Laura Mulvey and the Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey and the Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ is very much influenced from the works of the psychoanalysis and theories put forward by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud- the founding father of psycho and self-analysis.

Mulvey stated that in classic Hollywood pictures women were represented to give visual pleasure to men. The protagonists of these films were usually men, and this seemed to infer that the audience should be male also.

Mulvey described the ‘male gaze’ as being both voyeuristic and fetishistic. The voyeuristic aspect allows women to be objectified on the screen, whilst the fetishistic side of the gaze is the overvaluation of the female form where the erotic instinct is focused on the image alone. This links in strongly with Mulvey’s theory of ‘castration anxiety’ which is the idea that if a woman is not represented in an objectified manner in which the man is sexually attracted to her or in a position of lower authority then the man feels a lacking in his power towards her. The unconscious idea is essentially that a man holds his dominance over a woman with his sexuality, which further threatens his dominance if the woman does not arouse this.

Another large factor of the male gaze is how the typical male audience member would align themselves with the protagonist of the film, placing themselves in their shoes either by identifying with them or aspiring to be like them in some way or another. Through doing this the audience member gains narcissistic pleasure from identifying with the protagonist as their ‘ideal ego’ is shown on screen.

In the definition of Psychoanalysis narcissism holds the meaning of deriving erotic gratification from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes.

References:

 http://virgin-research.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/laura-mulvey-and-male-gaze-summarised.html

http://www.slideshare.net/Tegfan/feminism-5361019 http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html