Summary Of Finding The Source Of The Gaze

Finding the Source of the Power of the Gaze In almost all of literature, women are represented as objects of desire. They are supposed to be submissive and their male counterparts are supposed to possess the power. This power structure is ever-present in books, photographs, and advertisements, but especially in film. In the film Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), the main character and her male counterparts exemplify that women are mean to be recipients of the male gaze, and it becomes problematic if these structures are upended. Laura Mulvey, in her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, examines and explains these power structures. We can use her article to understand how Gilda both aligns with and escapes from the male gaze.
In her article,
In her article, she explains that women are objectified and looked at because of men. In other words, women do not have any say in their objectification. They are passive objects actively looked at by men. However, in Gilda’s strip-tease scene, Gilda is actively embracing her to-be-looked-at-ness. She actively decides to put herself on display as an object. This is something that Mulvey does not address in her explanation of power structures. Gilda invites the male gaze in her direction and disrupts the flow between active gazer and passive object. In fact, this disruption angers Gilda’s beau, Johnny. It is interesting that throughout the film, Johnny is perfectly fine with actively gazing at and objectifying Gilda. However, once she does this for herself and upends the flow of power, it angers Johnny. It seems that there is only one way for a female character to be gazed at; it must be a male gaze directed at a female, but it also must solely be the male’s choice. It supports Mulvey’s argument that only men have the power to look at women in media because we see what happens when Gilda flips this around and demands power as she gives a strip-tease. Again, in this moment she is controlling the direction of the gaze toward