A Male's Take On The Male Gaze

                The male gaze is an active and empowering look directed towards the other; for our purposes of discussion this other is the inferior female gender. This gaze provides males with the feelings of entitlement and ownership which eventually lead to their objectification of women. Berger describes a woman’s presence as being intrinsic which makes men think of it as kind of a heat or smell. Many men play the biological card and claim it is in their nature to look, but as described in class, sometimes these outward gestures can create strong fears within women every day. For example, there is the fear that they may be at risk of a rape or an assault if they reject the man that is gazing at them.

                The inclusion of mirrors in European oil paintings took the weight off of men and blamed women for their own display. Since then men have had an easier time gazing at women because it is assumed that women want to be treated as a sight by the way they dress and present themselves to the world. “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (Berger 46).

                The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture because classic Hollywood and mainstream entertainment has set that tone. The patriarchal society we have all been raised under has influenced our media since its inception. This idea of phallocentrism in Hollywood cinema has created a structure for the active male and passive female to develop further. In a mainstream film narrative the heroine almost always provokes the hero; she is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance” (Mulvey 837). Mulvey introduces us to the term scopophilia which is defined as pleasure in looking at another person as a sexual object. Women were often displayed and coded for visual and erotic impact. Mulvey makes a great point that adds to why the male gaze is pervasive in our popular culture; “the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey 838). As the representative of power and bearer of the look the male refuses to be subjected to any gaze. If any gaze were to be turned onto him it would arouse a feeling of inferiority that is foreign to men and hardly allowed in our society.

                The “oppositional gaze,” as described by Bell Hooks, is the black person’s overwhelming longing and rebellious desire to look at white supremacy that developed because it was a repressed look that was always controlled or punished by the white other. “This “gaze” has been and is a site of resistance for colonized black people globally” used in order to disengage with the negation of black representation in the mass media (Hooks 116). “Unless you went to work in a white world, across the tracks, you learned to look at white people by staring at them on the screen” (Hooks 117). The oppositional gaze developed in black females as resistance to media images as well because their presence in cinema and television was absence. This denial of the “body” of a black female perpetuates “white supremacy and with it a phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is white” (Hooks 118). “Even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve – to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze” (Hooks 119).

                After reading the writings of John Berger, Laura Mulvey, and Bell Hooks it has helped me develop huge empathy for women. I can see firsthand how these structures have shaped my mother and are beginning to prepare my sister for proper functionality within a still white male dominated society. My mother still sometimes wishes she was a lighter Hispanic woman and advises my sister to be a typical young lady who has manners and does not take up too much space. These new ideas have changed my views on how various media examples portray women. I originally thought how glamorous it is to be a woman who is desired, it must evoke such power and control. However, it is a trap and that power is temporarily false. I am ashamed sometimes to be considered part of a gender group who plays a dominant role in this interplay of societal structures.  It is realizations like these that make me extra cautious when interacting with women to make sure they are respected and given their space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXsd5aw8oas&feature=player_embedded

Berger, John. Ways Of Seeing, Based On The BBC Television Series With John Berger. London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1972.

Hein, Carolina. Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema. GRIN Verlag, 2008.

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks, Race And Representation. South End Pr, 1992.