‘Ways of Seeing’ and ‘The Male Gaze’

What is the Gaze? 
The concept of gaze is one that analyses how an audience views, or is intended to view, the people presented.  The types of gaze are primarily categorised by who is doing the looking and who controls the gaze (eg. director, camera, lead actor – historically male).

To look; to stare; to gaze - Looking and ‘the gaze’:  Jonathan Schroeder (1998), “to gaze implies more than to look at – it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.”

Jonathan Schroeder notes, 'Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view' (Schroeder 1998, 208).

Gender is not the only important factor in determining what Jane Gaines calls 'looking relations' - race and class are also key factors.     

Michel Foucault, who linked knowledge with power, related the 'inspecting gaze' to power rather than to gender in his discussion of surveillance (Foucault 1977).

From a feminist perspective , the ‘Male Gaze’ can be reduced to:

       ·         How men look at women

·         How women look at themselves

·         How women look at other women.

 Features of the ’ Male Gaze’

·         Voyeuristic – pleasure in ‘watching’. The camera lingers on the curves of the female body. Events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events.

·         Relegates women to the status of objects.

·         Male active / female passive: the female viewer experiences the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

      Here i have analysed 'Telephone' By Laday Gaga and Beyonce, the male gaze features increasingly in this music video. Male Gaze is firstly being reinforced through costumes, the women are all dressed in flesh revealing clothing eg the female prison officers are dressed in tight revealing black PVC outfits, both women are very butch, this could also represent how men like the idea of lesbians. Dialouge also reinforces the male gaze being represented, words such as "You've been a naughty girl" this is a sexual induendo . Location also has an impact in representing the Malegaze, for example the main section of the music video has been shot in a Prison with chains and whips, this is a direct link to S&M and fetish- some men enjoy punishing women with S&M.