Critical Introduction

Consequently, in film, women do not describe the world from their point of view. Instead, women learn to “submerge or renounce” their subjectivity; they find their own identity in the desires of the men to which they are attached (654). Therefore, Devereaux concludes, the issue is not whether it is a male or female who is doing the looking. Rather, the question is whether a patriarchal way of seeing the world triumphs regardless of who is behind the camera. In this sense, the discussion of the “literal” gaze becomes a discussion of the figurative gaze (654).

Scopophilia is defined as the pleasure in looking. There are three kinds of looking in film: characters looking at other characters, cameras looking at the characters, and finally, the audience looking that the screen through the camera. The only way to change how women are viewed in cinema is to disrupt the looking. Through the narrative and technical structure in Stepford Wives (1975), the traditional male gaze is questioned while at the same time the main character, Joanna, is given her own gaze.

Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant 's Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing ' in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy

Is it socially acceptable behaviour for people to dedicate their lives to an object? Sure, one might say. People have passions and hobbies; these “objects” are worked hard for and should be enjoyed. Although most would say that this type of behaviour is not how normal people should live and that life’s fruition lies in the hands of social interaction; we can only truly enjoy life in the company of other humans, not objects. Where is the line drawn? Is it possible to cling on to a possession so much that it starts to detrimentally affect the person involved? W.D. Valgardson’s short story The Novice demonstrates that this is certainly a possibility. The protagonist undergoes a similar situation; he gets caught up in idealism (glamorizing

You and I live in a world were modernism is reaching new heights every day. One day that touchscreen phone is considered new, and then next week it’s old news. These two stories that I am going to compare are about the role of technology, science and how it affects me and you. Based on how it uses new technology and modern science A Sound of Thunder is a better sci-fiction story.

Interpretation and understanding are essential portions of films since it allows the viewers to comprehend the plot. Concurrently, there are films that allow the characters to make sense of their own issues within the footage and engage in the perception of it. In the films, Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) and Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974), the characters are shown interpreting their views, looking for meaning, and forming judgements, as a consequence causing reaction. Both films exhibit the protagonist watching and interpreting its surroundings based on what they see close to them. Thesis

Forman presents this film and plot to us in a direct and simple manner. The camera will zoom in on a personality without trying to conceal the detail of its being there. As a viewer you can feel the camera moving forward and zooming in and are persuaded to incline into the screen yourself.

Several film theorists have used a variety of tactics and view points to analyze feature films since their inception. One of the most prominent theorists of those that analyze films from a feminist perspective is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is famous for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which presents an array of theories involving the treatment of women in films. Arguably the most notable idea presented in Mulvey’s work is the existence of the “male gaze” in films. This essay will examine Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in relation to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo. Vertigo does not fit the criteria of a film that

This is something that everyone does when looking at any piece of artwork, but Sherman made this key in her collection, allowing the viewer to analyse the image and come to their own conclusion on the narrative. It gives the viewer freedom to find their own connection with the images, only knowing that they were about feminist identity. All of Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills have a haunting emotion to them as if the subject is fighting off their own demons, especially in Untitled Film Still #3 (figure 8). The gaze opens the mind up to all narratives and almost gives the viewer a piece of the emotion from the persona to analyse and give back. This is one of the key points to Sherman’s work, the connection between the persona and the viewer, how they interrupt the narrative and emotion from the images.

The gaze deals with how the audience views the people presented in visual culture, in this case, adverts, magazines and Cinema. The ‘male gaze’ is the male ability to exercise control over women by representing them in visual means as passive, sexual objects of male desire. The power of men over women has always existed. They are seen as the more powerful and clever species. This control over women has been seen predominately in linguistics senses in past times. It is clear that there are more derogatory terms for women than there are for men. Men can also wolf whistle or cat-call in order to harass a woman but

The male gaze is a term that references how often women in media only have the purpose in stories in order to be objectified. Especially in the comics we read, the beautiful women are always shown more sexually than the men. In the Phantom Lady comics, her clothes constantly hug her figure, and she is occasionally shown in sexual positions. There is a scene on page 17 where she is shown changing, purely for fan service rather than being vital to the plot. Additionally, her costume serves no function for her, especially since it’s just a cape accompanied by almost a bathing suit type outfit, it is purely this way so that she is sexy looking. There are even gratuitous shots of her running just to emphasize on her figure, as on page 19, where

Theorist, E. Ann Kaplan in her work, “Is the Gaze Male?”, analyses the portrayal of women in film using Laura Mulvey’s “Gaze’ theory and psychoanalysis. In addition, Kaplan states that historically, females have been the central focus on only the melodrama genre, and while melodrama exposes the constraints and limitations that the family places on women, at the same time, gets women to accept those constraints as inevitable and normal. Kaplan argues that our culture is deeply rooted in “masculine” and “feminine, and dominance-submission patterns. In the end, she concludes that the exclusion from male culture provides an avenue to affect change in film and society. I partially agree with Kaplan that some women take pleasure from being the object of the male gaze as I think that is not entirely true, and specifically, this generalization does not apply to lesbians.

Laura Mulvey has discovered the term of ‘Male Gaze’ which has been discussed in her text, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which was published in 1975. In her text she has discussed that in film, audiences get to experience to interpret the characters in movie from men’s perspective because the camera acts as male gaze. Male characters are more to be active which they drive the narrative in films. On the other hand, female characters play passive roles that are act as object for visual pleasure. Tap and Touch Cinema is performance art which Valie Export has done around the Europe in 1968 – 1971, it will be relating to the male gaze.

In the early 1990s Laura Mulvey’s thesis concerning the patriarchal structure of an active male gaze has influenced feminist film critiques and Hollywood. Mulvey’s project is to use psychoanalysis to uncover the power of patriarchy in Hollywood cinema. Patriarchal influence upon cinema is found primarily in pleasure (pleasure in looking) or as Freud’s has put it, scopophilia. Mulvey suggests that it may be possible to create a new for of cinema due to the fact that patriarchy power to control cinematic pleasure has revealed.

This highlight area of his eye is the part of the frame which has the greatest contrast, so naturally the audience is drawn directly into this man’s stare,