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.
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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.