Ways of Seeing/Viewing- Michelle Lee

     The male gaze is a predator of women that lingers behind the camera. It reinforces the concept of objectifying women and further emphasizes the obsession of female appearance by making the goal to please the male spectator. "The 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the women is designed to flatter him" (Berger 64). This quote describes most of the the media that is produced in the United States. It has become the ideology in which media makers have built their productions around. 

      Above, is an ad for Rihanna's new perfume line called Nude. Although this fragrance is for women, she is dressed in the bare minimum and playfully hiding behind a sheer cloth to entice the audience (assumed to be men) to use their imagination to fill in the blank. This choice of attire is to persuade women to purchase this perfume so they can look flirty and seductive for their man just like Rihanna. The male gaze is in every corner of our media and is used as a tool against women to ultimately please the male audience. 
     "Pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and  passive/female" (Mulvey 837). Stereotypical masculine traits of actively pursuing are applied to objectified women. Men look at women in the media as prey and are made to believe that women are created to look beautiful for them and only them. It gives them a sense of righteousness and entitlement to own the object in the media which are unfortunately usually women. Those same women behind the camera are simultaneously brainwashed to believe that they should be the object of attraction for those men. The flaw starts with the outfit choice, the angle in which they pose, even down to the subtle feminine gaze that they portray through the lens.
     Bell Hooks speaks of the oppositional gaze which concentrates on the relationship of race in the media. The oppositional gaze is yet another flaw in our society. "Even when representation of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve, enhance, and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze" (Hooks 119). Hooks explains the existence and purpose of black women in the media is only to make white women look better and more desirable. Black women cannot be seen as who they are without being pitted against the supposedly superior white woman. As explained by Hooks, the oppositional gaze has developed because of how the media glorifies differences. She says in this interview (Click Here) how her students can relate to her lessons when she uses films as a tool. The montage of films used in the clip are movies and television shows that a majority of the population will find to be familiar which only stresses the ideology that she names as the oppositional gaze. 
     My new understanding of the media has made me realize the severity of our flawed media structure. The male gaze and oppositional gaze is so deeply embedded in films and television shows that many of us do not even realize it, myself included. I feel that I will not be able to engage in our media society in the same way from now on because of my new awareness to these major challenges. I hope that others will be informed and come to the same realizations I have come to and perhaps that will make a change in the content the media industry produces. 

Sources:

  John Berger,  Ways of Seeing
Bell Hooks, The Oppositional Gaze
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema