Is Male Gaze still prevalent in Hollywood?
It’s no secret: sex sells. Sexual imagery can be seen all throughout pop culture but that is not necessarily a negative thing. Take female rapper, Nicki Minaj who uses her sexuality to empower her as well as her audience. But far too often in history, a woman’s sexuality wasn’t seen as empowering but rather all they were good for. In old Hollywood movies, many of the actresses were subjected to male gaze, which meant that many of the roles women played had no actual depth/meaning but just portrayed their characters as sexual icons. Yet, Hollywood has seen a lot of change in the past few years, especially with the #MeToo movement. After all this time and new understanding of gender injustices, is Male gaze still prevalent in Hollywood?
How did it start?
Male gaze has occurred since women first started appearing in movies. It is defined as “the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.” However, male gazing officially got its definition back in the 1970s by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is a British feminist movie theorist and famously wrote “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” where she takes a Freudian psychological approach to movies. Her paper shows “... the way film reflects, reveals and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle” and “... the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form.” She points out the use of erotic images in film and how that affects the portrayal/role of women in movies. Mulvey also discusses sexual and imbalance as well as scopophilia, which is a Freudian term that is defined as the sexual pleasure from looking at erotic images. The combination of the two allows for women role in film to just be stripped down (quite literally) to just sexual objects.
Image Courtesy: Tumblr
What are some examples?
Male gaze in movies has been around for almost as long as talkies were created, which can be seen in the 1946 film The Postman Always Rings Twice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGFer3-Aguw#action=share). One popular movie around this time period that clearly shows male gaze is 1972 The Godfather. In this movie, the females roles are inessential and only exist for sexual reasons. Another classic example of this is old James Bond movies “Bond girls”, whose sole purpose is to be sexy. Many teen movies also have underlying male gaze as the lead actresses are shown through either camera angles or through the plot as appealing to the male audience. An example of that would be the scene in 2004 Mean Girls with the Christmas talent show and the male audiences faces or the concept of a woman needing a complete makeover like in the plot of 1999 She’s All That.
Is Male gaze still prevalent today?
While movies now a day are typically better about avoiding male gaze, it is still a prevalent issues. Women in many films roles aren’t just to stand there and look pretty anymore. Awareness of this problem can and will lead to the expungement of it from movies and many actresses have raised their concerns about the prevalence of male gaze. Also, having female directors and/or having more women in higher positions in the film industry will also help ensure equal treatment. Yet, the way a woman looks definitely still affects her roles. So is Male gaze completely eradicated? No, but we are certainly on the right path to making it so.
Strike Out,
Writer and Editor: Savannah Tindall
Tallahassee