Male Gaze By Laura Mullvey

In general, a superhero is dedicated to protecting the public and is a heroic character who has extraordinary talents and superhuman powers. Some superheroes use their powers to defeat supervillains to save the world. A female superhero is called a superheroine and Catwoman is one of the female superheroes that will be closely examined in this presentation.
In 1970, males were the dominant superheroes and only 15 percent of the protagonists were females. Women were generally underrepresented in accordance with society’s norms at the time. There were inequality between the sexes especially the status of women were poor. Women were not independent enough to vote and there was also unequal distinction of housework. Now the number of female superheroes
Laura Mulvey made the term “Male Gaze” in 1975. Mulvey plans to use Freud and Lacan's concepts as a "political weapon” she states. She used some of their concepts to argue that the cinematic apparatus of classical Hollywood cinema unavoidably placed the viewer in a masculine subject position, by the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire and "the male gaze." During the era of classical Hollywood cinema, viewers were encouraged to recognize the protagonist of the films, who were and still are overwhelmingly male. Meanwhile, in 1950 and 60s Hollywood female characters were, according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness" while the camera setting and the male viewer established the "bearer of the look." Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" that is seeing woman as an image "to be looked at" and “fetishistic meaning that seeing women are seen as a substitute for "the lack," the underlying psychoanalytic fear of
Generally, both genders are dressed in iconic costumes that define the character. In 1940, when the original Catwoman appeared first on screen in the batman spring series, Catwoman was dressed in a tight leather outfit to emphasize her curves. However in the 2004 Catwoman, her suit was reconstructed to reveal more muscle and skin than before and she was skimpily dressed in fetishistic black leather which suggests mystery, evil and unpredictability. She appears to be subordinate and is objectified; at the beginning of the film was she not better off when she was wearing loose clothes and was dressed as a stereotypical ‘nerd’. Germaine Greer is an Australian theorist, journalist and academic, who was one of a famous activist during the second wave of feminism in mid-20th century. She is now emeritus professor in English Literature and comparative studies at the University of Warwick in United Kingdom. She once suggested that every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not