We gaze

"To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men."
- John Berger

"One is not born a woman, but rather, becomes a woman."
- Simone de Beauvoir

Here, Berger assumes that ‘woman’ is an all-inclusive concept. He posits that, all women go through this coming of age where they must submit to the male gaze (46). de Beauvoir predates him, and yet suggests that his first assumption is incorrect. Women become women by submitting to the roles presented to them by society. Therefore one is not born into that space but rather places herself there by accepting social norms. But does that mean if the male gaze is rejected, there will be no women? Does woman exist because the social ‘we’ accept that male exists?

According to Laura Mulvey, as stated in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", the male gaze refers to the role of witness which we must all play as a result of the fetishization of the female body. She writes that, "A woman performs within the narrative, [while] the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking verisimilitude" (838). The idea is that, as consumers of art, we are forced to adopt the part of the voyeur. Mulvey further uses Alfred Hitchcock's overt play with voyeurism and scopophilia to clarify the concept. In his films, Hitchcock refuses to take the subversive route, one is forced not only to adopt the male gaze but to become to male gazing.

Pretty Little Liars, a telly show that sings praises to Hitchcock on a weekly basis, is targeted toward females between the ages of 12 and 34. It directly continues the trends that Mulvey defines in her essay. I would like to say that the male gaze still pervades popular culture because media is still produced by and for men but I'd be lying. In fact this show, which features a mysterious group of people continually spying on four teenage girls was created and produced by women based on a set of books written by a woman. [Why does the male gaze still pervade pop culture?] I honestly cannot that question.

Last year I went to see the Cindy Sherman exhibit at MoMa. In transforming herself from the "female object" to "active male spectator", had she defied the notion of a male gaze? Is the voyeur still a voyeur when the image on display is not being watched but rather being shown? Are those meant for his consumption, or hers? The male gaze lives on because we don't question it. And then when we do, it's provocative, it's pornography, it's unwelcome. In his 1974 BBC documentary, Ways of Seeing, John Berger says,

men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and more particularly and object of vision: a sight (47).

The gaze. Feminist theorists talk about the male gaze, seethe about the male gaze, challenge the male gaze but they do so from their own personal perspectives. A black woman will never see the world the way another woman does, or so says bell hooks.

                        

hooks defines a similar concept, “the oppositional gaze”, in her essay of the same name. She suggests that the oppositional gaze was forced upon black women because they were shown no one with whom they could identify. She then observes the gaze as a source of power rather than one which solely coerces submission. She argues that, “Black spectators actively chose not to identify...[and] were able to critically assess the cinema’s construction of white womanhood as an object of phallocentric gaze and choose not to identify with either the victim or the perpetrator” (122). Her opinion is strong, but her message not as widespread as one would hope... as I hoped. Today, where the black woman is missing in films and scripted television, she appears in the reality trash of our age, or on stage singing and rapping, or on the internet ripping bell hook’s precarious band-aid out of place.

                        

Which one is a more realistic portrayal of a modern day "black woman"? Criticizing the disassociated portrayals is one thing, but how does one remain active when a body like hers enters the discussion, when she sees the new turn cinema has taken, when black women are thrown up on a screen for the male gaze as well.

                        

I don’t fit in here, in this discourse. Not because I cannot, but because I don’t want to. When I watch a film, I never see myself on that screen. I rarely even see the characters. I see the story. It unfolds just as a book would. My “go-to” films are The Wizard of Oz, Funny Girl, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Kinky Boots and D.E.B.S. I don't identify with any of those. In fact, none of those panders to the male gaze that Berger describes. RHPS puts everyone on display in a fantastical romp and D.E.B.S targets a specific female demographic. I acknowledge the existence of the male gaze because I think to deny it would be unwise, but I don't believe it wields the power that it once did. When we watch a scene shown in the objective point of view, we are given a choice. Most people tend to focus on what they think the director intended of them, but when you glance inside a window you look wherever your eye takes you. That is my take on cinema. I look only where I choose to, and issue challenges to the concept that “women [must] watch themselves being looked at.”