Male Gaze and the Oppositional Gaze

The male gaze is the term coined by Laura Mulvey used to describe the objectification of women when being portrayed in media through the lens of a heterosexual male. Typically, in the media which is being depicted, the focus will go towards the woman's physical attributes in a sexualized manner such as by directing the attention to the woman's curves. This is can be done despite the context or the story the piece is trying to convey and as a result also end up taking away from it.

The pervasive nature of the male gaze ends up promoting an unhealthy attitude in how society views and treats women as it starts to promote poisonous ideas of what the "ideal" woman is supposed to look like, strips the woman of any agency and humanity leaving nothing but her sexuality as her defining factor. One such example of this used to comedic effect is this poster for the superhero movie The Avengers in which the only female of the team, Black Widow is displayed along her teammates:

Here Black Widow is reduced to a common trope that is a lot more prevalent in the comic world where female characters are displayed twisting in such a way that her breasts and buttocks end up being the focus. Here Black Widow is reduced to this trope and the viewer would not know any better of her expert martial art and gun skills where areas the other members of the team end up displaying their strengths and character defining qualities. Black Widow despite being an essential part of the team in the movie end up being nothing but an accessory for the others to shine more.

Mulvey gives an example in her essay of a way in which a movie (A Question Of Silence) uses a woman's image and body in order to tell a story instead of being an object of the male gaze. She explains of the framing of the shots which tend to have a focus on the women and their characteristics lend to the telling and growth of the characters and their relationship instead of an object of sexual gratification for men. These images serve as a way to drive the story and reflect on these themes instead.

The oppositional gaze, as coined by Bell Hooks is the encouragement of rebellion against stereotypical representations in film by actively critiquing them. Hooks puts forth this concept as a way for women to actively take back agency in the ways that they are represented by all these for-men-by-men depictions. This can be accomplished by doing things such as critiquing and calling out of the male gaze in media, showing how women can view men as objects of desire in the same way men view women and therefore have that power. 

Learning about the male gaze has helped me realize the significance of having such representations of women directly affect our society in ways that can only be described as harmful. In certain ways, its helped give a clearer picture of things like why sex-related crime rates have such a high percentage of male perpretators and a better explanation on other issues such as how things like eating disorders in young women can come to be since by continuing to allow these types of representations of media do nothing but contribute more to the problem. And to end this post, here's a link to a collaboration between numerous artist from the comics world parodying the cover of a Catwoman comic where she is doing an extremely unconventional pose that just so happens to end up prominently displaying her chest and behind, which results in hilarious responses from the artists: 

http://comicsalliance.com/artists-respond-dc-comics-back-breaking-catwoman-0-cover/

Works cited:

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"