Laura Mulvey(1975)

The Male Gaze Theory

The Male Gaze describes how the audience views women, presented in the media, through the perspective of a heterosexual male.Feminist Laura Mulvey looks at this in 3 ways:O How men view women.O How women view themselves.O How women view other women.

What Is The Male Gaze?

Mulvey believes that the media shows women as sexual objects and trophies rather than actual people. This is done through the control of the camera, for example- emphasising the curves of the female body through the use of close up shots as well as lingering on parts of their body, encouraging the audience to view women through a sexual desire.

How The Female Is Viewed.

Patriarchy

She also argues that the way women are displayed is the way men think they should be perceived. 91% of men are directors of films, allowing them to control how a woman is shown in a media text. It ultimately comes down the power of men who produce media texts, sexualising women and passing the ideology onto viewers of the content in order to please the male viewers. Mulvey believes that because of this ideology, sexualising women in media pleases women as well men because they know they are satisfying men in the same way that it is shown in media.

Examples

‘Blurred Lines’ is a perfect example of how women are sexualised and treated like objects by men. There is an explicit version of the video, showing women naked.

The sexualisation of women is also portrayed in magazines and photo-shoots, in which the

majority of young teenage girls look at and aspire to because of the ideology given.

Flaws In The TheoryO Some women may want to be seen in a

sexual way.O Artists, such as Beyoncé, use their

image to be seen as powerful, stimulating their career.

O Doesn’t take into account the perspective of homosexuals.

O Women are not always sexualised in all media texts (for example in the film ‘Before I Go To Sleep’.)