The male gaze is a term coined by Laura Mulvey, and is the cultural embodiment of the idea that popular & commercial media serves to portray and reinforce the desires of men as the benchmarks of success in society. In practice we observe this in mainstream media narratives, like film & television, which constantly tell stories that are about men's lives and desires, and that the women characters and their goals are secondary to the male leads. Even in cases of female leads, the stories revolve around trying to get the attention or affection of a man.
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| Leonardo DiCaprio and Some Living Mannequins - Wolf of Wall Street |
It is self serving in that it itself (the gaze) sets the value, importance, and creates the imagery that support and propel this concept deeper into the status quo. Berger gives a great quote about this cycle in 'Ways of Seeing', "you painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting 'Vanity', thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure" (p51). It demonstrates the power media has over our morals, that we can concoct images of our fantasies just to then shun those images and claim superiority over our desires.
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| Yes Fellas, One Spritz is All it Takes |
As I understand it, the oppositional gaze is the awareness and capacity of an individual to be critical and challenging of the male gaze. In our classroom, we are participating in a collective, oppositional gaze as we analyse examples of these structures and dissect them. It is also the empowerment of studying and understanding the male gaze enough to create and distribute media narratives that opposes it. I think this is particularly important to young people, as they need to be exposed to oppositional narratives just to know such a thing is possible.
In 'Black Looks' Hooks says, “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” (p122). This really sells the concept for me, as I can understand the desire to be increasingly critical of media as I learn more about it. Once you become aware of these things, they are difficult to ignore.
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| Example of Patriarchal Opposing Narratives in Hollywood |
These values are sold to us at young ages and are hard to shake into adulthood. What do we know as facts if we take advertising literally, as children might do? Boys play baseball and shoot toy guns, but girls DO NOT. Girls wear jewellery and play with dolls, but more importantly, boys DO NOT. Men drink beer and drive trucks, but women DO NOT. Women wear high heels and make-up, but more importantly, men DO NOT. It goes deeper than ads though, our moms and dads are also guilty of perpetuating these ideas because, culturally speaking, we all drink from the same well.
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| Clearly, This Image Makes Me Think Only of Basketball |
A few years ago, while spending time with my family during the holidays; my aunt, her husband, and their daughter (my cousin) came over my dad's house for Christmas eve dinner. My buddies and I were playing poker in the back room, and my cousin who was about 14 or 15 at the time wanted to join in and learn how the game works. So we taught her how the game works and such, and it was a fun time, until her dad sees her and storms in shouting that, "poker is not a game for girls, she should not be learning this". I was floored. I had never even entertained such a thought before and it made me very upset. I told my cousin, "That's not true. Cards are for anybody, people can play whatever card games they want", but the damage was done. My cousin is graduating high school soon and my advice to her has always been "go to college somewhere far away from your parents" but we'll see.
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| Guns + Pink = Guns for Girls! |
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