Penetrating the Male Gaze

Consider this commercial.                                     Taking place inside a mens' locker room, "Don" who appears to be a woman, is nagging the others about deodorant. Don is handed a Snickers and called a "diva". Upon the first bite, Don is transformed into his natural state as a man. The tagline of the commercial reads "YOU'RE NOT YOU WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY". The commercial infers that the state of hunger -- which symbolizes a lack, void, emptiness -- is a feminine quality. Furthermore, the traits of a "diva" i.e.; annoying, frivolous, annoying, unwanted, are also associated with the feminine. The commercial suggests to avoid these decidedly feminine qualities, one should purchase a Snickers bar. The commercial is clearly addressed to men, as made evident by the tagline's use of the second tense. This is the male gaze. It is a pervasive, and on going white supremacist, patriarchal tradition that shapes the ways in which Western society consume and internalize the media. It defines how a woman is treated. It is internalized by all. 

    John Berger in Chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, describes the male gaze as a manifestation of the difference in "the social presence of a woman...from that of a man" (Berger, 45). While a man's presence is active, dominant, and powerful; a woman's presence is passive, and defined by "what can and cannot be done to her" (46). This sexist notion is carried on by the male gaze in that it determines how a woman is treated in our society. And "to acquire some control over this process, women must contain [the male gaze] and interiorize it" (46). To play the game that has been established by the patriarchal foundations of our society, women constantly "watch themselves being looked at" (46) and learn how to think like a man, which traditionally entails the subjugation and marginalization of women. 

    Berger explores this aforementioned tradition of subjugating and marginalizing women, by observing the traditions of European oil paintings from the period of the Italian Renaissance. He notes how the first nudes in the tradition depicted the story  of Adam and Eve -- the creation story which blames all misery, evil, sins to the woman, and establishes that her husband "shall rule over thee" (48). 

    He continues on with the tradition of Renaissance paintings, and gives examples of paintings wherein the "subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator", which then progresses into paintings wherein the subject "is looking at herself in a mirror...thus join[ing] the spectators of herself" (50). Considering that mirrors were often a symbol of vanity, these paintings suggest to the surveyor to think negatively of the subject, but more importantly; reveal the contradictions and absurdity of the male gaze. Berger addresses the male patrons, painters, and producers of this male gaze:"You painted a naked woman 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" (51)

   This contradiction in the condemning of women is further explored by Laura Mulvey in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". She states how the "paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman...an idea of woman stands as a lunch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence" (Mulvey, 833). The idea of male superiority can only exist side by side the idea of female inferiority. And as the male gaze is constantly reiterating the idea of masculine superiority, it is also reiterating the idea of feminine inferiority. 

   Mulvey examines the ways in which the male gaze is internalized by all consumers of media, particularly through cinema. She cites Jaques Lacan and his theory of recognition/misrecognition: "the moment when a child recognizes its own image in the mirror is crucial for the constitution of the ego...the mirror phase occurs at a time when the child's physical ambitions outstrip his motor capacity, with the result that his recognition of himself is more complete, more perfect that he experiences his own body. Recognition is thus overlaid with mis-recognition" (836). 

    Mulvey applies this theory of recognition/misrecognition to the functions of cinema, noting its "production of ego ideals" (836). She suggests, "the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect" (836).  On the one hand, scopophilia manifests by the viewer's use "another person as an object of sexual stimulation" while narcissism manifests when the viewer identifies with the image seen. This deluded view of reality, while "pleasurable in form, can be threatening in content" as the marginalized, subjugated, and objectified viewers begin to internalize the patriarchal message underlying not only cinema, but all mainstream images. For example, consider this print advertisement for a Gucci fragrance for women, labeled "Gucci Guilty". Female viewers are not only made to be sexually stimulated by this image, but also made to identify with the female subject, who is staring back at the spectator, in tune with the aforementioned patriarchal tradition of Renaissance paintings. This simultaneous act of being sexually stimulated by and identifying with the image, allows for the viewer to internalize the underlying meaning of the image. "Gucci Guilty". The image is of a woman caught in a sexual act with a man, staring back at the viewer. She is "Guilty". Hence, the image reiterates the notion that women are promiscuous, that is is unnatural for a woman to be sexual, that she is guilty of exhibiting sexuality.  

   bell hooks delves deeper into this theory of recognition in images in her article "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators". She references Anne Friedberg's essay, "A Denial of Difference: Theories of Cinematic Identification" to emphasize that "identification can only be made through recognition" (hooks, 119), and questions what this may mean for those who are forming identities through misrecognition of images produced by the white, patriarchal mainstream media. Concerning the patriarchal tradition of objectifying women and making them the subject of the male gaze, hooks speaks of how it was not only based on a belief system of male supremacy, but just as importantly, of white supremacy.  It was white women exclusively who were made the objects of this gaze, and the only only representations of black women's bodies were portrayed "to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze" (119).

    Furthermore, hooks contextualizes how blacks in our society have been denied the right to gaze to show how gazing is an act of power. She notes that historically, "white slave owners punished enslaved black people for looking" and how "the politics of slavery, of racialized power  relations were such that the slaves were denied their right to gaze" (115). Nevertheless, "all attempts to repress black people' right to gaze had produced an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze" (116). 

   The oppositional gaze was developed as a way to resist the beliefs of the power structure, as a coping mechanism for those who are constantly marginalized and objectified by the unavoidable media, and as expression of curiosity and activity. Within the realm of cinema, the oppositional gaze was manifested by the Blaxploitation film genre in which black male independent filmmakers  told their own stories, and produced their own images. hooks notes that these same black male filmmakers "represent[ed] black women in their films as objects of the male gaze", ironically giving black women their previously denied "right" to be subjected to the male gaze (118). 

   hooks continues to explore the ways in which black women have been objectified by black male image makers in her analyzation of the "Sapphire" character in Amos 'n' Andy. She cites her essay, "Do you remember Sapphire" to describe this character as the: "backdrop, foil...bitch -- nag. She was there to soften images of black men, to make them seem vulnerable, easygoing, funny, and unthreatening to a white audience. She was there a man in drag, as castrating bitch...someone the white and black audience could hate" (120). 

The Sapphire character continues to be employed by acclaimed black male media makers such as Adam McGruder (creator of Boondocks),in his new comedy series Black Jesus. The clip above shows a scene of Shalinka being enraged at Boonie for neglecting his duties as a father. She begins attacking the only other woman in the scene for sleeping with Boonie. Like hooks' description of Sapphire, Shalinka is portrayed as an intimidating, nagging, deluded, and wild woman. 

   This exemplifies the common case of the oppressed becoming the oppressors. While black men had gained the freedom to produce images and films, they could only exist by marginalizing another group of people. To add to this sad case of internalized sexist, is also the case of internalized racism. In the clip of Black Jesus, the climax of the scene is when Shalinka removes her weave. Through this ploy, Shalinka is made the object of ridicule by both black and white audiences alike. It is as if there is an unspoken rule in Hollywood where in order to produce a tv show or film, it must be offensive to at least one of the marginalized groups in our society. 

   hooks offers the oppositional gaze to all marginalized people as a tool to not only dismantle the images that one may mistake for recognition of self and images that reinforce white male supremacy, but also to create and produce new images that actively oppose the oppressive and unrealistic standards of norm that are falsely put forth by the mainstream media. 

    

The male gaze is everywhere. This image shows that subscribing to Complex Magazine, means subscribing to the objectification of the female body and the perpetuation of oppressive traditions of sexism and racism. 

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Berger, John. "3." Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972: 39-64. 

hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race 
    and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992: 115-31. 

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism:    

   Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.