The Male Gaze – the perspective of a notionally typical heterosexual man considered as embodied in the audience or intended audience for films and other visual media, characterized by a tendency to objectify or sexualize women.
“it’s because of the male gaze that female characters are regularly eroticized.”

(Source – Oxford Languages)

Laura Mulvey – a filmmaker and theorist who created the term “the male gaze” in her 1973 paper Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

John Berger – an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. In his book Ways of Seeing, Berger observed that ‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have no means been overcome – men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’.

The Male Gaze

The male gaze is an objectification of and towards women. The ‘gaze’ is looked at as sexualising women and objectifying them and empowering men, to indicate that females feelings and thoughts are less important than women being ‘framed’ by male desire.

Laura Mulvey, is a feminist who explains that most films are designed to visually pleasure masculine ‘scopophilia’. Scopophilia is the sexual pleasure in looking. Her concept is described as a heterosexual, masculine gaze. She argues the disliking of women being sexualised by their body language and fashion in most movies, and how women are there to be a visual pleasure for men.

The Male Gaze–

the male gaze is the perspective of a heterosexual man and how it is used to create the feeling of empowerment in men and the objectification and sexualisation of women in video games, films and other media.

Laura Mulvey–

is a creator who works on explaining and exposing why the male gaze is so overused in games and how it is used. for example she talks about how the camera angles are used differently for male and female characters. for example male characters have a more over the shoulder camera angle in 3rd person games where as woman’s camera angles focus of getting the woman’s entire body in the shot. she also talks about how little clothing the female characters wear and how the heals they where bare inappropriate for fighting and are only used for the sexualisation of the character.

John Berger–

“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 shows how he too agrees that women are over sexualised and how the male gaze effectively objectifies the woman and how they are treated by men as something to look at and sexualise. aso woman start to feel as though they are just an object as the male gaze is such a prominent thing in current media such as video games.

Pithy quotes.

“It sets a dangerous precedent when game developers don’t do their research.”

“a link between violent video games and real-world violence.” 

“”young, white, straight male”

” they can be accepted anywhere- in both the gaming world- and that gaming.”

“displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men”

the male gaze- is the perspective of a heterosexual man and how it creates a feeling of empowerment of men objectifying and sexualising women in video games and other forms of media.

Laura Mulvey- is a creator who created the idea of the male gaze and exposing game creators for sexualising women and making the assumption that all men who play the game wants to see the woman’s butt per say.

John Berger- The voice actor for both Archie and Albert Crisp in the video game Grande Theft Auto: London 1969

“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.”

John Berger sight of seeing

This shows how men overly sexualised woman and treat them like objects. The male gaze shows how video games have an influence on how we act today and how women get treated due to being sexualised in videogames.

QUOTES

why diversity matters:

“The industry traditionally projects an image that is young, white, straight and male.”

“We aim to provide a welcoming and safe space for everyone who attends, to experiment with costume, gender and sexuality, and know that they will not only not be judged, but entirely supported and celebrated.” – xbox

LEVELLING UP

“Latinx characters have often been portrayed as gangbangers and drug dealers, as seen in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, with ridiculous, cliched gang names like “The Cholos” and “The Cubans,” voiced in exaggerated, stereotypical Hispanic accents”

“Worse still are the portrayals of Muslim/Arab/Middle Eastern people, who are often relegated to the role of terrorist.”

VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA

“The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking”

“ultimately the meaning of women is sexual difference”

FEMINIST FREQUENCT SITE

The male gaze – Laura Mulvey and John Berger

This is a key idea of feminist film theory, which visual media believed that men tends to sexualise women for a male viewer. The male gaze theory is when women in the media are portrayed from the eyes of a heterosexual man and that these women are represented as passive objects of male desire. This suggests that the female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, with the male. John Berger observed that by no means been overcome, men act and woman appear. Men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at.

Quotes

1. “It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.”
2. “Woman’s desire is subjugated to her image (…) as bearer, not maker, of meaning.”
3. “In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”
4. ” I still see storytelling for men by men that is always reinforcing the male gaze“
5. “Sheer male interest filled his gaze which was entirely focused on her. She’d never before felt so female, so utterly desirable, so wanton.”
6. “The “male gaze,” as a shaper of my life’s choices, is largely incidental.”
7. “There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.”
8. “The girl anchors the stage, sucks in the male gaze, and, depending on who she is, throws her own gaze back out into the audience.”

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.