Post 1: Male Gaze and Patriarchy

Edouard Manet, Olympia

The male gaze, a concept created by Laura Mulvey in the 70s, is known as the way media is viewed through a male’s perspective. As described by John Berger, the male gaze is the depiction of women in culture and media as well as literature, from a masculine perspective that depicts women as no more than sexual objects for the male’s gratification. According to Bell Hooks, “Patriarchy is 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” (Hooks, 1). As said by Hooks, Patriarchy is a word that does not seem to exist in any men’s vocabulary. Patriarchy is a term that is often ignored because of the “threat” it imposes to men’s masculinity. Learning about the meaning of the male gaze has forced me to really focus on the attention females obtain in movies, tv shows and literature. Every time I watch something, I know pay close attention to these small but rather large details. Its shown me that society has no respect for the image of a women and only use to satisfy the needs of a male when it comes to self-gratification or pleasure. 

For example, in the movie "Suicide Squad", Harley Quinn is a character who's look can be a little problematic in the feminist sense. Her whole persona and look are obvious enough for someone to know that the director of the film is a man based on the panning of the camera in the film. Her character sports a pair of tiny shorts and a shirt that reads "Daddy's Little Monster". Not to mention the fact that the movie is centered around her abusive boyfriend The Joker, which whom she seems to be madly in love with and refuses to leave his side. She is portrayed as nothing more than a sexual object who wont leave the side of her abusive boyfriend. 

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in "Suicide Squad"

Although the male gaze gives a negative interpretation of what the female is, the female gaze is an argument that rules out all the objectifications women face and shows us what it feels like to be the receiver of the male gaze. In cinema, the camera reveals what the protagonist is feeling rather than objectifying her and only panning in on the sexual view of the woman. It is a way of letting the man know that the woman knows she is being seen and that she knows she is only seen as no more than an object to the male gender. While the majority of movies only focus on the sexual nature of the woman, the female gaze offers a more personal connection to the woman and an understanding of what she really feels. Rather than believing societal misconceptions imposed by men, the female gaze offers an opportunity to change one's thinking of what the woman is really like. 

Works Cited:

Boutselis, Sabrina. “The Male Gaze in Monday of Une Semaine De Bonté.” Images WithIn Books, 4 May 2016, http://hamiltoncs.org/imageswithinbooks/uncategorized/the-male-gaze-in-monday-of-une-semaine-de-bonte/.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. Thames and Hudson, 1994.

Hooks, Bell. “Understanding Patriarchy.” Image No Borders, Imagenoborders, https://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf.