Male Gaze

Male Gaze Theory

The Male Gaze theory is the idea of putting the viewers into the males eyes while the camera may linger on and essentially objectify on attractive woman. The Male Gaze theory is often seen as an unequal balance of either power or simply status due to the rarity of the counter idea of a Female Gaze.

Feminist views are very opposed to the concept of Male Gaze as it seems to encourage an unequal view of power and status to women. Male Gaze as a term first emerged in the 1970s though the concept has existed for much longer into film history than that and can be traced as far back to films such as Casablanca (1942) and in some cases earlier than that, though it was of course more reserved than our general concept of it in the modern age.

A prime example of the Male Gaze theory, in what many feminists consider an offensive use of women in media, as shown on this picture from The Spirit (2007) which got a lot of criticism for it's objectifying women, is for women to be shown either nude or simply in alluring postures for no reason other than to appeal to the male audience, which they feel makes women more objects than actual people.