Examples of male gaze in posters:

Example of male gaze: Suicide Squad

In Suicide Squad, the character of Harley Quinn is seen through the male gaze. In a scene in the film all of the characters get their confiscated items back. She is shown to be getting changed and during this the camera pans up from her legs to her face when she is in her underwear. This is an example of scopophilia as the audience are looking at her and are expected to be attracted to her from this as it is from a heterosexual male’s position. It then shows the other characters reacting to her doing this. This is part of the twin mechanisms as this is showing the audience identification of what they are feeling from characters within the film.

Example of female gaze: Birds of Prey

The same character of Harley Quinn, in Birds of Prey, is still wearing revealing clothing, but the camera does not focus in or linger on her exposed skin at any point and instead follows her face, her actions or her entire body. This is an example of the female gaze as she is still wearing clothes that people may find attractive, but it is not a key part of any of the scenes and is not the main focus of anything. The male characters in this may also be seen as attractive to the audience however, the camera does not focus on them as well and films their actions. This means the audience sees the film from the position of a woman rather than a heterosexual male.

Example of a film that is more female centric:

I think that a good example of modern filmmakers attempting to take a less sexist and more female centric approach is Midsommar by Ari Aster. It is about a woman visiting a cult in Sweden after the death of her family. The director is male which shows that men are creating more stories with women who are complex characters in the centre of the story and are not just a passive woman which creates a sense of scopophilia, or as someone who has no faults and is unobtainable. In the film the camera never focuses on Danny’s (the protagonist) bare skin or individual body parts that would evoke more of scopophilia. Even when women’s bare skin is shown in the film during a scene where the cult tries to get Danny’s boyfriend to impregnate a woman in the cult, it is not lingered on and is shown as all of the scene unfolding rather than just the woman. When bare skin of any character is shown on screen it is not focused on and is a part of the background, and the focus is placed onto the plot or to something that the audience would find disturbing as it is a psychological horror film. I think this shows that filmmakers are using less scopophilia of women as anytime nudity is shown it is because of the plot rather than showing it for no other reason than to create scopophilia.