An
analysis and application of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ in the
film industry
By
Chrissy Micklewright
Film narrative and
technical conventions having roots in psychology is unavoidable. It is
inevitable that a film’s characters or storyline will have a deep-rooted
meaning in the director or writer’s life, or maybe even have an unintentional
connection to one of Freud’s theories, since everyone behind the creation of
films are all human and all have a working mind. Everything in all media is
done for a reason, and the reason more often than not has some kind of
psychological meaning.
In this essay, the
theory that will be analysed and applied is the feminist theory of the ‘Male
Gaze’ by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey states in her essay, Visual and Other
Pleasures(1):
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure
in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The
determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is
styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are
simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong
visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote
to-be-looked-at-ness.”
Simplified, Mulvey
believes that women in all media forms are crafted from the point of view of a
male, to appeal to males and to show to impressionable women how they should
look. The most common form of media that this theory can be applied to is music
videos. Young female pop artists have a habit of having aggressively sexualised
music videos that pose no necessity or link to the narrative of their songs. On
top of that, these music videos often always have male directors and men in the
higher-up positions of their record companies telling them what to do. However,
for the sake of this essay, only film examples will be analysed.
In John Hughes’
1985 teen comedy-drama The Breakfast Club(2), there is a scene in
which Mollie Ringwald’s character’s crotch is exposed under the table. This is
because the camera is positioned to be in the position of Bender’s character as
he is under the table looking under her skirt. An important thing to note is
that in this scene, Claire (Ringwald) didn’t consent to him looking at her in
such a way. It is also something that the film could have progressed in
narrative without having the shot. For example, why was it not a long shot of
the table, with Claire’s facial expression being present, rather than what
Bender saw? Because the cinematographer felt that we needed to see the male
point of view, because it is assumed that that is what audiences want to
see.
Films that have
female target audiences also have a lot of shots and scenes which cater to the
male gaze. For example, Robert Luketic’s 2001 rom-com Legally Blonde(3).
The premise of the film is to be empowering and to remind women that they can
achieve something as amazing as graduate from the prestigious Harvard law
school and that they don’t need men by their side. Though the film is largely
comedic and satirical, it does still intend to carry that message. However,
Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods consistently has a man on her mind:
the reason why she goes to Harvard is because of her boyfriend leaving her at
the start because she is ‘too blonde’ and not serious enough. She also ends up
falling in love with a man whilst studying, so whilst the film aims (or claims)
to be empowering and quite feminist, the protagonist’s life seems to be
incredibly male dominated. In the scene where Elle explains through her video
essay to Harvard’s admissions team why they should accept her, a more literal
example of the male gaze is displayed. Her ‘video essay’ shows her, bikini-clad
in a pool talking about why she should be accepted because she knows about a TV
soap and another shot of her walking in a street and literally having a man
look at her and cat call. This is a more literal example, with the male gaze
being the admissions department overlooking her video and the man who catcalls
her. An example of technical conventions being used to portray the male gaze in
this film would be the scene in which Elle attends a party in which she was
told was a costume party, only to show up dressed as a Playboy bunny despite it
not actually being a costume party. The part where the camera follows her
walking into the party, following particularly her legs. This is an example of
fragmentation. This is when the female body is ‘cut up’, or so to say, through
editing to show only a specific part. In this instance, the body part on show
is her legs. This practice objectifies women and reduces their entire human
body and self to just a specific, overly sexualised part. It’s almost as though
men only want to see women for their sexually appealing body parts, rather than
their face, voice or mind, thus objectifying the women fragmented. Mulvey
stated in Visual Pleasure (1):
“Woman's desire is subjugated to her image (...) as
bearer, not maker, of meaning.”
In this quote,
Mulvey talks about how a woman’s worth is reduced from who she is, in her mind,
to what she simply looks like and whether or not she is desirable by a man.
Though, not all
films follow the typical practice of the Male Gaze theory, and it is not only
something that is seen in mainstream cinema. It is represented quite
differently in arthouse cinema and more alternative films. Some make a comment
on the male gaze from a more ‘meta’ perspective. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s
1969 film ‘Rape’ (4) is a film based on the concept of a male gaze, from
even before the theory was devised.
Laura Mulvey’s
Male Gaze theory can be applied to Yoko Ono’s 1969 art independent film ‘Rape’.
During Ono’s film, funded by her husband John, a film crew was hired to follow
a young illegal female migrant named Eva Majlata. The film crew followed her
and recorded her day’s activities. It is important to note that she did not
consent to being filmed and did not give any form of permission. The person who
gave permission for her to be filmed was her sister. It is hard to pick
apart this film shot by shot, scene by scene, as it is essentially an hour of
following a young girl, the cameras' position sometimes varying from behind her
to in front of her.
This film is
significant because it is clearly from a male gaze literally, as it is meant to
be filmed from the point of view of Eva’s stalker. Simply, the film is
following the young girl without her permission, with a handheld camera
documenting the stalking. This film is a great example of the male gaze being
able to make an audience uncomfortable. It is an example of the male gaze being
presented in a non-aggressively sexualised way, but still from a man’s point of
view. Deeply disturbing – emotionally and aesthetically. A camera picks up a
woman walking on the street and follows her. And follows her. And follows her.
Despite her pleas. Because she pleads with the off-screen crew and because she
looks directly into the camera, the film becomes an unusual POV/non-POV-hybrid,
implicating the audience in this woman's persecution. But, because she speaks
German, the film prevents its presumably English-speaking audience from
comprehending her objections. Her lack of understandable communication to an
English-speaking audience further objectifies her and reinforces that she is
not someone to be listened to, but simply someone to be looked at. Her worth to
an audience becomes diminished because they don’t know what she is saying,
which links back to Mulvey’s quote previously.
At around 38
minutes in, a scene begins with a close-up POV shot of the cameraman knocking
on a red door. His action of knocking the door repeatedly could be significant
as it suggests women are reluctant to let men in, and only do so when they feel
obliged to after after being pushed into it, linking into the film's title.
Funnily enough, in this scene, it isn't even her that lets him in. It appears
as though he lets himself in, again, linking back to the title. Once the woman
becomes present in the scene, a sense of panic and discomfort is created by the
POV camera becoming more fidgety and moving quicker as it tracks her. The shot
distance varies from extreme close-ups of her face, to mid-shots of her body,
emphasising the cameraman's invasion of her personal space. The camera is also
out of focus at many points when it is an extreme close-up of her face. This
links into Mulvey's theory of fragmentation. When the camera is close enough to
her face to give her an identity and a voice, it becomes out of focus. Perhaps
this could be a comment about misogynists refusing to acknowledge their
behaviour.
The use of camera
in this film is handheld and is visibly poor quality. The latter is mainly due
to the technology of cameras available for independent filmmakers at the time
of it being made was quite poor. However, it could be stated that the use of
handheld camera is to add a sense of realism, because the film is quite
literally real, and a sense of discomfort for the audience. A shaky camera is a
cinematic technique that can be used to make the audience feel dizzy,
uncomfortable or sick, which is the message John and Yoko are trying to
reinforce about the male gaze. Shaky cameras can also be used to emphasise the
nervousness or discomfort of the subject being captured by the camera, which is
what has been done. Mulvey states that “the
position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of
their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the
performer.” (1), and that is what is happening throughout this whole
film. The audience is
both immersed in the perspective of both the man behind the camera and his
victim.
Chris Cunningham’s
1999 music short film for Aphex Twin’s track ‘Windowlicker’ (5/6) is a
parody of notoriously misogynistic hip-hop music videos. Conventions of the
male gaze are easy to see in this video, with consistent shots of sexualised
body parts, again, following the fragmentation theory. The mise-en-scene of the
wardrobe choices having the women be scantily-clad as opposed to their male
counterparts is a great example of how (although this is a parody – many hip
hop music videos follow this therefore it is still a valid point to make) when
an artist is male and has the ability to decide how women are represented in
their art, the women will be as objectified as possible. Also, referring to
Mulvey’s quote about women being ‘subjugated to her image’, all of the
women bar the first two in this music video have the face of Richard James
(Aphex Twin). Though in this instance it is part of the parody and part of
Aphex Twin’s image, it still takes away the women’s personality and what makes
them significant from each other. As they don’t have varying faces, they are
all pretty much exactly the same and no longer individual people. Objects.
This music video
comes from artists from outside the mainstream music video movement. It is more
of an external comment, whilst most of the problematically sexualising music
videos come from artists who are either being told to sell themselves sexually
or exploit themselves knowing they have young, impressionable audiences,
further increasing the impact of the male gaze on young women.
Sexualisation of
women in the media industry isn't exclusive to live action films, though. In
animated media, such as films and games, it is still unfortunately incredibly
present. A good example to look at is the 1988 animation/live action hybrid
film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (7). The character of the female protagonist
Jessica Rabbit is a curvaceous, flirtatious bombshell of a character. Animator
Richard Williams described her character to be the "ultimate male
fantasy" (8). Jessica Rabbit's character is crafted by an almost all-male
animation production team (10), which alone just goes to show that when men in
the film industry can literally create a female character, they will make her
as unnecessarily sexualised as humanly possible.
A particular scene
in which the sexualisation of Jessica Rabbit's character is the famous 'Why
don't you do it right' scene. The scene begins with a long shot of her leg and
breast poking out of a stage curtain - fragmenting her as her body parts rather
than as a whole human (1). The scene then instantly cuts to Bob Hoskins'
character gawking at her. This is a very literal example of the male gaze. This
scene displays Jessica as a 'passive erotic object for the gaze of male
spectators (1). Also, the comparison of the fact that we can see Eddie
Valiant's (Bob Hoskins) facial expression as opposed to Jessica's body parts
just goes to show that women are perceived as objects, simple body parts,
whereas a man is perceived as emotions, expressions, a presence and a voice -
the things that a face alone allows you to have. More value than a woman's
individual body parts, it seems.
The use of camera
and lighting is significant to the male gaze theory in this scene. The camera
is following Jessica (as if she's a real human character and not a drawing
added in post-production), allowing the film's audience to take the role of one
of the men from the scene's audience staring at her. Almost like a sense of
scopophilia, just not as sexually explicit. The usage of lighting in this scene
is particularly important because the spotlight is on her. Everywhere else in
the scene is dim - you can't see any of the men unless she is the main focus in
the scene (for example, when a man holds his hand out to help her, or when she
sits on Eddie's lap, or when puts her foot in a mans' face). We're only allowed
to look at her, because she's the focus.
In conclusion,
Laura Mulvey’s theory is incredibly solid and can genuinely be applied to any
media with a female present in the product. Even when a film is shot and
directed by a woman, each individual shot can be explained to have the
reasoning behind it rooted in something reinforced by a man. Even when a film
is intended to be empowering for women (Legally Blonde (3)), they
still manage to possess some conventions of this theory, especially when most
of the senior producers and directors etc are male. Much like Freud’s
personality theory (9), it is present in almost all works of media.
1. Mulvey,
L., 1989. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and
Criticism, 1 Introduction, A political Use of Psychoanalysis. 1st ed. New
York: Macmillan
2. The
Breakfast Club. (1985). [film] Universal.
3. Legally
Blonde. (2001). [film] Directed by R. Luketic. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
4. Rape.
(1969). [film] Directed by Y. Ono and J. Lennon. Österreichischer Rundfunk
(ORF).
5. James,
R. (1999). Window Licker. [12", CD, VHS] Warp Records.
Available at: https://open.spotify.com/track/3aub1GpyKYRd1cVN54bnw6?autoplay=true&v=T
[Accessed 24 Jan. 2019].
6. Windowlicker.
(1999). [film] Directed by C. Cunningham. Cindy Burney.
7. Who
Framed Roger Rabbit?. (1988). [film] Directed by R. Zemeckis. Hollywood:
Walt Disney Animation Studios.
8. WEINRAUB,
B. (1988). An Animator Breaks Old Rules And New Ground in 'Roger Rabbit'. NY
Times. [online] Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/01/movies/an-animator-breaks-old-rules-and-new-ground-in-roger-rabbit.html.
9. Freud, S.
(1923). The ego and the id. 1st ed.
