Monday, 12 December 2016

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema", coined the term 'male gaze' which became a well known and discussed theory.

In film, the male gaze is when the audience put in the perspective of a straight man, for example, a scene may focus on a woman's body and its curves, showing the scene from a males point of view. It is only the male gaze if the curves are emphasised with specific conventions like slow motion, cut aways or deliberate camera movements.
The male gaze theory denies women of their own identity, showing them as subordinate to men and as objects of admiration of physical appearance. The male gaze is very prominent in James Bond films 

The female characters in film is key; she often has little importance herself, she is there more to make the male feel more important and needed. 

Mulvey states that the female character in a narrative has two functions:
-As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative t view
-As an erotic object for the audience within the cinema (or wherever viewing) to view.

Female objectification is related to the male gaze, that when the persons gazed at are objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed by those viewing. Characters that are objectified are often devalued and their humanity and personal identity is removed.

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