Mulvey's Argument

When one hears the terms “violence” and “horror,” one typically imagines horrible crimes and serial killers; rarely would one think of everyday suburban life. However, this is the exact landscape of violence depicted in Charles Burns’ Black Hole. In Black Hole Burns draws attention to the implicit assumptions about “normal” and “other” made in everyday life by exposing the objectification of women and through the male gaze. The male gaze is a phrase used in film and gender studies to describe the lens through which audiences view popular culture from a heterosexual male perspective. According to Laura Mulvey, the film theorist who coined the term, the male gaze is so ubiquitous that it often goes unrecognized and is considered the norm.

In Chapter 3 of his book, “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger argues that in western nude art and present day media, that women are largely shown and treated as objects upon whom power is asserted by men either as figures in the canvas or as spectators. Berger’s purpose is to make readers aware of how the perception of women in the art so that they will recognize the evolution of western cultured art.

Through exposure, the role of women as a visible visual icon, such as cinematic mechanisms fetishism serves to convince the position of the male audience as an absolute subject.

The movie “Tough Guise” examines and evaluates the relationship between cultural and social construction of masculinity and the images we see in mass media and popular culture. The movie recognizes immense violence in America as a product of gendered associated phenomenon, and identifies and explains its connection to cultural codes and ideals of “masculinity”. In the movie, Katz main thesis revolves around the idea: masculinity is created; it does not inherently exist, as opposed to one’s biological sex. Central to his argument is this concept: One may be born as male or female: which is one’s biological identity, but the concept of “masculinity” is a societal and cultural construct. To further empower his thesis he argues that media plays a vital role in dispensing and sustaining this cultural construct.

Mulvey’s main argument in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is that Hollywood narrative films use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men. The narrative

This regularity has been occurring for generations, so much so that the objectification of females has been normalised within the movie industry. These cultural attitudes have had an array of consequences on this generation of young men, and the objectification of women has led to men suppressing their emotions without a second thought.

For definition of the male gaze, this area of the exhibit will focus on Laura Mulvey’s “Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look.” In this piece, Mulvey discusses two theories: voyeurism and fetishistic scopophilia. To briefly explain, voyeurism involves deriving pleasure from the assertion of control, usually done by a male. On the other hand, fetishistic scopophilia transforms the female entity into an object whose sole purpose is to pleasure. An area of this exhibit include an arcade machine of the game “Mortal Kombat” to depict the difference in the way males and females are drawn and portrayed in video games. Male characters within this game are provided armor, or clothing at the least, that covers their vital organs and suits their fighting style. It is obvious the intention of the male characters’ clothing is functionality. However, the same can not be said about their female counterparts. Not only is their clothing minimal, their fighting style is also hypersexualized. This video game is almost the epitome of Mulvey’s fetishistic scopophilia. Next to this will be side-by-side showcasing of famous superhero costumes such as Wonder Woman vs. Superman and Catwoman vs. the Joker. Again, these costumes reinforce fetishistic scopophilia as female characters are purposely clothed with minimal armor that accentuates a female’s breasts and butt. Music videos are another reliable source for elaborating on fetishistic scopophilia. For instance, the popular rock band Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” reduces the band’s teacher to nothing but a sexual object to whom they sexually fantasize about instead of respect and learn from. Moreover, the famous “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne reduces the band’s friend’s mom to a sexual object for visual pleasure. The novel “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov will be used to further detail how males view women, even young teens, as subjects for their pleasure,

As the male gaze has become shorthand for any piece of entertainment featuring objectification of the female form, like Game of Thrones‘ notorious ‘sexposition,’ it certainly plays a part elsewhere. For example, moviegoers (both male and female) have been conditioned since classical Hollywood to expect a (white) male protagonist. Even today, with this remaining relatively unchanged, we find it easier to identify with these characters, and efforts to challenge this are comparatively small in number. As Martha M. Lauzen found in her look at the top 100 grossing films of 2013, only 15% of protagonists were women. However, there are reasons to be optimistic.

In other words, the male genitals, or the phallus, are almost idolized in that it is given such power and authority with no discernible reason. This transformation of organ into symbol has no biological origin, yet this biology is the basis needed in order to culturally transform its meaning (Vance 130). There is a cultural importance based on male power, or male dominance that takes root through the male genitals. This can be witnessed through the daily interactions between people and the language used. There are a plethora of euphemisms for the penis, but very few for the vagina. Language for male genitals like “tool”, “sword”, “rod”, “hammer”, to name a few, implies a use for the aforementioned appendage, an active party to any activities that involve it. In contrast, popular euphemisms for the vagina include “axe wound”, “cum dumpster”, “dick shed”, “penis holster”, a selection of crude and demeaning phrases used to exemplify the role of the vagina in contrast to the penis, a passive role. This role of language is an example of the casual power imbalance between men and women, and how Western society views male genitalia and female genitalia. Vance discusses different cartoons that depict simple and lighthearted commentaries on sexual relations, but instead “…uncritically reflected

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.

Third wave feminism clinches the instability of gender as an identifying category, distinguishing that identity is produced within a matrix of cultural resources and that gendered self-expression is performative (Butler, 1990). As Butler explains, a gendered body exists only as a series of “corporeal signs” (Butler, 1990) and other discursive functions have no true ingredient beyond the acts constituting its social reality. This social reality functioning within the hegemonic structured is governed by language and rule. To further expand to this theory, investigation into Mulvey’s idea of the “Male Gaze” must be examined. To briefly describe this idea, the male gaze is a specific “lens” through which an audience views visual pop culture. More specifically, it is the idea that media whether it be music, videos, or advertisements were all created to please a heterosexual male audience (Lahey, 2007). In Nicki’s video, she “twerks” on and around other women who all share her curvy physique, but makes it evident that her sexuality is a device which she achieves empowerment through, and not a tool solely used for attracting the male gaze. The first way in which she does this comes in the fact that no men (other than Drake) appear in the video. Historically (and still to this day), countless male

The prominence of the phallus in film is run through the whole filmic process. The weak female is in need of the male influence, she being the castrated female ‘it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies’ (Mulvey, 1989 p. 6). The Females lack of the phallus is brought to the forefront with the male dominance. The female is often shown

If a girl begins to demonstrate some signs of male characteristics, she is referred to as a ‘tom-boy’. It is like a taboo to show such kinds of signs in a girl. On the other hand, if a male does not have masculine features, he is seen as an outcast. All of these perceptions are obtained from the media, and especially televisions and movies. According to Mehta and Hay (2005), media houses have for a long time helped to construct and reinforce stereotypical ideas about masculinity and men. From what is portrayed in the media, it is possible for people to dismiss others on the basis of whether they have masculinity or are feminine (Ferrey, 2008).

Academic study around film and gender tends to divide into two paradigms: positive postfeminist and negative feminist analyses. Mulvey (1975) propositioned the Male gaze theory, whereby the majority of films are made for male viewers, in which women are situated as passive objects for male visual consumption. Brooks (1997) argues this is still the case in mass culture and the arts, where women are objectified as sexual objects, which exposes society to negative role models. Postfeminist theory (Hermes 1995, Geraghty 1991) and in particular, within the study of popular culture, argues that the interpretation of cultural texts varies person to person, and consumers understand most texts to be fictitious and are used as tools of escapism from everyday life.

A symbolic version of a phallus, such as a wand, sword or cane, is constructed to represent male generative powers. The phallus in psychoanalytic theory is represented as the supreme symbol of masculine power and of feminine lack (Rine 14-15). Feminist theorists constructed the term ‘phallocentrism’ in order to denote the pervasive privileging of the masculine within the current system of signification. (Rine 22-26). Freud did not make a distinction between the penis, as a biological bodily organ, and the phallus as a signifier of sexual difference. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis argues that whilst men posses a penis, no one can posses a symbolic phallus (Homer 56). Lacan, in the essay The Signification of the Phallus argues that the difference between “having” and “being” the phallus is that men are positioned as men as long as they are seen to have the phallus, whereas women, not having a phallus, are seen to “be” the phallus (Lacan 1309). To Lacan, the phallus symbolizes both the penis and the clitoris as a signifier but the phallus is constructed to be a signifier of power and is distinguished between the sexes in terms of lack (Lacan 1306, Rine 14). Lacan’s distinction between the penis and the