Laura Mulvey on the Male Gaze

'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' was published in 1975.
Scopophilia - the pleasure involved in looking at other people's bodies as (particularly erotic) objects. In the darkness of the cinema, (or in a magazine) you can look but can't be seen.

The male perspective dominates - the man is the bearer and the woman is the reciever of the look. The man is controlling and the woman is passive.
I think this is a relevant, yet stereotypical view. I believe that this can work both ways, not just males being 'dominant'.


'The camera objectifies and sexualises a female'

I think this is true for both males and females, as people are fasinated by good looking people. (This links back to the definition of scopophilia).


A view that supports my opinion is Kaplan and Kaja Silverman (1980) who disagreed and argued that the gaze could be adopted by both male and female subjects: the male is not always the controlling subject, nor is the female always the passive object.

Steve Neale (1983) identifies the gaze of mainstream cinema in the Hollywood tradition as not only male by also hetrosexual. Neale also challenged the idea that the male is never sexually objectified in mainstream cinema and argued that the male is not always the looker in control of the gaze. It is widely noted that since the 1980's there has been an increasing display and sexualisation of the male body in mainstream cinema and television and in advertising.

Is my magazine in anyway sexual or erotic?
In convensional pop magazines, similar to what I am going to make, none of the images are in anyway like this. This may be due to a younger target audience. I have stuck firmly to this convension.