Nude Girl on a Panther Skin (1844) by Félix Trutat shows a reclining nude woman being watched by a disproportionately large male face at the window of her bedroom; the painting "powerfully exemplifie[s]" the concept of the male gaze.[1]
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts[2] and in literature[3] from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.[4] In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: that of the man behind the camera, that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and that of the spectator gazing at the image.[5][6]
The concept of the gaze (le regard) was first used by the English art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing (1972), which presents analyses of the representation of women — as passive objects to be seen — in advertising and as nude subjects in European art.[7] The feminist intellectual Laura Mulvey applied the concepts of the gaze to critique traditional representations of women in cinema,[8] from which work emerged the concept and the term of the male gaze.[9]
The beauty standards perpetuated by the gaze have historically sexualized and fetishized the black female nude due to an attraction to their characteristics but at the same time punished black women and pushed their bodies outside of what is considered desirable.[10]
The psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan are the foundations from which Mulvey developed the theory of the male gaze and interpreted and explained scopophilia, the "primordial wish for pleasurable looking" that is satisfied by the cinematic experience.[11]: 807 The terms scopophilia and scoptophilia identify both the aesthetic joy and the sexual pleasures derived from looking at someone or something.[11]: 815 Concerning the psychologic applications and functions of the gaze, the male gaze is conceptually contrasted with the female gaze.[12][13]
^Hoy, Pat C.; DiYanni, Robert (1999-11-23). Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. McGraw-Hill Companies, Incorporated. pp. IV. ISBN 978-0-07-229045-5.
^"Feminist Aesthetics". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2012. Retrieved 13 May 2015. Assumes a standard point of view that is masculine and heterosexual. . . . The phrase 'male gaze' refers to the frequent framing of objects of visual art so that the viewer is situated in a masculine position of appreciation.
^That the male gaze applies to literature and to the visual arts: Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Małgorzata (2013). Soft-Shed Kisses: Re-visioning the Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 15.
^Devereaux, Mary (1995). "Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers, and the Gendered Spectator: The "New" Aesthetics". In Brand, Peggy Z.; Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.). Feminism and tradition in aesthetics. University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. p. 126. ISBN 9780271043968.
^Walters, Suzanna Danuta (1995). "Visual Pressures: On Gender and Looking". In Walters, Suzanna Danuta (ed.). Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 57. ISBN 9780520089778.
^Bell, Vicki (2017-01-14). "How John Berger Changed Our Ways of Seeing Art". The Independent. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
^A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James, Sheila Dillon, p. 75, 2012, Wiley, ISBN 1444355007, 9781444355000
^"6 Female Artists on What the Male Gaze Means to Them". Repeller. 2016-09-22. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
^Farrington, Lisa E. (1983). "Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude". Woman's Art Journal. 24 (2): 15–23. doi:10.2307/1358782. JSTOR 1358782.
^ abCite error: The named reference mulvey1975 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference interview-mulvey-2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Jacobsson, Eva-Maria (1999). A Female Gaze? (PDF) (Report). Stockholm, Sweden: Royal Institute of Technology. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-10-04.
In feminist theory, the malegaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective...
theory that discusses the malegaze, Michel Foucault, and white feminism in film theory. In the 1992 essay "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators"...
female gaze. It is a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's term "the malegaze", which represents not only the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer...
looming act of the gaze inextricably to power. The term "female gaze" was created as a response to the proposed concept of the malegaze coined by Laura...
has been touched on by several writers under the broader context of the malegaze. From the Western perspective, panchira is characterized by the sexual...
male audiences largely remember scenes that involve empty fields and unknown strangers or what they have ascribed as "rural terror." The "malegaze,"...
to concentrate on the malegaze. In 17th-century portrayals, combining Susanna's rejection of the men's advances while gazing toward heaven became common...
camera positioning and the male viewer constituted the "bearer of the look". Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of the malegaze of this era: "voyeuristic"...
ambiguous femme fatale, while others argued she was a product of the malegaze. Ada Wong is an American woman of Chinese descent. She was conceived for...
the feminine perspective, emphasizing the female gaze over the malegaze. It stands against the malegaze through women's camaraderie, intelligence, and...
on Annie Lennox, the singer whose powerful androgynous look defied the malegaze". Subsequent hits with Eurythmics include "There Must Be an Angel (Playing...
well as by male directors, like Pedro Almodovar. The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing...
the context of race and white people reading". Gaze Imperial gazeMalegaze "Writing Past The White Gaze As A Black Author". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-09-13...
basic representation of women, female agency, power and authority, the malegaze, and issues of gender and sexuality. Johanson's 2015 study, funded by...
damaging gender roles for women and for its potential appeal for the malegaze. At the same time, the aesthetic primarily derives from "French culture...
such as Sylvia Sleigh is an example of this reversal of the malegaze as her work depicts male sitters presented in traditional erotic reclining poses that...
commercial cinema; notably, the malegaze is fully presented, described, and explained, and contrasted with the female gaze, in the essay "Visual Pleasure...
a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the malegaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting...
the malegaze, which can lead to problematic and objectifying portrayals. In video games, lesbian characters have often been depicted through the male gaze...
significant attention, generating discussions about nudity in film and the malegaze. Despite this, Sweeney has stated she would not stop doing nude scenes...
643–652. doi:10.1080/10481889309539000. Wood, Mitchell J. (2004). The Gay MaleGaze: Body image disturbance and gender oppression among gay men. In Lipton...
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