set that tone. We see example of  this in a variety of media everyday from magazines ads, sports, music,movies and so on.
As a woman, looking through a magazine there are constant reminders of this male gaze Mulvey talks about. Sexy ads of women holding perfume with pouty lips, glowing skin, revealing if any clothing at all and that stare as if their eyes are saying “I want you”. Women are apart of that audience but I feel a lot of the times women will look at those magazines to get some inspiration of what you should look like. Many women look at these magazines to see the new trends and try to copy what your favorite celebrity looks like and when we have these images created to feed the male gaze it’s as if we’ve accepted it by trying to emulate it. We look at these images through the eyes of men. Those who create these images, according to Mulvey usually are men, use these females to speak to the man, to convey an image and unfortunately, sex sells.
Chanel Ad
Dolce and Gabbana

“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” I think this ties into the Mulvey essay. The image of woman is based upon what men want to see. When we want to keep up with trends we look at those magazines to find what we should be doing with our hair, makeup and sex life and it’s we’re basing it on what our men will like and how to please our man. When Berger says “Women watch themselves being looked at” that means women are in the mirror watching how they appear to man, will it satisfy your man.

The oppositional gaze by Bell Hooks  points out that there are many  gazes from different standpoints  not just the male gaze. Hooks discusses Black Female Spectatorship. “  When I returned to films as a young woman, after a long period of silence, I had developed an oppositional gaze.  Not only would I be hurt by the absence of black female presence, or the insertion of violating representation, I interrogated the work, cultivated a way to look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language.  Foreign films and U.S. independent cinema were the primary locations of my filmic looking relations, even though I also watched Hollywood films.”

Black women were not represented in the media and when they were there was misrepresentation most of the time. Black women did not go to the movies expecting to see compelling representations of black femaleness. When they were present they were there to enhance the man and white women. To this day, we can still see examples misrepresentation of black people in general, for instance, the shooting of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown.  In a world that’s evolved so much, ignorance can date us back tremendously.

By learning about these structures from the three readings, it has opened my eyes to look deeper into media. As I was growing up, I never thought much about how women are portrayed I just thought this is what we do, this is how we act and look. It’s easy for things to go over your head lose the meaning behind something. As one woman put it from the Hooks essay “she could only get pleasure from movies as long as I didn’t look too deep”.I think it’s important to learn about the ideas from Mulvey, Berger and Hooks to understand yourself and others.
_________________________________________

Mulvey, Laura. "Women as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look." Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. N.p.: n.p., 1975. 837. Print.

Berger, John. "3." Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1973. 47. Print.

Hooks, Bell. "The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992. 121-22. Print.

The Oppositional Gaze of the Media

     The male gaze is that all invading glare that we as women grow up being aware of, and we are trained to be objects that give pleasure to that gaze through media. But as the years pass, that pervasive form of vision has increased in the media, while disguising the objectification with different smoke-screens. Women are way more hyper-sexualized now than in the past years, exasperating the problem of the male gaze and it is a landscape I find myself confused and stuck in. Bell Hooks said, “Even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve — to enhance and maintain white woman hood as object of the phallocentric gaze” (The Oppositional Gaze, 119). Even though racism prevails in a society who likes to think they are colorblind, black women have become the center of hyper sexualization as well, empowering the phallocentric gaze in the process. Videos like “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj are proof of that:

"Anaconda" video by Nicki Minaj

     This is an accurate GIF from “If You Had My Love” by Jennifer Lopez of what me and girls my age were like when watching women we looked up to:

GIF from If You Had My Love music video

The video itself was about a voyeuristic site where Jennifer Lopez was watched from all kinds of rooms showering, dancing, what have you. It was a fantasy come true for men and that’s what we looked up to at that time, and that’s what we wanted to be. Media trains us and even makes us want to be seen that way. However, Jennifer Lopez has “evolved” from cute, sexy to shaking-my-booty-with-barely-any-clothes-on sexy.

Jennifer Lopez from If You Had My Love music video
(1999)

Jennifer Lopez from her most recent Booty Video ft. Iggy Azalea
(2014)

     “The women’s sexual passion needs to be minimized to that the so spectator may feel that he has the monopoly of such passion,” says Berger (Ways of Seeing, 55). It’s a misconception that just because women are able to show their bodies, their luxurious hair, and passion in videos then that means we hold power over men by mesmerization. Although it’s a misconception, it’s a powerful smoke-screen for the male-dominated gaze that the media is built on. “Let women think they are powerful and sexy, while we make money off of billions of people watching them,” is what I imagine men in the media-business saying. Much like racism, female suppression and male domination exists, it’s just not as obvious. 

     So now black women are equally as sexualized and now we can show all the passion we want. Therefore, we’re just as powerful as men. Wrong. Those two “feats” are merely mirrors that the media place in our hands, “You painted a naked women because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure” (Berger, 51). Although the media places Jennifer Lopez on the spotlight  and encourages this evolution because “sex sells,” we’re quick to criticize her first even though there’s a bigger picture. We’re quick to criticize Nicki Minaj even though this hyper-sexualization is what sells in our society because of the phallocentric gaze, and she had to mold herself into it in order to succeed. 

     “In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey states, “Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order” (835). This goes for not only film, but the whole media business. And what makes the most money is what becomes mainstream. As a result, the more erotic, the more it sells, and the more it gets exposed to little girls repeatedly today because it becomes mainstream. I would be scared for myself if I was a little girl today looking up to the current Jennifer Lopez, and I’m afraid that the male-gaze is being imposed on a new generation in a more pervasive way than the past years. The only thing I can do is divert from mainstream and choose what I love because of my taste and not because of what is popular out there. And I could only hope that it doesn’t get worse and that the next generation of women will be able to do the same and not fall for the smoke-screens which  give pleasure and empower the phallocentric gaze that dominates the media business.

Works Cited

Hooks, Bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze
Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin BooksMulvey, Laura (1975 article)  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism


By:Vanessa Rodriguez

Post #2 The male gaze and the opposing gaze

    The male gaze is the way in which the audience views all types of media - images, literature, art, and cinema. The audience is considered to be male in every aspect and women are merely portrayed the way in which men want to view the women.

In Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" Grace Kelly's portrayal in the movie was primarily to be viewed for the male audience's pleasure

     The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture because historically men have had the power in art, film, the workplace, and politics. Men were the most important audience category because they were the consumers buying tickets to films, buying the books, and commissioning the paintings that objectified the women. Since men controlled all aspects of society throughout past centuries, it is no surprise that media created an atmosphere where the male audience was able to view the female art form. The male gaze became ubiquitous because the female art form lost her identity, and “…becomes his property, los[t] her outward glamorous characteristics… her eroticism [was] subjected to the male star alone.” (Mulvey, pg 840). This example demonstrates how the male gaze replaced any kind of identifiable characteristics the female character once had, making her act the way she wanted the male to see her. The important characteristic of the male gaze was the male’s right of judgement where the male is the judge and the female is the one to be judged. “Paris awards the apple to the woman he finds most beautiful. Thus beauty becomes competitive” (Berger page 52). The male’s right to judge transforms the female into a submissive role where she loses all of her power. This submissiveness also creates a competitive atmosphere among other females to be viewed as the most beautiful female. Therefore the female’s only purpose was to gain the approval of the male judging her beauty.

An example of a woman portrayed only as a man's possession.

     The oppositional Gaze is a form of silent rebellion; a silent weapon where black people could have a voice in a world that strictly forbade their participation. The oppositional gaze’s roots began during slavery where black people had no voice and were severely punished for opposing any form of white society’s persecution of them. “The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations, were such that the slaves were denied their right to gaze”. (Hooks, pg 115). Opposing glances were the only weapon that these slaves had in many cases and it is understandable that slaves mastered the subtlety of the opposing gaze. Any slave who met his master’s eye with a hint of hostility could easily be killed, therefore, it was imperative to conceal the gaze from white detection. The oppositional gaze in the days of slavery was constantly monitored, so the ability to disguise it was very important. Blacks throughout slavery and the racially charged atmosphere of the early 20th century were constantly punished for opposing white society and therefore developed a strong urge to have their voices heard in a way that did not result in a form of punishment. Television and film viewers’ ability to judge forms of media was crucial in the development and growth of the opposing gaze throughout the 20th century. After slavery and during the Civil Rights Movement, black people were increasingly able to consume television, books, and films in a relatively safe environment. These forms of media were viewed usually in the home or the darkness of a theatre where the viewer was unhindered in his ability to express his disapproval of what was seen on the screen. “Given the real life public circumstances wherein black men were murdered/lynched for looking at white womanhood, where the black male gaze was always subject to control and or punishment by the powerful white other, the private realm of the television screen or dark theaters could unleash the repressed gaze.” (Bell Hooks, pg 118). Black culture was not accurately represented in early forms of media. Therefore, the ability for black viewers to recognize this form of white supremacy while expressing their displeasure in safe places, allowed the oppositional gaze to continue to grow.

1970's picture showing black women expressing rebellion against racial inequality


     Since I now know that “Women watch themselves being looked at… The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female” (Berger, pg 74), some of my views about various media have certainly changed. I now look at female characters with more of a keen eye; I recognize the main purpose and positioning in many forms of media is to be viewed and judged by the male audience. I see when she exudes sexuality, she is probably doing it for my pleasure and for the male audience. I also think that how a viewer absorbs media in all its forms will depend on that particular viewer’s past experience and his or her background. How a viewer responds to media will differ according to race, age, gender, background and family upbringing. These varying factors that exist in all of us will ultimately decide how we view and judge media. Our life experiences play a major part in how we perceive media in all its forms.

http://theodysseyonline.com/nebraska/media--men-how-we-can-change-their-view-of-women/36368

Works Cited:
• Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
• hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 “The Oppositional Gaze”
• Mulvey, Laura (1975) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism

Post 2 Defining the Male and Oppositional Gaze: "If I Were Your Father, I Would Have to Rape You."

 One of the first things that struck a cord in me as I read, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger, was his opening statement, “…the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. (p.45)”  As much as my feminist mind hates to admit it, the statement is accurate, but not in a flattering way towards women—the woman’s social presence is automatically deemed as weaker than that of a man.  Berger goes on to say, “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promos of power which he embodies.  If the promise is large and credible, his presence is striking (p. 45).”  Was Trayvon Martin’s blackness [presence] defined as powerful and that is why he was shot to death, or was George Zimmerman’s whiteness [presence] seen as the more powerful one, therefore, feeling entitled to shoot? This presence-and-power analogy is definitely divided into parts—race and gender.  No matter what the physicality is of a woman, her presence will never be more powerful than her male counterparts, nor will the black presence be more powerful than that of whites.  

 Without saying it, black men show us everyday that their desire to be with a white woman is based solely on the fact that she is white.  Black males are adamant about not wanting to be judged by the way they look--skin color, attire, speech--but yet, they are consistent in their critique of how "slutty" a woman is based on her attire, speech, and occasionally, skin color.  Berger says, “…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…(p. 46)”  Women will, more often than not, make exceptions for the men they choose as a mate, compromising the physicality and personality of the man.  This is not typical of the male gender. Women use their gaze to make exceptions for men, while men use the gaze to criticize women.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09/17/there-is-nothing-funny-or-smart-about-that-viral-nicki-minaj-parody-video/

So my parents would not worry, I used the old, “My-friend-said-this-once-happened-to-her" line.  But, really, this very revolting experience happened to me.  When I was 200 pounds, I was very voluptuous.  A man once said to me as I stood at a bus stop, “If you were my daughter, I would have to rape you.”  I was fully clothed, dressed appropriately, but my young brain could not process that the comment was not my fault.  This experience of mine defines the male gaze.  The oppositional gaze is something I am ashamed to define, but this is how I see it—the asexual subject or someone viewed as asexual—overweight, unattractive, inarticulate and not sensual at all, and usually a black woman.  This type of black person is often given a public platform--Sherri Shepard from, The View.  Presenting the worst of black women to the world seems to be a trend.  Notice how nearly every talk show has the overweight, loud, black woman.  Whites have contributed to what I perceive the oppositional gaze to be.  And if there are too many black women in public arenas that stray away from this gaze that comforts some whites, they become uneasy and it becomes obvious: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/09/26/people-magazine-deletes-stupid-insensitive-tweet-about-the-help-during-viola-daviss-new-show/.  Because I believe that men have defined the gaze, then the oppositional gaze is the antithesis of the male gaze.  The oppositional gaze allows non-black people to view and perpetuate stereotypes in the black race.  

In, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey states, “The presence of a woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a storyline …(p. 837)”  Instantly, I think of the role of “Bond Girl.”  What does a beautiful woman coming out of the water in a bikini have to do with assisting the male protagonist, James Bond, in saving the world?”  In an interview, actress, Angelina Jolie, revealed the studios asked her to be a "Bond Girl."  Her response, "I don't want to be a "Bond Girl," I want to be Bond."  That is how the role, Salt, came to her.  However, if Jolie allows herself to still be sexualized, as mentioned in the film, Misrepresentation, is she still in control?

Singer and performer, Little Richard, explains why he is always in makeup during performances. He told the story of the infancy stages of his career, which were very frustrating.  At a time when the country was still segregated, because Richard was a handsome man, white women expressed their attraction for him in the nightclubs where he played. White men began to feel threatened and Richard was asked not to return.  After this recurring episode, he then decided to make a buffoon of himself by putting on a ton of ridiculous and feminine makeup to appear non-threatening to white men.  In Bell Hooks, The Oppositional Gaze, Hook says, “Amazed the first time I read in history classes that white slaveowners punished enslaved black people for looking… (p.115)”  I cannot say for sure if white men punished their white women for ogling this black male entertainer, I can only speculate that they did.  I do know that Richard was punished.  He emasculated himself for acceptance.  Hooks goes on to say, “…I wondered how this traumatic relationship to the gaze had informed black parenting and black spectatorship. (p. 115)”  The gaze Hooks speaks about has influenced black pathology, especially when it comes to how black people raise their children—corporal punishment.  Not all black children grew up in violence. I was never hit.  However, as we see prominent black people on television gleefully telling their stories of getting whooped (they are careful to not use the word “whipped),”  and beaten, it has a negative affect on the next generation of both blacks and whites.

                                                               
                                                               Works Cited

Hooks, Bell. "Black Looks: Race and Representation."  The Oppositional Gaze. Boston : South End Press, 1992: 115-31
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford Up, 1999: 833-44
Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing." London: Penguin, 1972: 39-64

The Male Gaze and Oppositional Gaze As I See Them

Titian's Venus of Urbino is a classic example
of work made for the male gaze.

The male gaze as I understand it, is a concept that asserts that in most forms of media, the viewer is automatically assumed to be a heterosexual male, and therefore the images of women presented to them through various mediums are created to appeal to their sexual desires.

In his 1972 BBC television series and book Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that the male gaze is a long standing tradition which can trace it’s origins back to the European nude painting. He posits that “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.” (Berger 54) It’s precisely this type of objectification, appealing to the sexual desires of men that effectively dehumanizes the women on display. They are no longer people, but rather things to be looked at for the pleasure of the men looking at them. Berger also argues that in this predicates the role of men as the surveyor, stating that men determine how they treat women based on their perceptions of them. And that a woman therefore learns to survey herself constantly, or as Berger puts it, “Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.” (Berger 46) The author then offers up a provocative simplification of his argument in the phrase “men act and women appear.” (Berger 47)

Marylin Monroe's appearance
in River of No Return (1954)
as cited by Laura Mulvey

Interestingly enough, this “tradition” has been able to make it’s way into modern and contemporary mediums such as film, an argument beautifully outlined in Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” published only three years after Berger’s work. In the third portion of the text entitled “Woman ad Image, Man as Bearer of the Look,” Mulvey similarly states that “The determining male gaze projects it’s phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly.” (Mulvey 837) 

And it is through film that we find the emergence of the oppositional gaze as a construct of of black female subjectivity. Author bell hooks outlines the concept in detail, as part of her book “Black Looks: Race and Representation” in which she moves past a focus on gender representation within the cinema and more closely focuses on the aspect of race. She posits that the “gaze has been and is a site of resistance for colonized black people globally” going on to say that “In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to asset agency by claiming and cultivating ‘awareness’ politicizes ‘looking’ relations-one learns to look in a certain way in order to resist.” (hooks 116)

Lamenting the racially hostile and stereotyped representations plaguing mainstream cinema, bell hooks calls upon black women to be critical of the films (and by extension, all media) they consume and seek out narratives that “do not simply offer diverse representations, they imagine new transgressive possibilities for the formulation of identity.” (hooks 130)

Just one example of idealized female bodies in comic books.
Click here for an interesting article on the male gaze as it
appears in DC Comics.

As an artist/illustrator and avid reader of comic books, my artistic inclinations and sensibilities have been greatly informed by work that caters to the male gaze through their depiction of idealized female body types and traditional notions of feminine beauty. It’s been interesting to see just how unconsciously I have reinforced and catered to the male gaze in my own work and it’s something that I’m trying to work on. In terms of the oppositional gaze, I completely agree with hooks in her assertion that the only way to move past the problematic representations of race and gender in film is to be critical in what we consume. This is the only way to help us move past the “single story” that’s been put forth.