Male gaze theory

The 'gaze' is a term which shows how viewers interact with the visual media, including adverts, television and film.


The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. The phrase and definition was created by feminist, Laura Mulvey 1975.


Mulvey argued that traditional Hollywood films respond to a deep-seated drive known as “scopophilia”: the sexual pleasure involved in looking. Mulvey argued that most popular movies are filmed in ways that satisfy masculine scopophilia.





Main features of the male gaze theory :

-The representation of women as a sexual fantasy and from a heterosexual male point of view

-Scopophilia- the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies

-Objectification of female characters

-Patriarchal society

-Objectification of female characters

-Active male and passive female

-Men – controlling subjects

-Women as an image

-Men do the looking and the women are there to be looked at

-It feeds the needs of the male ego