LAURA MULVEY “VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE

CINEMA” - 1975

The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist, she is best known for her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

She suggested that the way in which females are viewed in cinema is “unequal”. The camera necessarily presents woman as “sexualised” for the pleasure of men

Muvley’s three types of “looking”

The look of the camera as it

records the filmic event

(Camera shot and angles)

The look of the audience as it watches the final film

product (the way they perceive the

look of the woman)

The look of the character at each other in the visual

image of the screen illusion

(the way in which the male and

female in screen look at each other)