Feminist Film Theory and Male Gaze

We always say that cinema is voyeuristic and it is designed to provide pleasure to the audience. Yet on a deeper level, when we dig into gaze theories or gender studies, we see that the iceberg is quite chaotic, problematic and highly questionable.

Let's break down Feminist Film Theory and gaze theories.

Feminist Film Theory examines how cinema constructs the dynamics between the one who is watching and the one being watched by analyzing gender, patriarchy and power structures, revealing how visual storytelling comes within gender norms and patriarchal structures.

Film industry, despite previously being collectively a gender-equal industry, has become predominantly male dominated over time. Therefore, the representations of gender have been shaped by heterosexual male perspectives for over a century. In short, it is all about the male gaze and the female spectator. Things being like this, film theorists examine the ways in which female characters are being portrayed, objectified, sexualized and sexploitated.

Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist, published an essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in 1975 and gave a psychoanalytical approach to feminist film theory. Throughout her work, Mulvey expands on her take on women as the passive spectator being watched by the male, oppressive, and active figure.

She asserts "The paradox of phallocentrism is in that it depends on woman (as lack) to provide meaning and order, to give symbolic meaning to the phallus (the yin needs its yang) – phallus also signifies threat of castration (woman's supposed desire to “make good the lack”)." (Mulvey,1975)

She argues that in classical filmmaking and Hollywood cinema, women are reduced to mere objects that serve the pleasure of the male spectator, reinforcing gender structures that are based on patriarchal power dynamics.

Of course these theories continue to evolve, questioning and challenging the ways cinema shapes and reinforces gendered power relations yet in this article, I tried to briefly break down and give you a concise overview of Feminist Film Theory and gaze theories.