Is Laura Mulvey's theory of 'the male gaze' relevant in todays Hollywood?

Is Laura Mulvey's theory os 'the male gaze' relevant in todays Hollywood?

Item 16-The Resident Trailer

The Resident is a film made in 2011 starring Hilary Swank, Jeffery Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee. Today I will be looking at Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory from her work ‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema’ and will be studying three films, The Resident, Peeping Tom and Disturbia to determine if Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory is relevant in today’s Hollywood.

I must first point out that I strongly believe that the male gaze theory is extremely relevant in today’s Hollywood. Laura Mulvey said, “The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at” (Item 10). Taking this quote in mind you can clearly see when watching films made recently that there is a sense of male gaze that runs throughout them. There will be at least a small element of the male gaze in every film however it may not be as noticeable as others.

Item 2- Opening scene of Peeping Tom, 4 minuets

Peeping Tom was released in 1962-over 50 years ago. The opening scene is a great example of where the male gaze and scopophilia is clearly shown.  We see the killer-Mark Lewis- using a video camera to film a woman he is approaching. The use of a close up shot looking up and down the woman’s body along with her reaction to the male attention suggests that she is used to getting attention from men. Her neutral facial expression links to Mulvey’s point of gaining pleasure from being looked at as she doesn’t show a clear disapproval of the attention however doesn’t seem to be overly happy about it either.

The male gaze will appear at some point in every film, whether it’s as obvious as showing James Bond (Item 6) staring at woman as they walk out of the water or a little more subtle in a romance where it is considered sweet and loving.

Disturbia, a film made in 2009(Item 3), also demonstrates scopophilia however is used more subtly than in Peeping Tom as Disturbia takes a while to show it and also it isn’t as focused on showing it, for example in one scene kale is looking around his neighbourhood with binoculars and then happens to see into his new neighbours window.

Peeping Tom(Item 2) not only shows that the male has been in film for a very long time but also shows some of the changes the male gaze has gone through in the last 50 years. In my view it hasn’t changed much and the only change in my eyes would be that scopophilia applies to women as well as men nowadays, an example of this ‘female gaze’ would be Cameron Diaz’s character in In Her Shoes when she ogles over the attractive men.

There are some similarities between the ways the male gaze was portrayed in the 1960’s and how it is now as all three films I am examining have very similar scenes. There are at least one scene in Peeping Tom, Disturbia and The Resident which shows the male lead watching a female while she is in a private moment for example, Kale watches the Neighbour getting undressed in Disturbia, Lewis watches the prostitute get undressed in Peeping Tom. This supports Mulvey’s view of there being pleasure in being looked at as well as the women purposely grab the men’s attention. Kale’s neighbour goes for a swim in her pool and notices that he is watching her out of the window yet continues to show off her body when she gets out of the water.

The camera clearly controls women in films, especially in the film Disturbia, as Kale watches the neighbour through her window and goes into a close-up of her body and as men can control the camera it means they have a control over the women. This reinforces that Mulvey’s male gaze theory is relevant in today’s Hollywood. The use of extreme close-up shots of parts of women’s bodies shows that the women are merely objects with the men having the advantage. Freud associated scopophilia with “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.”  This is shown in Peeping Tom as well as described earlier about Lewis looking the prostitute up and down at a close range with his camera. The Resident may be filmed differently however the camera still controls the female through the camera angles.

Item 1- 1.40 minutes from Caught in the Act scene

The point-of-view camera shot along with the use of the hole-in-the-wall in the Mise-en-scene also creates the sense of control as it is as if the woman is trapped in the small space just as in Disturbia (Item 3) and Peeping Tom (Item 2) she is trapped in the small confined space of the camera lens. Mulvey would say this is an example of “Mise-en-scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema” (Item 10).

(Item 10)”In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked 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. Women displayed as sexual object is the leis-motif of erotic spectacles: from pinups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire”. The idea of this is shown in Peeping Tom when Lewis walks into the local shop and notices pictures of naked women on the door of the shop and when a man walks into the shop and asks to see the ‘views’-referring to the pictures of the pin-up girls. Lewis also gets asked “Which magazine sells the most copies?” and he replies “Those with girls on the front cover and no front cover on the girls” once again showing that women are merely objects to fulfil males desires.

“Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen” (Item 10). The way that the male gaze is shown in the film industry influences real life as men in the audience look at the men in the films and admire how they have control over the woman, therefore, look to act the same. Similarly the women in the audience admire the women in the films as they attract male attention and like to please the men as well. This relates to Mulvey’s view that women have two character types (Item 6)-sexually active female and powerless female as the women are portrayed as sexually active.

Laura Mulvey’s theory links well with Disturbia, The Resident and Peeping Tom as the two character types are shown in each film. We see the young attractive next door neighbour in Disturbia who always shows her body off knowing Kale is watching. We also see the powerless female when Kale is watching the house across the street and zooms in on a frantic woman who’s been kidnapped. We see this in Peeping Tom when Lewis is taking photographs of women for his boss to sell. A pretty woman is standing off to the side in profile and is there as a sexual object, yet when she turns to face them she reveals a facial deformity and says “ you don’t have to photograph my face”, which presents a powerless female as she has no power over her fate and body. The powerless and sexually active female in The Resident (Item 1) is both portrayed by Juliet who is shown as sexually active as when she is lying in the bath she is masturbating while her landlord watches. However she is also powerless, in an emotional sense, as she is suffering from a break up from her cheating fiancé yet is so in love with him that she gives in and they start dating again.

Item 2- Scene 3 of Peeping Tom, 3 minutes

These scantily dressed women striking poses for the camera to draw attention to their physical attractiveness. The contrived acts detract from their natural beauty. This supports Laura Mulvey’s view that “It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it”. (Item 10)

To conclude, Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze is relevant in today’s Hollywood and will always be within the film industry. The male gaze is just as strong as it has always been and the growth of the female gaze will also continue to keep this element in Hollywood.