The Power of Attraction: Females in Our Westernized Country

Feminists that approach analyzing popular culture proceed from a variety of theoretical positions that carry with them a deeper social analysis and political agenda. Popular culture has been a critical part of feminist analysis. “Cultural politics are crucially important to feminism because they involve struggles over meaning” (Storey, Intro 136). Analyzing a piece of pop culture through a feminist viewpoint, whether it be a music video or any sort of media, opens up a broader discussion about the structure of our patriarchal society and the ways in which politics are constantly portrayed and

She argues that black female spectators neither wish to identify with a white woman subject objectified by the “male gaze” nor identify with a black male perpetrator of this “male gaze”. hooks asserts that black men, unconcerned with gender, were able to “repudiate the reproduction of racism in cinema…even as they could feel as though they were rebelling against white supremacy by daring to look”, specifically at white women (118). By being allowed to look at white women, black male spectators were able to ignore inherent racism in cinema in order to participate in a form of the “male gaze”, hooks states. Because black female spectators were unwilling or unable to ignore both the racism and sexism of this “gaze”, hooks states that “black female spectators construct a theory of looking relations where cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation” (126). While black female viewers may not take pleasure in the film narrative, hooks argues that through the “oppositional gaze” they are able to take pleasure in resisting this narrative

The post-modernist Julie Rrap is a contemporary artist whose focal point rests on the basis of femineity and the way the female identity is represented historically within art. She is a feminist who accuses the ‘male gaze’ of instigating a predatory activity that is accustomed with the norm of society. She relates this norm to existing social structures that are attributed with a patriarchal society, where women were nothing more than sexual objects. All in all this term, the ‘male gaze’ evaluates the predatory voyeurism of society, where the male is the active subject and the female is a passive object of representation.

When we look at this piece, we tend to see the differences in ways a subject can be organized and displayed. This assemblage by Betye Saar shows us how using different pieces of medium can bring about the wholeness of the point of view in which the artist is trying to portray. So in part, this piece speaks about stereotyping and how it is seen through the eyes of an artist.

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.

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

Laura Mulvey understands Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills as to be rehearsing this structure of the ‘male gaze’, “The camera looks; it captures the female character in a parody of different voyeurisms. It intrudes into moments in which she is ungraded, sometimes undressed, absorbed into her own world in the privacy of her own environment. Or it witnesses a moment in which her guard drops and she is suddenly startled by the presence, unseen and off-screen watching her.”[v]

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

“Bodies” explores how an understanding of feminized media is in part governed by a gendered understanding of the body, as well as how individuals use feminized forms of media in order to push and redefine the boundaries of the “feminine.” Authors Barbara L. Ley, Kyra Hunting, Michele White, and Beretta Smith-Shomade examine pregnancy apps, fashion, nail polish, and embodied spirituality, analyzing the twenty-first century understanding of the feminine body

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

Essentially, a woman’s place in society’s stratification is defined by the outward manifestation of her person, which is identified first and foremost by her gender. Simone de Beauvoir asserts that women are characterized as “others” or as “not male” . This distinction would not be possible if women were not recognizable by sight as not male. Due to this, it is relevant to look at film and its associations with visual representations of the woman and the male gaze. As John Berger recognises “men act, women appear…men look at women…women themselves being looked at” . This succinctly defines that the position of women in patriarchal culture depends on look and elucidates that women exist only in relation to men. Thus, this essay will explore to what extent women are controlled and guided by the patriarchal male gaze as is reflected in visual popular culture, in particular, narrative cinema, with specific reference to Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

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.

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, psychoanalyst and feminist writer. Her work on abjection gives an engaging insight into human culture in terms of it’s relationship to larger overarching power structures. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva argues that the oppression of woman in patriarchal societies is constructed through fear of the abject. “The tremendous forcing that consists in subordinating maternal power (whether historical of phantasmic, natural or reproductive.)” (Kristeva, 1982, p.91) The abject refers to the human reaction of revulsion to the threat of breakdown between the subject and object, the self and other. The border which separates nature and culture, between human and non human. “The abject confronts us, on one

Feminism and popular culture have interacted over the years, each influencing and responding to the other. The media has been a cause of feminist protests, especially because of their representations of men and women’s lives. These portrayals can have an impact on society, as because of their mass distribution, they have the capability to influence the public’s perspective on gender relations and feminist issues. The views of feminism and the ideas that the movement was currently emphasizing can be seen in popular culture’s productions during that time. One critical feminist issue has been the expectations for their physical appearances and lives outside of the home. In fact, Naomi Wolf’s idea of these themes, as described in The Beauty

Since its humble beginnings in the later years of the nineteenth century, film has undergone many changes. One thing that has never changed is the filmmaker’s interest in representing society in the present day. For better or worse, film has a habit of showing the world just what it values the most. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to what kinds of ideas films are portraying (Stern, Steven E. and Handel, 284). Alarmingly, viewers, especially young women, are increasingly influenced by the lifestyle choices and attitudes that they learn from watching these films (Steele, 331). An example of this can be seen in a popular trope of the “romantic comedy” genre in this day and age: the powerful man doing something to help, or “save” the less powerful woman, representing a troubling “sexual double standard” (Smith, Stacy L, Pieper, Granados, Choueiti, 783).