Task 7- Applying the Male Gaze

We can apply the Male Gaze theory to pretty much anything, not just music magazines, like this clip from Hollyoaks. In this clip there are a selection of scenes from a single episode where the character of Mitzeee Minniver introduced for the first time. Lets watch...

 

It starts with a scene of Mitzeee walking down the road with her legs fully on show. There is a lot of implied sexuality and she has to even pull her skirt down when it starts to ride up. She is enhanced even more because of the people sitting around her as they follow her with there eyes, the camera then pans around to follow her backside playing of her sexuality even more and objectifies her.

Next she poses next to a window as the camera quick cuts to her face where she removes her sunglasses, pucks her lips and bats her eyelashes. Throughout this scene we also get a song called 'She Wants To Move' which as the title suggests is about a woman who likes to move which can make peoples mind wander and also starts to continues to make her seem like more of an object.

We then get a couple of quick fire scenes where she talks to someone on the phone, makes a joke about female sex toys and kisses someone randomly.

In the second to final scene it starts with a seductive shot of her lips and then a scene where she sprays someone down with a water gun. throughout this scene she is clad in just a bikini and followed around by a cohort of young men to emphasize her sexuality. Then the clip ends with acting like a prostitute and gesturing someone who she is obviously winding up down an alley. Even after she starts to get threatened she starts showing off her body to him making her seem like I've said before as just an object.

Task 6 - The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze is a theory penned by Laura Mulvey that addresses the power that woman can have over men with there sexuality. Take this image for example...

In this image we can see a cover of the music magazine Q with Lily Allen on the cover. In this image she is not being shot in a way which celebrates her music career or achievements in the industry, no, she is shot in a way that flaunts her sexuality and appeals to the Patriatical society that they want to buy the magazine. The seductive pose to the tagline 'SEXY BEAST LILY ALLEN & HER WICKED WICKED WAYS' are there specifically to appeal to the male demographic. This can be seen more clearly when I compare and contrast it with this image...

When it is a man on the cover it is the complete opposite. This is the same magazine but it now has Noel Gallagher of Oasis and now The High Flying Birds, he is not being exploited for his sexuality to appeal to the audience, because that isn't what the audience wants to see. He is actually being celebrated for his music and is pictured next to a speaker with a tagline that empowers rather than exploits him. The Male Gaze is a powerful thing. Now if we look at this next magazine...

 

This is Beth Ditto who took the theory of the Male Gaze and parodied it hard. She is not what most people would call sexy or attractive, so this was a powerful statement. But as Ditto, lead singer of punk band The Gossip, has already starred in her own porn movie with her lesbian transgender lover, and regularly takes all her clothes off on stage because she gets overheated, this nude stunt is not out of character for her, either. Therefore not really having the effect she wanted it to have.