Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Mulvey is best known for her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, written in 1973 and published in 1975. It was the subject of much interdisciplinary discussion among film theorists, which continued into the mid-1980s. Critics of the article pointed out that Mulvey’s argument implies the impossibility of the enjoyment of classical Hollywood cinema by women, and that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorship not organized along normative gender lines. Regarding Mulvey’s view of the identity of the gaze, some authors questioned “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” on the matter of whether the gaze is really always male. Mulvey does not acknowledge a protagonist and a spectator other than a heterosexual male, failing to consider a woman or homosexual as the gaze.

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet.  His essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, is often used as a university text. He lived in France for over fifty years. In 1972, the BBC broadcast his four-part television series Ways of Seeing and published its accompanying text, a book of the same name. The first episode functions as an introduction to the study of images.

• The male gaze is depicting women and the world through a straight males perspective, mainly seen in visual arts and literature.
• The male gaze presents women as sexual objects and are mainly shown through clothing and movement.
• John Berger- English art critic- author of ‘ways of seeing’
• Laura Mulvey – British feminist film theorist – theorised of the male gaze.

Notes on youtube video:

The male gaze: invokes the sexual politics of the gaze and suggests a sexualised way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, the woman is visually positioned as an “object”. Her feelings and thoughts are less important than the males and she is “framed” by male desire.

Laura Mulvey: British feminist and film theorist who invented “the male gaze” theory. She is mostly known for her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which focuses on John’s idea of “The male gaze”.

John Peter Berger: British essayist and cultural thinker as well as a plentiful novelist, poet, translator, art critic and screenwriter. He is best known for his book and BBC series “Ways of Seeing”. This book was largely based on the idea of “the male gaze”.

In the book ‘Ways of seeing’ by John Berger it is suggested that woman are sexualised and depicted. This occurs within video games to give the assumed straight male that is playing a certain sense of empowerment, this is thought of as the male gaze.

The male gaze, developed by Laura Muvley, by definition is the act of depicting women and the world in visual arts and in literature, from a masculine and heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as a sexual object that aids for pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.

In Johns book he talks about the way both men and women are presented in visual culture, he suggests that both genders entice different ‘gazes’ meaning that they are looked at differently for example from different angles. This happens particularly for the female gender as there is an obvious representation of their bum and an over exaggeration of a hip sway.

Levelling up Quotes= ‘some of the only places where Black characters could be found was in sports games’

‘ the most-active gameplaying demographic is African American teenagers’

Diversity Matters=  ‘Aimed at children affected by cancer’

‘narrative game about multiracial communities living in the city’s urban areas’

Laura Mulvey= ‘One is scopophilia’

‘The determining male gaze protects its phantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly’

Video game characters are presented in many different ways, however there could be a link between female characters and sexualisation in comparison to male characters, who could be said to be presented in “normal” ways.

Examples of female sexualisation include differences in female animations, camera angles and clothing. The purpose of this may be to satisfy the stereotypical straight male player who would usually be interested in these types of games.

This could link to an idea dubbed “The Male Gaze” which is a masculine, heterosexual viewpoint of the stereotypical straight male which portrays women as “objects” used for sexual pleasure. It was first applied by John Berger in a documentary-style analysis named “Ways of Seeing” in 1972. It showed how women were represented in art and advertising.

The concept was further applied by Laura Mulvey when she critiqued traditional representations of women in film, which solidified the term further.

The ‘Male Gaze’ is a very popular point of view used in media, this is mostly used in Film and Video Games. The ‘Male Gaze’ is essentially the interpreted way a male character would see the world depicted in the narrative, for example the ‘Male Gaze’ commonly over-sexualises any female character whether that be the costumes available for the genders or just the simple movement which may be exaggerated or iconic to that gender

“Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.

The series was intended as a response to Kenneth Clark‘s Civilisation TV series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon, and the series and book criticise traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. According to James Bridle, Berger “didn’t just help us gain a new perspective on viewing art with his 1972 series Ways of Seeing – he also revealed much about the world in which we live. Whether exploring the history of the female nude or the status of oil paint, his landmark series showed how art revealed the social and political systems in which it was made. He also examined what had changed in our ways of seeing in the time between when the art was made and today.”

The series has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.”

The extract pulled from Wikipedia gives a short insight to the book ‘Ways of seeing’ by John Berger, published in 1972 it expertly explains the ‘Male Gaze’ and what it commonly means in the sense of using it in media.

The male gaze is how a straight man feels empowered by objectifying and sexualising women in general and in media platforms.

Laura Mulvey created the idea of the so called ‘male gaze’ and revealed the amount of sexualisation women were getting. Then also presumed all men who play these games are only interested in seeing the sexualised version of a woman.

John Berger is well known for his piece of writing “Ways of seeing” which had many feminists viewing it around the male gaze.

John Berger sight of seeing

“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight.”

This is proving women are objectified and overly sexualised. Video games have proved the male gaze influenced how women are treated and looked at.

Levelling up article

“don’t look like they’re from around here” and appear “dirty.”

“Asian women perpetuates the stereotype that they are meek, submissive, sexual objects who exist purely for men’s entertainment.”

Why diversity matters article

 “As a girl growing up playing games I was always like, why do I have to play as a boy?”

“If we can show just one of them that they can be accepted anywhere – in both gaming and in the real, working world – and that gaming is not just about being super gender- or sexually conforming, then all the months of work is worth it. That’s why it’s important.”

Laura Mulvey- Visual pleasure and narrative cinema

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”

“The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.

• The male gaze is a part of representation of female characters in not only video games, but other forms of media too.
• The male gaze is a masculine, heterosexual point of view that bestows women as sexual objects solely for the pleasure of the straight male.
• John Peter Berger – An English art critic who wrote the book “Ways of Seeing” which was a book that created the idea of the male gaze.
• Laura Mulvey – She is mainly known for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in her book named “Screen” which further explored the idea of the male gaze and the male perspective in film and cinema.