Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist that is known for her essay "the visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema" She is also known for her view on films and the modern cinema, saying how when watching films, she noticed that modern cinema reflects society as patriarchal.
One theory that Mulvey has is that men and women are viewed within films very differently. Her view is that she believed in most films men are the dominant figure, whereas women are usually seen as "Damsels in distress" She says that men tend to have agency within films, which means that they are the only ones to have the ability to move the film forward. Within Hollywood, this is in fact very true.
Within the world of most Hollywood films, women are seen as the object of desire. There are two roles they could follow; An object of erotic desire for characters, and an object of erotic desire for audiences.
This can be argued well within the first Transformers movie. Megan Fox's role in one particular scene shows her leaving over a car, in quite a sexual manner.
The Gaze
The Gaze is Mulvey's idea of how men view Women in music videos. This means that the camera films the storyline from the males point of view. The idea is that women are objects of erotic desire , this is evident when considering the male gaze as it is something that most males would prefer to see. The male character tends to always direct his gaze towards the Female character, almost leading the audience to do the same. The male gaze is generally reserved to as Active, whilst the female gaze is a passive one. The audience of a film or music video is forced to identify with the male character. There are three levels of cinematic gaze, the first is the male gaze. The second is when the camera shows us what a male character is looking at, mostly the female character and the third gaze is when the audience is looking through the camera and what the male character is looking at.
One theory that Mulvey has is that men and women are viewed within films very differently. Her view is that she believed in most films men are the dominant figure, whereas women are usually seen as "Damsels in distress" She says that men tend to have agency within films, which means that they are the only ones to have the ability to move the film forward. Within Hollywood, this is in fact very true.Within the world of most Hollywood films, women are seen as the object of desire. There are two roles they could follow; An object of erotic desire for characters, and an object of erotic desire for audiences.
This can be argued well within the first Transformers movie. Megan Fox's role in one particular scene shows her leaving over a car, in quite a sexual manner.
The Gaze
The Gaze is Mulvey's idea of how men view Women in music videos. This means that the camera films the storyline from the males point of view. The idea is that women are objects of erotic desire , this is evident when considering the male gaze as it is something that most males would prefer to see. The male character tends to always direct his gaze towards the Female character, almost leading the audience to do the same. The male gaze is generally reserved to as Active, whilst the female gaze is a passive one. The audience of a film or music video is forced to identify with the male character. There are three levels of cinematic gaze, the first is the male gaze. The second is when the camera shows us what a male character is looking at, mostly the female character and the third gaze is when the audience is looking through the camera and what the male character is looking at.
Using Mulvey's theory in a music video.
If we use Mulvey's theory for this video ,we can see that it is extremely true as Rihanna presents herself and the other women in the video. The Mise-en-scene shows supports this idea as Rihanna is wearing skin tight clothing and there isn't much of it. This agrees with the idea of The Male Gaze as it is much more attractive to the male eye seeing Rihanna in skin tight clothing over other forms of clothing. The women and Rihanna use their bodies by bending over cars to appeal to the men. All women in this video are objects of erotic desire. The audience is made to agree with the male gaze.
No comments:
Post a Comment