Even in Children's Cinema...

The male gaze is a term that was first coined by Laura Mullvey. In her article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Mullvey describes the male gaze as almost a gaze given my “the male” that projects a list of expectations and creates a “phantasy onto the female figure.” The female responds by playing that typically desired and expected “exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Basically, the determining male gaze is a list of visual and physical expectations that “the male” projects on to “the female” that makes the female act, dress, look, etc. accordingly to those expectations, resulting in women becoming sexual/erotic beings that willingly participate in this because they desire to be looked at; women become sexual and erotic only as a result of male expectations. They fix themselves up so that others (men) see them as desiring or pleasing.

A personalized example would be that when I go shopping, instead of picking out what I really like to wear, I think of how my boyfriend would like me to be dressed; what makes him smile? What are his favorite colors to see me in? Does that look sexy? Would he like that on me? Women’s perceptions of themselves are only seen through the male.

The determined male gaze is all over pop culture. In most movies, there are hot chicks, only a beautiful cast (if I remember correctly, life is not full of only hot people and especially hot women.) And in every movie there is a full body shot of some hot woman in revealing clothes; a close up of her shoes, onto her legs, bottom, torso chest and then her luxurious long hair, followed by a shot of her face that is almost never looking at the camera initially, shyly peering down and then giving flutter eyelashes. It’s the typical shot of a woman. Do I look at women like that? No. But hey, maybe men do and in all reality, isn’t that all that matters? (No).

Even in radio, if there is an interview of a hot new female artist, don’t we always hear the cute, subtle little chuckle and almost-smirk like qualities of her laugh and conversation. Does this make her any more appealing to me as a woman? No, but it sure gets male listeners. But the most ironic thing is that that makes more young girls do that, act like clones to get male attention.

The oppositional gaze is a term coined by Bell Hooks response to years of the oppression that African Americans received in the United States as a result of slavery. She writes about how African Americans were ever allowed to look Whites in the eyes because of fear for their lives or how black men could be killed for looking at a white woman. As time went on, the practice carried on through generations in the African American communities. That’s where the oppositional gaze came in; Hooks writes about how by looking at Whites or even each other in the eyes, there was a certain power that came with daring to look that established a platform to “be” and not just exist. In her article, “The Oppositional Gaze,” Hooks writes, “not only will I stare, I want my look to change reality.”

After understanding both of these concepts, I’ve really had to evaluate why I do things and the power that they connote or even give away. They have forced me to re-evaluate every piece of media that I see, the conversations that I overhear. For example, this weekend I went to the movies and saw “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and there was a character, I forgot her name, who wanted a career as a weather girl but only got it after she changed her appearance. She also felt that she had to play dumb to get the guy she liked. Wow, That made me think of the power of the male gaze. Something that is even present in children’s cinema.