For centuries in the history of
visual art and literature men are treated as the sole spectator. Women and the
world in general are often presented only from a heterosexual male point of
view. This form of spectatorship turns women into objects positioned there only
to satisfy the male ego. Laura Mulvey, is the first to coin this phrase. In her
essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema, she argues that the male gaze is based in scopohilia, which she
explains is -“erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object
(835).” The idea of women as objects is an important one when trying to
understand the history of women in all forms of media. In terms of movies
Mulvey states “narrative supports the man’s role as the active one of
forwarding the story making things happen, (838)” whereas women are seen “as
erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object
for the spectator within the auditorium.” The male characters are the ones
pushing along the story, making the action happen where as women are there to
be looked at, or at the very most represent something to the male characters. This
ties in with John Berger’s ideas in Ways
of Seeing where he talks about the role of women in Western European nude
paintings. He says, “Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of
their own.” Nude paintings almost exclusively depict women in a way that is
inherently objectifying because they do not show the women for who she is, they
show her as the man wants to see her, it is for his own benefit, not hers. There
are obvious exceptions to these two observations but in general they hold true,
despite both of them having written 40 years ago. We are still hard pressed to
see many mainstream movies that present women with much agency. We are making
progress but we still have a long way to go, especially in big blockbuster
movies like Jurassic World, or any of
the Avengers movies. An explicit
example of the male gaze can be found in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. The movie follows the story of a sensitive
bounty hunter/womanizer who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. The
female lead and love interest, played by Zoe Saldana is a tough, smart woman
yet every shot of her starts at her ass and then goes up. There are so many tracking
shots of her butt as she runs throughout the movie I was shocked more people
didn’t notice it. I’m not big into comic books or comic book movies but these
genres push away potential female audiences by portraying them as nothing more
than sexy stand-in’s who happen to fight crime. But even the fight scenes have
an erotic tone to them, especially if you look at Scarlett Johansson in any of the
Avengers movies. In this video though, an interviewer addresses the sexism that Johansson faces during press tours. (The image below is of one of the Avengers movie posters where the clear focus is on her body, and is targeted towards the male gaze)
But movies like Ghostbusters, and TV shows like Jessica Jones,
Veep, Broad City, Jane the Virgin etc., give me hope that we are moving in the
right direction.
The reason these patterns of
viewing are so ingrained in our society is because of the patriarchy. In Understanding the Patriarchy Bell Hooks
defines the patriarchy as “ a political-social system that insists that males
are inherently dominating, superior to everything, and everyone deemed weak,
especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the
weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism
and violence (18).” Patriarchy is founded on the ideals of imperialist white
supremacisism and capitalism. All of these ideas are interlocked, and you
cannot have one without the others. Patriarchy hurts both men and women. Women
are oppressed by being told their worth only comes from fulfilling their
assigned gendered roles of caretaking, homemaking, being subservient, and being
there to please the male eye. But men are also harmed by the patriarchy because
society puts so much pressure on them to hide their emotions for fear of being
weak or being a “pussy”. Bell Hooks states “To indoctrinate boys into the rules
of the patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and deny their feelings (31).” In
order to be a better, happier, more evolved, society the patriarchy needs to be
dismantled.
The Oppositional Gaze is a reaction
to the overwhelming whiteness in cinema and the drastic underrepresentation of
black people, women in particular. During the era of slavery for a black person
to stare at a white person was considered an act of aggression and rebellion
and was met with cruel punishment. When movies emerged as a mass form of
entertainment there were seldom any people of color. And the portrayals that
did exist were shaped by the way white people saw them, and were not
reflections of reality. The Oppositional Gaze is a form of critical
spectatorship in which black viewers are actively engaging with the content
they watch and actively choose how they make their own interpretation of the
characters and the aspects they do or don’t relate to. Bell Hooks says, “Not
only will I stare I want my gaze to change reality.” What she means is that her
very gaze, and the act of watching and being critically engaged is in itself an
act of rebellion. As a white woman I take for granted the amount of women who
look like me in the entertainment world. But even if they may have my color
skin, it does not necessarily mean I see myself in the characters they portray.
However, I’ll never really understand what it must feel like to only see people
who look like me as token characters, or as ugly stereotypes.
Of the pieces we had to read this
week the line that stuck out to me the most out anything was John Berger’s
line, “Men act, women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being
looked at.” I identify so much with this experience but I was never able to put
it into words. I see and experience it everyday, the feeling of being looked at
and assessed by random men. This is a uniquely female experience, and even if I
will check out a hot guy sometimes, I don’t think I look at them with the same
kind of lechery men do when they ogle women. Also I think Bell Hooks should be
required reading for all humans.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1973. Print.
Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria, 2004. Print.
Hooks, Bell. In Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992) 115-31
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Cristiscim: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.
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