The Male Gaze

The term 'Male Gaze' was first coined by Laura Mulvey in her essay 'Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema' (1975) where the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. This can be shown when the camera focuses on women's bodies. The theory shows how women are often deprived of a human identity in film are often relegated to the status of objects used for the gratification of men with women in the audience having to watch from a males perspective.

Some theorists have also noted how the sexualisation of the female body often occurs in situations where it has nothing to do with the product being advertised. Mulvey's essay states that the role of a woman in a narrative has two functions
1.As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
2.As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view
Mulvey believes that the 'Male Gaze' leads to hegemonic ideologies within society. This is because of the a lot of the representation of women in media is through a mans perspective, other women will start to adopt this way of thinking therefore judging other woman the way a man would which then leads to them objectifying other women.

Laura Mulvey's Maze Gale theory wont be applied to my music video as my video is mainly performance based and no one starring in my video will be viewed as an object in the way that Mulvey describes in her theory.