The Theory of the 'Male Gaze'

The theory of the male gaze was founded by Laura Mulvey. Laura Mulvey wrote s very influential essay ''Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'' (1975.) This suggests that the way women are viewed in cinema is 'unequal'. The camera necessarily presents women as ''sexualised'' for the pleasure of men.

Overall Laura Mulvey says:
- Women are presented as sexual spectacle objects of pleasure
- Men have this gaze to avoid being 'castrated' 

Here is a diagram of the male gaze I drew in lesson explaining how the 'male gaze' works during a scene.

An example of the male gaze is Carrie (1976) in the first shower scene of the movie. As you can see in this scene in the movie is that teen age girls are happily changing in the changing rooms and smiling at each other which does not happen in reality. This is an example of a male gaze because a man would think this would happen in a girls changing room and walking about openly without clothes. Also the camera zooms up in the areas Carrie is washing herself in the shower without showing a lot but shows how a male would be pleased by it.