In simple terms the concept of the male gaze states that representations of women in film (but the concept can be applied to representations across a whole range of media) become eroticized objects or images for male consumption and pleasure. This theory was first formulated by feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey in an essay entitled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema published in 1975. Mulvey theorizes a series of male looks or gazes operating within Classical Hollywood cinema (Hollywood roughly between 1930 to 1960): the spectator in the theater looks, the camera/projector looks (records/projects) and the male characters within the film narrative look. This series of interrelated looks or gazes has as its object the female character which fulfills a similar role for each of the looks. For Mulvey the series of gazes is always marked as male because classical Hollywood cinema operates within and reproduces a patriarchal order. This male gaze creates for male pleasure representations of women that are highly eroticized and therefore desirable. Mulvey's notion of the male gaze can be used in the analysis of all sorts of representations of women.
What is important for Mulvey is the appeal that the classical Hollywood film makes to the male viewer. Within the conventions or codes of the cinema, the image of the woman exists to be looked at and to be desired by the male spectator who possesses the gaze (along with its controlling power). While male viewers desire the female characters, another drive that appeals to male viewers, that of identification, compels the male spectator to identify with the male characters on the screen. The ideology of heterosexual patriarchy that works within classical Hollywood film prohibits male characters to be constituted as erotic objects. The male spectator (and gaze) cannot look at the male character in the same way as the female characters. As Mulvey states; "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionistic like... A male movie star's glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, ideal ego." Thus the male spectators do not sexually desire the male screen character but desires to be like the male character. The male character on the screen represents a more perfect and complete image of masculinity which the male spectator can identify with but not sexually desire.
You may be thinking to yourself that there are also female viewers in movie audiences and these spectators are not mentioned above. And that is precisely Mulvey's point; the male gaze privileges male viewers over female viewers and serves the interests of patriarchal ideology. For female spectators the male gaze supports patriarchal ideology; if women identify with female representations they are identifying with representations that reduce women to sexual objects. By internalizing these representations women, so the argument goes, are participating in their own oppression. They define themselves as objects to be looked at by men. This point explains the wide range of ads (and representations in general) where women are concerned even anxious about their appearance.
Mulvey asserts that because cinematic representations of women are produced by a male dominated system there is no viewing position for women that is comparable to the male gaze. In other words there is no female gaze working for women within patriarchal ideology and practices.
What is important for Mulvey is the appeal that the classical Hollywood film makes to the male viewer. Within the conventions or codes of the cinema, the image of the woman exists to be looked at and to be desired by the male spectator who possesses the gaze (along with its controlling power). While male viewers desire the female characters, another drive that appeals to male viewers, that of identification, compels the male spectator to identify with the male characters on the screen. The ideology of heterosexual patriarchy that works within classical Hollywood film prohibits male characters to be constituted as erotic objects. The male spectator (and gaze) cannot look at the male character in the same way as the female characters. As Mulvey states; "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionistic like... A male movie star's glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, ideal ego." Thus the male spectators do not sexually desire the male screen character but desires to be like the male character. The male character on the screen represents a more perfect and complete image of masculinity which the male spectator can identify with but not sexually desire.
You may be thinking to yourself that there are also female viewers in movie audiences and these spectators are not mentioned above. And that is precisely Mulvey's point; the male gaze privileges male viewers over female viewers and serves the interests of patriarchal ideology. For female spectators the male gaze supports patriarchal ideology; if women identify with female representations they are identifying with representations that reduce women to sexual objects. By internalizing these representations women, so the argument goes, are participating in their own oppression. They define themselves as objects to be looked at by men. This point explains the wide range of ads (and representations in general) where women are concerned even anxious about their appearance.
Mulvey asserts that because cinematic representations of women are produced by a male dominated system there is no viewing position for women that is comparable to the male gaze. In other words there is no female gaze working for women within patriarchal ideology and practices.
