The Male Gaze

Mari Katayam, ‘bystander #014’, 2016 (image source)

The 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, is a look at the sexual politics that drive the cinematic experience. She argues that traditional Hollywood films were a response to male scopophilia, or the sexual pleasure involved in looking, and that female characters were nothing more than objects used to satisfy male desires. She backs her argument that women are objectified passive players while men are the active heroes by citing Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud. Mulvey uses Lacan’s mirror theory to explain how cinema creates an illusion so deep that a person gets lost in the space and darkness of the theater while also projecting themselves onto the actors. There is both a loss of ego and a narcissistic gain of ego involved. Freudian psychoanalysis comes into play when the active male gaze, in the form of the libido, is set upon the passive female object which brings about the castration complex. The castration complex is a theory that refers to the collective feelings and fantasies associated with the child deprived of the phallus. Boys fear a loss of the penis while girls fear it has already been lost. Either way, it is a result of punishment for oedipal feelings.(1)

Mulvey believes that the female form was intentionally coded for erotic impact by filmmakers. The sole purpose of a female actress is to provide visual pleasure for the male. Females have no intrinsic value outside of pleasure objects. She acts as both an erotic object in the story while simultaneously filling that role for the spectator. The female is so objectified that filmmakers were utilizing the mirror theory in dictating camera angles and editing in order to display her as a sexual object. By shooting the woman over a man’s shoulder or fixating on the woman's body the angles are inferring that the man is in control. The male protagonist would, of course, be perceived in the most commanding and heroic light, towering above the woman while he observes her. All of this is set up so that the spectator can move through the actor and gain possession of the female.(1)

Mulvey proceeds to explain how the castration complex is what drives the narrative because the woman represents sexual difference and a threat to manhood. In order to alleviate this complex the male must either demystify or punish the woman. There is a sadistic side to traditional Hollywood film that rears its head in the form of film noir. Alfred Hitcock was a master at the film Noir where the female character would commit some illegal act and wind up being punished for it by a male character. He uses the same format in many of his movies from Rear Window to Psycho. (1)

I would like to think that in the years since Mulvey wrote this essay that we have moved past
these old and twisted Freudian theories but unfortunately, we still have a long way to go. I need only turn on Netflix to prove this. We have made some progress, but statistically females are not equally represented in cinema. In 2019 women accounted for 10.7% of directors and 19.4% of writers.(2) Even as we move forward we are faced with the reality that most strong female characters are also required to be sexy. I am hopeful though because, according to these statistics, diversity drives sales. This means that we are climbing away from the white male gaze and venturing into new waters where white males are no longer the focal point. There are artists out there bringing attention to this issue like Mari Katayama in the photo above. Hers is an example of an artist attempting to reclaim the female form. Mari Katayama is celebrating her imperfections of amputation in her works. She is not alone in her quest to reclaim the feminine form. She is one of many artists following in the footsteps of Cindy Sherman, Sherry Levine, and Barbara Kruger to name a few. Mulvey was able to cast light onto a problem that permeates the art world in every way imaginable. The male gaze, especially that of the white Euro/US gaze has been the standard to which artists have catered for far too long. Hopefully, there will be more artists like Mari Katayama who have strong female voices that will bring about change.


Sources

1. Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Screen, vol 16, no 3 (1975), 6-18.
2. Statistic Resources, in Women and Hollywood, accessed September 30, 2021, https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/