Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory
Laura Mulvey had a great influence since the mid 1970's when she produced her theory which was also heavily influenced by the works of Freud. Her theory suggests that women are used in filmography as a form of attraction to males, the male gaze. She uses the words 'voyeuristically' and 'fetishistically' which mean to derive sexual gratification from the women on screen and to obsess over the body or a part of the body which then becomes a fetish. Laura Mulvey's theory suggests that the audience is forced to view women from the eyes of the heterosexual male where the films constantly focus on the womens curves and body, this can overall have two effects: objectification and narcissistic identification which means to regard the women as objects of pleasure but also with a lack of empathy for the women.
It has been said that filmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock has objectified these female subjects with an aim to purely arouse the audience. A common piece of his work is Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window' as it is explicitly about gender looking and voyeurism. The portagonist character Jeffries looks through his window with binoculars and this is the only view the audience are able to see leading them to be apart of the voyeurism as well, he does bring POV angles so that we are able to relate to the characters. The voyeurism in this film is noticabley on the protagonist character Jeffries as his curiosity leads him to notice other characters in the building opposite him where he finds himself gazing at women dancing in her underwear and also the newlyweds, the women dancing are subject to the objectification of the male gaze and visual pleasure because Jeffries is shown to be looking down on the women. Women are used nowadays still as a male gaze and as an object to entice men into watching a film, there are specific rated films just for men to do this however it can also be found in 12A rated films where women become a male gaze figure and are shown to be parading around to get attention from the men in a sexy and enticing way. These films however aren't just aimed at men but also women because of the storyline and the ability to relate to the characters in the film. In my opinion the films are done more tastefully and the objectification of women and the male gaze is hidden much better so that women can also enjoy the film without being objectified.
I can apply Laure Mulvey's 'male gaze' theory to my music video and annalyse how I contradicted and challenged her theory and didn't show women to be an object of pleasure to the male eye. ​If you look back at my preliminary task music video 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars you will see that we have used women in the background, they aren't the main focus. This challenged the male gaze theory because you can't see any of the women's features used in the video, there may be one section of the video at 1:25 where Joanna comes into the shot and is wearing a low cut top as this can be seen to follow the theory of Laura Mulvey. The rest of the video the girls are covered up and shown to be weaker than the male protagonist in the video as they are in the background and not used as a main focus to the video.