Mulvey’s Male Gaze- Audience Theory

What is the gaze? • Gaze is the notion of how the audience perceive characters

which are presented to us.• Laura Mulvey suggests that the male gaze is where the

camera adapts the males point of view- for the benefit of the assumed male audience

• Feminists view the concept of male gaze in three different ways:

• How men look at women• How women look at themselves• How women look at other women

Features of The Male Gaze

• The camera tends to linger on female bodies which draws attention to the fact that women are represented as ‘sexual objects’ .

• These particular camera movements are used in order to gratify male audiences.

• Mulvey argues that mainly the protagonists are male which in addition allows the male audiences to relate to the character.

• The fact that the central active characters are always mostly male presents women as passive and sexual objects.

• Female audiences are forced to identify with the male gaze

Criticisms of Mulvey’s Theory

• In Scream4, the central heroic character is a female which challenges Mulvey’s theory that all central heroic characters are male.

Gale Weathers is the central heroic character in scream 4. The fact that she is a women challenges ideas expressed by Mulvey.

•Since Mulvey wrote this theory, stereotypical representations of women• have changed. An example of this can be from Kill Bill.