The male gaze is occurring everywhere. Its plastered all
over the ads on the subway, magazine, and television. It is clear, obvious and
in front of the audience. The male gaze stands out, however most people are
blinded by it. Large amounts of people do not recognize it and cannot tell it
is there. This practice has been going on for centuries and, in our modern
culture, is it still being used in mass media.
By reading John Berger's Way of Seeing, we learn that the
male gaze is the portrayal of women as spectator for men. Woman are used and
displayed as sex objects. A major example Berger sites is about nude and
nakedness in European oil paintings. "To be naked is to be oneself. To be
nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognize oneself."
(Berger, 54) A woman who is nude in oil painting is meant to be a display for
the male viewer. The nudeness is not an act of sexual expression for the woman
but an exhibition for men.
In our modern time, the male gaze is used in advertising.
Recently, the NYC subway cars and stations were covered with an ad for a new Fall TV show
called, Marry Me. In this ad we see a woman embracing her male lover, however
the woman is staring out towards the viewer. Berger explains that while the
female may have a male lover embracing her. The attention is not directed towards
him but towards the true lover, which are the spectator and the male viewer.
(Berger, 56)
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| W23rd St Subway Station |
bell hooks writes in The Oppositional Gaze about the
experience of black women being spectators. She recounts her experience growing
up with viewing black woman on cinema. “Major early black male independent
filmmakers represent black women in their films as objects of the male gaze.”
(hooks, 118) Even though black men were creating and producing films, the black
females in their media were still product of the male gaze. Growing up, the
black actresses she saw on the big screen were not relatable to her. The character that she saw were not real role models she could look up to. These characters were mostly housemaids, slaves, or servers. In the few leading roles black actors had, they were concealed to look and act white. She
explains that many white audiences could not tell that these black performers
like Lena Horne where in fact African-American. (hooks, 119)
The examples that hooks write about are still relevant to
today. Magazine, films and television show Photoshop, manipulate, and edit to
light the skin of black women. Black and Latina women deal have an added pressure
of their skin color along with the main issues women deal with on a regular
basis in their real life and in the media. Berger and hooks showed great example of major issues that our culture needs to correct. However without acknowledgement of the male and oppositional gaze, most viewers are unable to identify and see that it is there, staring right in your face.
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
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