Gender And Gaze Analysis

In Chapter three of ‘The Practices of Looking’ Sturken and Cartwright examine the relationship between gender and the gaze. The chapter focuses on the work of feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey. Mulvey’s main theory is first coined in her essay ‘Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ she discusses the ‘male gaze’, which is comprised of the outlook that the ‘camera is used as a tool of voyuerism and sadism’ and adopts the perspective of a heterosexual male viewer in order to objectify women. Mulvey argues that cinema caters towards male viewing pleasure and her work is strongly associated with psychoanalysis, including terms such as scopophilia and voyuerism.

In contemporary society, the male gaze is used most often in advertisements as a persuasive tool and
Beckford is the object of Spears desire. In relation to Mulvey’s theory it can be viewed that Beckford is acting as ‘the bearer of meaning’ in this situation, which reverses the gender roles Mulvey presupposes in her essay. Despite the arguments valid points, there is still a discernible difference between men and women in the media. Critics have also critiqued Mulvey’s definition of spectatorship, Annette Kuhn questioned Mulvey by stating “If Mulvey’s argument is correct… dominant cinema… advances masculine subjectivity a the only subjectivity available” She continues by saying “What exactly does this mean for women as spectators in the cinema, given that women do go to the cinema and indeed that for certain types of films they have constituted a large part of the audience?”. (Kuhn, 1982) Kuhn’s point is important to consider when outweighing the strengths and weaknesses of Mulvey’s theory as Mulvey believes that this spectatorship is oblivious to women, However Kuhn suggests that some films which include the male gaze have a main audience of women, therefore the importance of the male gaze and its damaging effect which Mulvey discusses may be