Laura Mulvey is a British feminist who is best known for her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. She wrote this in 1973 and was published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal 'Screen'. Her article was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. It is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework. She uses some of Freud's and Lacan's concepts to argue that the cinematic apparatus of Hollywood cinema put the audience into a man's perspective. The woman on the screen is seen as an object of desire and 'the male gaze'.
What is the Gaze?
The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented, for feminists it can be thought of in three ways:
- Men view women as sexual objects
- Women look at other women and compare themselves (makes them feel negative about themselves by picking out their flaws)
- How women look at themselves (women look at other women to shape their own identities. They compare themselves to other women to create an ideal version of themselves
Mulvey's research focuses on women as sexual objects and how they are placed into media texts to be enjoyed by men and objectified (seen not heard)
The way it can be identified if it is the 'male gaze' is if the woman's curves are highlighted with specific conventions such as:
- slow motion
- deliberate camera movements
- cut aways
Her theory also looks at women's human identity being taken away from them and they are only admired for their physical appearance. The female character also has no real importance to the film/video. She is just there to be enjoyed by men.
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