On Ways of Seeing

             According to Wikipedia, “the male gaze is a concept coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey. It refers to the way visual arts are structured around a masculine viewer”. That means the media consider males as certain audiences. Obviously, men play active roles, whatever he is behind the camera, he is the character within the media or he is a spectator.  Women play passive roles and are represented as erotic objects. These erotic objects are full of our media. For example, a famous actress Marilyn Monroe became a sex symbol for playing dumb blonde characters. Women were portrayed as bimbos.

Marilyn Monroe in The Severn Year Itch

             

            Believing or not, we live in a patriarchal society. This is reality. “Men act and women appear” John Burger thinks, “The social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power, which he embodies. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.”(Burger, Ways of Seeing 45). “By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her”(Burger, Ways of Seeing 46). Different social presences determine the media in pleasing men to get maximum profit. In the media development, economy is a crucial factor to determine how the media develop. Therefore, the male gaze is a pretty pervasive form of vision in popular culture.

Men Act and Women Appear

         Different from Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory, Bell Hooks suggests the Oppositional Gaze. In her book Black Looks, Hooks asserts, “By courageously looking, we defiantly declared: ‘Not only will I stare. I want my look to change reality.’ Even in the worst circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one's gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency”(Hooks, Black Looks 116). Hooks appreciates black women critique stereotyped characters in the media instead of accepting them. 
         Hooks says, “When I returned to films as a young woman, after a long period of silence, I had developed an oppositional gaze. Not only would I not be hurt by the absence of black female presence, or the insertion of violating representation, I interrogated the work, cultivated a way to look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language” (Hooks, Black Looks 122). Based on her personal experience of suffering, she finds a way to challenge the patriarchal society to overcome the obstacle of race and gender.

A Professional African American Woman

          As a new Chinese immigrant, I am Eastern way of thinking.  I don’t really understand the Western way of thinking. When I look at American arts, I don’t understand what messages they try to convey. Therefore, in my production, when the conflict arises because of cultural background, I usually confuse how to use media to address my idea. Confucius heavily influenced ancient Chinese culture. He emphasized, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and do no evil”. Even though I don’t really agree with Mulvey or Hooks, the Western ways of seeing help me a lot understand the Western media.

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972.

Hooks, Bell.  Black Looks: race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.