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Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein found guilty of sexual assault trial. Actresses Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd are amongst those that testified. The Me Too (or #MeToo) movement is a social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment towards women, where people publicize allegations of sex crimes A number of high-profile posts and responses from celebrities included Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence, and Uma Thurman.

The ME TOO campaign

The notion of the Male Gaze comes from Laura Mulvey's seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). The concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. The male gaze can be thought of in 3 ways: How men look at women How women look at themselves How women look at other women

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘Male Gaze’ in 1975. She believes that in film audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Scopophilia: A term coined by the Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. What does this word mean?

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

Features of the Male Gaze The camera lingers on the image 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. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

Features of the Male Gaze The masculine subject (spectator) emerges from two scopophillic processes working in tandem

• Voyeuristic objectification of female characters
• Narcissistic identification with male characters

The female character functions as an object of desire – sexualised.

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

• The object of the gaze is made responsible for the character/spectator’s anxiety – punished (sadistic)

• The object of the gaze is turned into a fetish object – a spectacle.

Neither option allows for the depiction of the female as a subject in her own right.

Features of the Male Gaze Male Anxiety: Female also signify the threat of castration of the male subject/spectator. To resolve this, there are two options:

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

Woman as object of anxiety – to be punished Alfred Hitchcock Psycho (1960)

Woman as fetish – Hollywood celebrity spectacle Marilyn Monroe

Features of the Male Gaze: Male Anxiety

GAze THEORY: THE MALE GAZE

Schroeder, J (1998) 'Consuming Representation: A Visual Approach to Consumer Research’ in Stern, B (Ed.) Representing Consumers: Voices, Views and Visions. London: Routledge

[T]o 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. (Schroeder 1998, p.208)