Representaion – TASK 1

Laura Mulvey The “male gaze” is something that sexualises women by empowering men and objectifying women. In the “male gaze” the women is objectified to fit the wants of the heterosexual male.

John Berger – The book “ways of seeing” says in it that women from their earliest childhood have always had to survey themselves constantly. She is told that is it crucial on how she appears to men as it determines how successful she is in life.

8 pithy quotes:

Leveling up

As technology advanced, Black and other characters of color became more prevalent, even if most often confined to the fighting genre.

Despite many video game companies being based in East Asia, most games feature white protagonists.

Why diversity matters

Katie asked why it was important that Nintendo’s iconic plumber accompanied her on the ride. “Because he taught me to never give up,” her daughter said.

If you do not see yourself on Netflix, on Instagram, in games, in forums, where are you? Do you mean anything? It matters.

Laura Mulvey

At first glance, the cinema would seem to be remote from the undercover world of the surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim.

Male gaze

Laura Mulvey identifies the sexualisation of femininity and female characters compared to the male character that we identify with due to the lack of sexualisation and the addition of development and characteristics shown to deepen their character, in a lot of games and movies, Mulvey stated female characters are forced to identity with passive objects to be looked at and desired compared to men’s representation which is more focussed on how the characters body language reinforces the features they have- e.g. an assassin moving sneakily. She also has the idea that the majority of movie directors, game developers, big artists and key people in the media are men therefore we view media in a mans view hence the male gaze, an example would be in a film panning the camera on a sexualised female scene or in a media game exaggerations of female body parts overlooking how they’re actually meant to walk to show more depth to the character. This doesn’t mean male characters can’t be sexualised either- there’s just a stronger amount of female sexualisation- someone replaced popular oversexualised female poses with a boy doing it but that would still be viewing it in the male gaze. The male gaze supports the idea that a sexualised way of looking empowers men and sexualised women