Male Gaze

'..film has been called an instrument of the make gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a males point of view..' -1998 Jonathan Schroeder
Laura Mulvey is a British Feminist Theorist, she wrote a very influential essay, 'Visual Plessure and Narrative Cinema' -1975

- Women are represented as sexual spectacle and objects of pleasure for the characters and audience

- Men have this gaze to avoid being ‘cast rated’

- Men fetishise women imbuing them with an overvalued and unrealistic status – ‘fetishistic scopophilia’

- The gaze is constructed through the camera man and production team establishing and framing a shot; by the ‘look’ within the film of male characters objectifying female ones; the spectators gaze is thereby constructed through these mechanisms.

Anne Doane-1982

‘..male bodies are only on display in certain conditions, they are always in active poses as if they can walk away from the women gaze..’

Van Zoonen-1994

‘..men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at..’