Oppositional Gaze

 

The male gaze occurs when the viewers are looking through the lenses of the male perspectives. You can see that a lot of movies, television shows and magazine prints/ ads depicts women visually appealing and sexy because that is what the male audience wants to see. According to Laura Mulvey, in her article, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, “in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (837). It is said that women play a passive role in cinema and that it is needed for a woman to appear on screen because without her, the man loses his power as the controller.

In John Berger article, Ways of Seeing, explains that “women have to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (46). So women back then were already taught to identify themselves as the pleaser of men and to give off the persona that she belong to him. “Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own” (Berger, 55). And also that male were able to look and women were supposed to be looked at.

In earlier European paintings, one can see that women were painted nude to demonstrate a sign of her submission to the viewers feelings or demands. Berger also asserts that "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves," (47). In his article, he also mentioned how the artists made the woman in their paintings to be vain by looking at herself in the mirror, indicating that this is what she wanted to be perceive as and not what the artist want when in reality, that is not the case.

However, in today’s society we have many female celebrities and artists that convey the act of being that sexy image but also showing the viewers that she is also this strong, confident, and intelligent person. That she should not be underestimated just because she’s a woman. This is something we do not see back in the European painting era. Take actress Angelina Jolie for example. She portrays herself as a bada** in several movies she was in, which goes against how females were perceived movies and in real life in earlie days.

So speaking from a female point of view, I do think it’s great that females can now be depicted as a strong, independent, woman as opposed to how they were depicted back then. And also to understand how the male and female relate to one another in the sense of the male gaze. Although females to this day are still seen as an object when portrayed in many of the media publishing but that’s because women will never be seen as having power over men. Maybe one day that perception can be erased.

Photos provided by Google.



Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. N.p.: n.p., 1999. Print.

"Ways of Seeing (Penguin Modern Classics) [Paperback]." Ways of Seeing (Penguin Modern Classics): John Berger: 9780141035796: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/Ways-Seeing-Penguin-Modern- Classics/dp/014103579X>.