The Male Gaze - Man Made by Mad Men

     The patriarchal culture surrounding us produces some seriously misogynistic concepts that if unchecked yields warped ideals.  In a more eloquent explanation and drawing from the Freudian school of psychotherapy, Laura Mulvey approaches film analyzation from a viewpoint that opens up the conversation that media is obsessed with ‘watching’ and its target audience of white male heterosexuals which she referred to as ‘The Male Gaze’.  Introduced in 1975, the idea refers to the manner in which visual and auditory arts are designed around a masculine viewer.  Freud’s ideas on scopophilia, which translates to the ‘love of watching’, where one derives pleasure from watching and objectifying in a sexual nature plays heavily in Mulvey’s concept. Known also as voyeurism, she highlights Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s obsession with reducing women to nothing more than eye candy to be looked at for the pleasure of men.  Going further, in her essay entitled, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", she points out that specifically film “…satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect” (1 -Mulvey 836). By this I believe she means that escaping into a movie in a short term way allows the loss of ego while at the same time fortifying it. 

Once this idea of the male gaze permeating throughout all facets of media is introduced, it is as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon states, shows up almost everywhere.  I am witness to the concept of the Male Gaze permeating every aspect of media once I began looking for evidence of it. 

The Male Gaze varies culture to culture

Examples are as close as reality TV shows like the bachelor and bachelorette.  From comic books themes to automobile commercials, I feel we as a society are witness to this type of objectification so much and so often that we are sometimes blind in recognizing it.

     hook's idea of the oppositional gaze, explained in her article concludes that African- American women are forced into a space wherein the oppositional gaze can exist.  She suggests the idea of negative reprimands when it comes to gazing. The author explains the oppositional gaze appears early in childhood, when an adolescent is being reprimanded by their mom or dad.  Told to look at the parent, resulting in fear coupled with being captivated in the same moment. Hooks goes on to explain “…the child’s thoughts change to: “Not only will I stare.  I want my look to change reality” (2 -hooks 116) Furthermore, conditioning occurred between slaves and their owners not being able to even make eye contact, and was considered contemptuous in nature. Through "looking at films with an oppositional gaze," I believe hooks means to say that people who are silenced or who have no representation on the screen can cultivate a space where critical conclusions, along with assessing value or lack thereof, can be made where the goal would be to inclusiveness and empathetic to all voices.  Being aware is the first step in avoiding damaging media.

     The hypocrisy of how women are treated and represented not only hold back women but men as well.  Being trapped in roles set up by previous generations perpetuate patriarchal mindsets resulting in less actualization where the goal should be to evolve mentally towards understanding the problems faced by under-represented persons.  In his book Ways of Seeing, writer John Berger explains the different ways men and women are viewed in society, and he explains “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (3 - Berger 46). One only has to gaze upon the recent super bowl ads

SuperBowl ads highlighting the Male Gaze

to see the tactic in action.

     Summed up best by hooks, “To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries.”(4 - hooks 130)  We can overcome when we are aware what it is that causes the damage in the first place and the first step is overcoming the male gaze.

1  Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 1999

2  hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze." Black Looks: Race and Representation.1992.

3  Berger, John. Ways Of Seeing, Based On The BBC Television Series With John Berger. London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1972.

4  hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, (New York: Routledge, 1994): 130.