“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly (Mulvey, 1989a: 19).” This statement largely sums up Mulvey’s position on her article “Visual and Other Pleasures”
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist who coined the term “the male gaze”. She has inspired studies of spectatorship focus on how subjective positions are constructed by media texts. The male gaze theory states that women are typically the objects of gaze in film. This can be seen through the control of the camera (the gaze), its positioning, and angle. According to Mulvey, cinema or films practicing the male gaze further objectify women.
However, the male gaze theory is more evident in traditional cinema. Males were presented active, controlling subjects while women were passive and they role was being desired by men. It was like the cinema’s target audience were males in general. In today’s cinema, though, more films are targeted to women audiences. But films still use women’s body image in such films. And the effect of this? – brainwash.
Today, because of the media, people, not just women, concern themselves so much of their looks. It’s as if the media is saying that “there’s no place for ugly people in the world.” Consequently, making the rest of humankind narcissistic.
The Reel Deal 