Essay On Wolf Of Wall Street Based On The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze is a concept coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay entitled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Mulvey, 1975) ,It depicts the way that visual media is tailored to a heterosexual male perspective in that the world is shown specifically for a male viewer and man is often the dominant character through male gaze while woman are portrayed as passive. Lora

Pretty Woman displays our fascination of “fetishism” of the commodity-form on multiple levels. We have the relatively straightforward case of prostitution, for instance, where sex and the woman's

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

Gender roles have been, and unfortunately still are, evident in our everyday lives for quite sometime. Women are often portrayed as sexual objects, or delicate individuals; a body with no brain or strength. These traits are easily found within many novels and movies- old and new. In Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Rear Window and Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock begins his films representing women with the same characteristics as stated above. They are very stylish, attractive and presented as second-class individuals to males. But after examining these two films, Hitchcock does something that many directors in his time would not have dared to do. By making the women the heroine and arguably the protagonist of the storyline, Hitchcock proves to

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

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

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

The portrayal of women in film has been a largely discussed and debated topic over the previous few decades. One particular argument arisen by audiences, mainly feminist film theorists, is that women are viewed through a male-dominant gaze that objectifies the female characters, therefore overall affecting the treatment of women in the real world. The aforementioned ‘gaze’ is a term that describes how the audience/viewer engages with visual medias; a male gaze would imply that women are presented as an ‘object’ of a heterosexual male’s desire in a work of media. The film Thelma and Louise directed by Ridley Scott and released in 1991 was a large source of controversy and has provided many debates on the topic of female representation in film.

Dunham’s work is a direct example of both arguments but in differing ways. Berger’s analysis helps illuminate and explain the effects of feminism and how women should be viewed; despite being in the context of historical art, the analysis can still be applied to Dunham’s film. Twenge’s argument, on the other hand, focuses on how the distinction between self-esteem and narcissism is dwindling and that this can be seen all over society, like in Dunham’s film. Both analyses and arguments in the context of Dunham’s film provide insight into the type of society we live in, a society that looks to reflect women in one light and turn them into narcissists in another. Overall, Dunham’s film is used to depict a story about women in a fantasized way through representing the simplicity and elegance of

Even though male gaze is still the fundamental construct in modern films, I do not think lesbians and majority of women these days enjoy objectification. Women are trying to break through gender differences and evolve as equal being to men. In trying to explain how women are positioned in films, Kaplan says “Psychoanalysis a crucial tool for explaining the needs, desires and male-female positioning that are reflected in film” p. (). Kaplan uses psychoanalysis to argue how women take

The male gaze puts his fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled, in a unique sort of way. In this traditional exhibitionist, role women are continuously being looked at and their appearance is delivered to the male gaze in such a way as a strong visual and erotic impact and provides male desire. The presence of a woman in a normal narrative film is the key of the movie. However, the key of the narrative film works against the development of the story-line and stops the action due to the erotic gaze. Butt Boetticher said: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”.

The male gaze was introduced by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and is “a feature of gender power asymmetry in film”. Mulvey explained, “Women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera”. The male gaze is when the audience views the scene of object –in this case the woman- from the prospective of a man. This may occur if the camera lingers over a woman’s curves for a while displaying her as an erotic object rather than a human being, making her a victim of sexualisation. The woman is usually unaware of this gaze, which brings patriarchy to the situation. Her essay also explains that the ‘female gaze’ is similar except it is like women looking at themselves through a male’s eyes. This can have a negative effect on real life women because they are being told what they should look like in order to be noticed by men and what men want to see. Feminists

The female gaze theory suggests that men and women observe and react to certain areas of life entirely differently due to the oppression and sexual objectification of women. While the male gaze continues to perpetuate the concept of women primarily as sex objects, female film directors

If you have ever seen the movie The Wolf on Wall Street, there is no doubt you have seen the effects drugs can have. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a high-strung stock broker reliant on a multitude of illegal drugs to keep up with his hectic life style. His addiction gets so severe that at one point in the movie, he is lying on the floor, unable to move due to the drugs’ effects on his body. Even though the movie is set in the 90’s, a decade infamous for its use of drugs, today, drug usage and abuse has never been more of an issue. According to Alice Park (2016), “More people died of drug overdoses in 2014 in the U.S. than in any other year” (p.49). What people fail to realize is that drug abuse effects more than just the individual that uses them. The loved ones trying to support the user, the community the user is in, can all be affected by drug abuse. In fact, all members of society are affected by the abuse of drugs. In short, no one benefits from drug abuse. In the words of the Nation Institute of Drug Abuse, “Drug abuse is a major public health problem that impacts society on multiple levels. Directly or indirectly, every community is affected by drug abuse and addiction, as is every family. Drugs take a tremendous toll on our society at many levels” ( Magnitude, 2016).

Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts states that “sexual objectification occurs whenever a woman’s body, body parts, or sexual functions are separated out from her person, and reduced to the status of mere instruments…” Fredrickson and Roberts continue expanding this thought until they come to the realization that as a result of objectification, women begin seeing themselves as objects and treat their physical appearance with equal importance to self