Theorist Laura Mulvey came up with the theory ‘The Male Gaze’. As a feminist theorist, she aimed to criticise commercial film and is about how women In cinema are portrayed. They are objectified by the camera lens in order to satisfy the man. let’s dig into this a little to understand better what this means.
More than often men are the ones who are in control of the production and camera lens and therefore ensure the camera appeases to their own interests.
Let’s look into Hollywood a little. It appears that most movies in Hollywood are directed by men. To name a few we have Kevin Feige who directed the Avengers, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tim Bevan and Eric Feller. Many of these movies produced by these men include a male protagonist who saves the girl. Not only are there mainly male producers but they then hire male scriptwriters and directors whose job is to stage a scene and create the look and feel of the movie. They seem to therefore have full control of the characters on set and often this means that women in movies are from a male’s imagination.
Let’s look ate one movie directed by Martin Scorsese called The Wolf of Wall Street. This movie is so obviously directed by a male. Margot Robbie who plays seductive Naomi Lapaglia is sexualised throughout the whole movie. To explain briefly what the movie is about we can start with the main character Jordan Belfort, played by the one and only Leonardo DiCaprio playing a stockbroker. He quickly rises to have A LOT of money and ends up leaving his wife for Naomi. He becomes corrupt and we see his quick rise and fall. Margot Robbie’s character in this movie is simply to be the beautiful ‘other women’. The women he can’t have because he is married but that eventually seduces him into bed and then marriage. Her character is there to seduce and this does to sit right with me.
Another element that is a consequence of men directing and producing these Hollywood films is that women (like Margot Robbie) are not how everyday women look. The body, the hair and well everything is often how women look in movies but not in real life. Women therefore are not being realistically represented. This can lead to girls growing up with unrealistic body expectations and made to think that men will only like girls who look like those in movies. They are watching these women who have been treated and moulded to fit the man’s fantasy of what a women should look like. it is just not realistic and very unhealthy. It is also insulting. Women therefore are compared to the women that men are watching in the movies.If men have the power then they have the ability to control where the camera goes and the angles used. If we think abut movies that we have watched we can very easily think of the image that is so often used. Women’s bodies often have close up camera shots.
In her book Laura states that
‘The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of the story line’. These women are playing ‘us’ yet they look so different.
References:
Meida-studies.com
I really agree with the opinion you showed in the blog as the male gaze is presenting so much that the general public believes that women are supposed to look like that or women are supposed to look more exposed and sexy. What’s more, more and more young girls prefer to show their body to men through video or media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok in order to attract men’s attention and comments which is a really aberrant behaviour for me. As for me, whether women are great or perfect not depend on what men think, and we don’t need to prove our worth with male praise or attention. On the other hand, men have always been seemingly dominant in terms of gender, and the criteria for judging women in most male perspectives is based on the male gaze, which is undoubtedly unfair to women. But getting to the root of the problem of the male gaze is fraught with difficulties.
I love how you tied into how seeing these unrealistic standards on film and TV changes society for the worse. I fully agree, it is painfully obvious when watching films like The Wolf of Wall Street that it was a male-dominated environment behind the scenes. Because of this, women aren’t fairly represented in hyper-masculine films as such. It is disheartening to see how men portray women on TV as beggars, like a side piece to men. You wrote a great debrief on the male gaze!
I love your example of Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street! Indeed, it is common that women to always play like a “background” or sidekick for men. In some films, their presence is just to add a little romance to the storyline or to make male actors look more powerful. And they always wear sexy clothing, as a sexualized symbol in films, to attract more male audience. It is disappointing and sad to see how men portray women as unimportant objects to men because women are very important and they can be powerful as well.