Media is a
source of entertainment meaning it should appeal to the broad audience; people
of all race, gender, social status etc but it seems as if the “audience” only
consists of men.
The male gaze refers to the
depiction of male perspective; their way of viewing the world and those living
in it. We see this in a variety of art forms including paintings, advertisements,
and music videos. As pointed out by
Berger, paintings of naked women are made to please the man looking at it. “You
painted a naked women because you enjoy looking at her, you put a mirror in her
hand and you called the painting Vanity,
that morally condemning the women whose nakedness you had depicted for your own
pleasure.” (Berger, 51) Not only are the creations made mostly by men for men,
but they also work to lower the image and “social status” of a woman in
comparison to a man.
Really? Is this necessary?
When
was the last time you saw a music video with a woman acting as bait to a man’s
sexual desires or a blown up image of a young women in a two piece marketing
something that has no relevance to her appearance? Probably two minutes ago because
that is the kind of media world we live in today. The male gaze works to emphasize
the status difference imposed on the two genders. Women have always been considered
to be subordinate to men; the male gaze hammers in this ideology. “In a world orders
by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and
passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the
female figure which is styled accordingly.” (Mulvey, 387) The male gaze
consumes women as materialistic objects; as long as the depiction of a female
is how they perceive “it” to be, it’s all good. Once she acts to please herself
with the simple act of holding a mirror like in Vanity, she immediately becomes obscure. It’s almost as if a woman
can’t have thoughts of her own because it somehow threatens the male ego.
Similar
to the male gaze, the oppositional gaze is a way of putting down a certain group
of people, in this case, African Americans. Our media doesn’t do a good job at
displaying minority groups and when they do make an attempt it is always a spinoff
of demeaning stereotypes which aren’t true. This not only lowers the
self-esteem of African Americans but also forces them to “not think much” of
the issue. “I could always get pleasure from movies as long as I did not look
too deep.” (Hooks, 121) Humiliation of African American women have grew to a
point where the viewers don’t want to identify with the characters or critic
the direction of the film because it’s not who they are nor how they want to be
portrayed as.
Why does is have to be a women? and why of color?
The male gaze and the oppositional
gaze both show the diminishing morals of media. Not only do we watch such performances
but also encourage it by laughing or displaying any kind of emotion that may
have been the intention of the maker. Being surrounded my media 24/7, it has a
great impact in our lives whether we accept it or not. We live in a male
dominated world and media just promotes that idea instead of trying to change
it, we being the root of media. What is our role in all this chaos? We clearly
know everything, we are aware of the problem but don’t offer any solutions. Why?
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