essay

How has Film affected the Male Gaze in today’s society? 

By Elizabeth Ibbotson

This essay will be analysing and evaluating how films have affected the male gaze and in turn its effect on women on the screen and in today’s society. “Pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.” (Mulvey, 1992,page 27) How these films influence men to look at women as an object of desire and how the films portray the women as a cinematic spectacle. We will be looking at two films in particular in which the male gaze is used. The first film is “Some like it hot” (1959) directed by Billy Wilder and starring screen siren Marilyn Monroe. From observing specific scenes in relation to how Marilyn Monroe is portrayed visually and erotically in both her appearance and behaviour we can analyse the way that she acts which has affected the male gaze. The second analysis will show the male gaze in films from one of cinemas ultimate fantasy womanisers.  Through looking at numerous scenes from the “James Bond” films, where the narrative is often controlled by his body language we can examine the male gaze through his reactions and expressions and how these in turn influence the women starring in these films to act in response to the male gaze.

The male gaze was first introduced by Jacques Lacan and is a psychoanalytical term. The Gaze was originally used in film theory in the 1970’s, however the term “gaze” is now more broadly used by media theorist. The gaze is about how the audience views the people presented and is categorised by who is doing the viewing. It is also about the viewer mirroring what is being seen. Laura Mulvey suggests the concept of the male gaze being a feature of power in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema”, she believes “The male is the mover of the narrative while the female’s association with space or matter deprives her of subjectivity.”(Doane, page 6). The male gaze is the relationship between the viewer and the viewed, and the gazer and the gazed. The male gaze is about “the image of a woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man” (Mulvey page 17). Mulvey suggests two modes of gazing when viewing a film, “Voyeuristic and Fetishistic” the concepts of an empowered male gaze. In these two theories, the gaze is not associated with a unified subject or desire. Fetishistic is a response to Freud’s theory to evoke a consequence of castration anxiety. The Freudian scenario of fetishism “The traumatic moment of the look of the mother’s “castrated” body initiates a process of simultaneous affirmation and denial of possibility of the subjects own castration, and hence the manufacture of a substitute maternal phallus in the form of the fetish” (Doane, page 14). A fetish is described as sexual attraction to objects or body parts.

Voyeurism or Mulvey’s term “to-be-looked-at-ness” involves a controlling gaze, observing others for pleasure, engaged in their intimate behaviour. “Voyeurism according to Christian Metz is a perfect type of desire insofar as it presupposes and activates as its fundamental condition a spatial distance between subject and object”(page 12)

Another term used in cinema about the gaze is called “Scopophilia” which is where the male viewer objectifies women in to mere objects to be looked at. Mulvey describes it as “using another person for a sexual stimulation through sight”(page 10)

The use of the male gaze can be identified in the film “Some like it hot” which was seen as shocking when it premiered in 1959. There are scenes with cross dressers and Marilyn Monroe that were classed as very sexual at that time. Naming the character Sugar Cane can be classed as suggestive, whetting the appetite for the visual gaze to come.  The male gaze is utilised early on in the opening scene where Sugar walks past the two cross dressers as she is getting on to the train. The cross dressers are arguing when they suddenly stop as they see her, seductive music begins to play, the camera switches to her walking in an exaggeratedly feminine way, wearing a tight fitted skirt and high heals. Here she plays to the male gaze by behaving as if not realising she is being looked at by both them and the men in the audience illustrating both scopophilia and voyeurism. The two men talk about how she moves, “Jell-O on springs, a built in motor”. This scene supports Freud’s theory of  “the act of seeing is more erotic than the actual touch. The use of voyeurism with the two cross dressers make the viewer look at Sugar Cane in the same erotic way using the technique of mirroring.  Sugar walks past them and is made to jump by the trains’ engine roaring at her. This shows symbolism, it is as if the train was also aroused by her sexuality.

There are numerous scenes that seem surreal to women but are a fantasy for men. The women undress and get naked throughout the film with overly erotic mannerisms. Acting in a way that men perceive women to behave with glossy pouting lips, legs flexing and pointing while undressing as if men where watching them do so, even though there are no men around in the scenes they appear to enjoy eroticizing for the gazer. “The presence of women can threaten the flow of narrative, by freezing the action in moments of erotic contemplation”(Mulvey, page 63) Therefore the actresses are told to act in this sexual nature solely for the male viewer and what he wants to believe and desire, as John Berger writes in “ways of seeing” “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”. (Berger, 1972,page 45)

Throughout the film there are scenes where Monroe is a cinematic spectacle and is there to be gazed at giving the viewer control and power of the gaze.

Looking at the male gaze both from the male actors perspective and the male viewer is shown in dramatic form in the “James Bond” films. The big band music pulls us towards the screen where instantly we are lured by dancing silhouettes of naked women, a classic scene of women objectifying themselves. This gives pleasure to the viewer who is able to gaze freely, whether the women welcome the gaze or not, conforming to the hegemonic norm as described in feminist theory. The women in these films portray themselves as sexualised objects, their characters are transformed by the way they act to meet the male idea of women. As with “Some like it hot”, innuendo related names are given to the Bond girls, Honey Rider, Pussy Galore and Plenty O’Toole which immediately arouses the male viewers attention. The viewer does not only respond to how the women objectify themselves but at how Bond reacts to their presence through his gaze and expressions and how we view him viewing the women, “recognising or identifying with the image, a narcissistic pleasure to do with the constitution or maintenance of the ego”(Mulvey, page 62).

Analysis of the James Bond film, “Doctor No” (1962) starring Sean Connery and directed by Terence Young shows us an example of voyeurism where Bond is spying on the woman and again we can see “the act of seeing is more erotic than the actual touch”. We observe this through his facial expressions, making you feel what he see is pleasurable and taking pleasure yourself. There is a scene where the Bond girl, Ursula Andress is walking out of the sea on to the beach singing a song about a mango tree. Here the audience is viewing the beautiful woman emerge from the sea in a bikini, she is unaware she is being watched which instantly arouses the male viewers. Then they are also viewing Sean Connery’s reactions, he is stood half behind a tree, further back on the beach spying on her. As the scene goes on his expression is aroused with one eyebrow lifting and a pleasurable look and knowing smile appears on his face. Here Bond is controlling the narrative of the film with his gaze. This scene is an example of scopophilia, the pleasure of looking and taking others as objects of desire. “Scopophilia pleasure involves seeing others as sexual stimulation” (Mulvey page 62). It is also an example of voyeurism, Bond spying on a woman undressing. This leads the audience to mirror his actions and look at the Bond girl in the same way, as if peeping through the screen, taking pleasure in the secretive act of watching from a safe distance.

 “Die Another Day” (2002) directed by Lee Tamahori and staring Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry is visually sensual allowing the viewer to experience the male fantasy. The main scene for this analysis is showing a beautiful paradise beach where Bond first sees the girl ‘Jinx’ emerge from the sea. The scene starts by zooming in to Bond looking through binoculars, the camera changes so that the viewer is looking through the binoculars to the sea as if they are Bond. After a second you see the water rise with a woman pushing her body upwards with her head to the sky, as she lowers her head her arms raise in to the sky and she gasps for air as water drips from her body. This scene is intended as a male fantasy, a woman would not normally be found doing this on a beach and is an example of fetishism, a man made object of desire that has power over others. The film has made the female body in to cinematic spectacle and an object to be looked at for male pleasure. This really targets the viewers as they objectify Jinx and control her with their own gaze, as the camera is set so that it is the viewer watching and not just Bond. The scene continues with Jinx walking towards James Bond shaking her hips and drying her self, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is being watched. This is another example of voyeurism, which leads the audience to have control of the gaze, whether she wants it or not leads us to hegemonic ideologies within our society.

The films I have looked at “Some like it hot”, “Doctor No.” and “Die another day” have shown the regular usage of the male gaze in a cinematic style. This way of portraying women could influence how we as an audience perceive women and how women today may respond to that perception. I can see that they all use fetishism, scopophilia, symbolism and voyeurism in varying amounts. This could be seen as sexist but I feel that these films have a huge appeal to women too as they are blended with humour as in “Some Like it hot” and exotic destinations and power in “James Bond”.  The use of the gaze in films controls the male gazer, however, I also think that because we constantly see films of women acting for the male gaze it has become the norm and this could influence women to perceive themselves in this way in real life.  We can see the use of the male gaze everywhere in today’ society from music video’s, magazines, billboards and many aspects of the media showing us the true power of “The gaze”.