The document discusses the concept of the "male gaze" introduced by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey. She argued that most Hollywood movies are filmed from the perspective of the heterosexual male gaze, which objectifies and sexualizes women for male visual pleasure. Women are portrayed as passive objects to be looked at, while men are active subjects. While some argue that both men and women can be depicted sexually, the male gaze creates an imbalance of power that perpetuates the real-life objectification of women.

1. A brief explanation of the concept of ‘Male
Gaze’ through Hollywood Movies!
Ms. Soumya Thomas

2.  ‘Gaze’ is a term that describes how viewers
engage with any visual medium.
 Originated in the 1970s, as an offshoot of
film theory and criticism, the ‘gaze’ refers to
how we look at visual representations.

3.  ’Male Gaze’ cites the sexual politics of the
gaze and points to the sexualized way of
looking that empowers men and objectifies
women.
 Woman is visually sited as an “object” of
heterosexual male desire.
 Women’s feelings, thoughts and own sexual
drives are less important than them being
‘framed’ by male desire.

4.  Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film
theorist.
 She is the one who introduced the concept of
the male gaze.
 She first mentioned the concept in the
famous essay (1975), ’Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema’.

5.  Mulvey argued that male gaze brought into
the social sphere through the deep-seated
drive known as ‘scopophilia’.
 Scopophilia is the sexual pleasure involved in
looking.
 Mulvey’s concept of Male Gaze is more
accurately described as a heterosexual,
masculine gaze.

6.  Mulvey argued that almost all of the most
popular Hollywood movies are filmed in ways
that satisfy masculine scopophilia.
 Mulvey proposes that women are
characterized by their “to-be-looked-at-
ness” in cinema.
 Woman turns into a ‘spectacle’, and man is
‘the bearer of the look’.

7.  Male Gaze though takes many forms, can be
easily identified from situations where female
characters are controlled by, and mostly exist
in terms of what they represent to, the hero.
 This is highly visible in the various ways the
camera repeatedly focuses to look at
women’s bodies.

8.  Mulvey’s essay provokes
strong reactions, even after
40 odd years.
 One repeating response is
that both women and men
are objectified in cinema.
 Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford)
is depicted equally sexy as
Gilda Mundson (Rita
Hayworth) in the
movie Gilda (1946)

9.  Films do represent women’s desire, but do so
in ‘non gaze’ related ways.
 Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) expresses
the heroine’s passionate nature through the
film’s famous score.
 The argument that women’s desire is best
expressed through sensation rather than a
gaze may evoke the cliché that male desire is
“visual” whereas women’s is “sensory”.

10.  Though men are depicted as objects of desire
in movies, there is no direct female
equivalent of the male gaze.
 The male gaze creates a power imbalance. It
supports a patriarchal status quo,
perpetuating women’s real-life sexual
objectification.
 So in conclusion, the female gaze never can
be ‘like’ the male gaze.

11.  https://theconversation.com/explainer-
what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-
about-a-female-gaze-52486
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze