Post 2 Bethany Si Yue Mong

     A male gaze is how audiences in media see others in a male’s point of view. The male gaze becomes a pervasive form of vision in popular culture due to the different social presence of male and female. In our society, media affects social convention such as gender role. Because of gender role, people’s behaviors and thoughts are somehow shaped by the media. In John Berger’s article, he stated how male and female are portrayed in media and how does the ideal images of men and women affect people in our culture.

     In the “Ways of Seeing”, Berger illustrated how media portrayed men and women and their relationship. Berger wrote, “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.” In this quote, my interpretation of “promise of power” means how men are capable of doing things. In the article, Berger gave examples that promise of power “may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior to the man.” In other words, it means no matter how men are like internally or externally, men are going to see these factors as exterior. However, the case will be different when people see it in a female point of view. Berger claimed, “By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.” In this quote, the writer presented women who express themselves in a more conservative way. Berger used passive voice – “can and cannot be done to her” to show that women are at a passive state unlike men. It shows there is difference on how media portrayed men and women.

     A recent movie “Skyfall” is a good example to prove that men are the leading role and women are followers and appendages of men in media. In the story, James Bond is always the hero who saves the people. And, he won’t get killed so easily because he is powerful and smart. However, when it compares with the Bond girl, women are portrayed weaker in media. In the movie, the Bond girl’s life is controlled by her lover, Silva. James Bond tried to save the Bond girl but she still finally got killed by Silva. The part that James Bond tries to save the girl and the part that Silva tries to kill her both indicates that men are the leading role in media. And, women are just followers. Also, the part when Silva and Bond shot the glass on top of the Bond girl’s head shows that the girl is just an appendage during their bet. This movie indicates that men are always the leading role and women are only followers or appendages.

     An oppositional gaze is about how the relationship between media and race affect audiences. In “Black Looks: Race and Representation,” Bell Hooks talked about how media affected black women’s images. He wrote, “Conventional representations of black women have done violence to the image.” In this quote, “image” refers to how white women look ideally in the media. Because media portrays a male gaze, it makes white females more desirable for both white and black men. However, the black women become the reverse side of how the media sees women should be. This is the reason why Hooks thinks the society sees black women as image which “done violence” to the ideal white women image. As a result, the oppositional gaze raises the issue of racism.

     In the “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey suggested that a male gaze in media does not only give pleasure to viewers who are mostly men, but also to women. In the article, the author wrote “There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at.” Because of the influence of media, not just men but women believe that they should look like how women are portrayed in the media. The ideal form of women becomes the standard form of how women believe they should look like in the society. This explained why Mulvey said it is also a “pleasure in being looked at.” It is because a male gaze does not only provide pleasure for male, but also female.

     After learning about how gender differences play a role in media, I realized how the media reveals our society and culture. Also, I realized how our culture and society interacts with media to develop social conventions or even stereotypes. As a media consumer, I think the best way for me to understand how our culture, society and media interact together is to put myself into what I learned. For example, when I watch the movie “Skyfall”, I realized the Bond girl is portrayed as sexy, pretty and dependent to male. And, James Bond is portrayed as smart and strong who gets a lot of girls. I will analyze from what I learned about the relationship between media and gender depiction, instead of purely believing in that girls who are pretty or dependent will lead them to get strong or smart guys.

Here's the link to a Youtube video of how women nowadays influenced by the media:
http://youtu.be/hMxtBL8lHbU

Post #2

Male gaze is a catchy, yet destructive, method of using and portraying women through the media. In Ways of Seeing, Berger defines male gaze as "what he is capable of doing for you and to you" (Berger 46). It is destructive in the sense that the makers of the media production takes women as objects and portrays them to the viewers (usually males) to attract their attention to the women and the product that she's in contact with. This method is usually sexually portrayed and displays women as extremely vulnerable and submissive to the viewer that she's looking at through the camera. The image may be pleasing to the eyes of the male spectator, but it negatively affects women and their existences.

The ad by Dolce & Gabbana shows four men vs. one woman. Honestly, I'm not really sure what D & G is trying to advertise through this picture, but all I see is a gang of men trying to rape (?) a woman. The men are looking down at the woman as she's either expecting or resisting what she's about to get.

The ad is by Michelob (beer) despicts women as beer. The woman seems to be dancing in sexual ways.

Oppositional gaze is a challenge for black people portrayed in the media due to white supremacy. Hooks stated that black female spectators connected to the way the black female characters were portrayed in the media "as to perpetuate white supremacy and with it a phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is "white"" (Hooks 118). In other words, although white females were displayed in sexual ways to attract male gaze, black females were portrayed very minimally in the media. This is why black females have to imagine themselves as white in order for them to connect themselves with the female characters that are portrayed in the media.

After reading and discussing the articles, I now understand what "sex sells" actually means. I originally thought that the advertisements would only affect the consumers and audiences that are interested in the products. However, sex sells the products that are displayed in the advertisements, as well as (mostly) women that are portrayed as well. The idea of submissiveness and objectivity in females in the media not only affects the models, but it affects all women. Going back to the Dolce & Gabbana ad, the fact that the gang of men are holding the woman down gives an impression that women have to become objects, submissive, and powerless.

Also, these flaws are not only visibly portrayed in the media, but it is hidden in Disney movies as well. For the most part, the Disney princesses are always seeking for their prince charming to rescue them from the evil stepmother, witch, monster, etc. Even female characters in Disney movies are submissive and powerless when it comes to male characters, which gives an impression to young viewers that that is how females must act before their male counterparts. Personally, I was one of the girls who grew up admiring the princesses from Disney movies. After realizing the damage that it created in my childhood, I'm not sure what my identity is in the media... 

The Male and Oppositional Gaze - June Marie Davis

The Male Gaze is a theory that defines a woman’s role as merely being an object for male spectatorship.  John Berger put it simply, “men act and women appear…The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.  Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight”.  I can recall growing up my grandmother saying to me, “you need to know how to cook, clean and always look your best and keep your husband happy”.  I find it interesting just thinking about my upbringing, I was already being molded into Berger’s theory.  The phrase that comes to mind, “you are meant to be seen, not heard”, my brother and I heard that a lot growing up, but reading Berger’s work I find it very apropos to the point he is making about women being objects.

Modern Day  - The Judgement of Paris???

 

Popular culture has become pervasive because most of what we consume is of sexual content.  We are visual beings and we have been seduced by social media to believe that women are objects.   Pervasiveness is what we as a soiety consume on a daily basis, it's in food, art, etc.  Mulvey’s reading discusses this very thing, that there is pleasure in looking.  She talks in length about Freud’s theory on scopophilia, which holds true especially alongside these images I’ve uploaded.

Hmmm...What is this really saying?

 

Really?

 

FOR MEN! of course!

 

 

The Oppositional Gaze, article by Bell Hooks discusses black representation in cinema and other media outlets.  More specifically, Hooks breaks down the way black women have viewed themselves in media as the spectator.  Not only is this article about the “negation” of black representation in media, but it is also an article about the development of black cinema; you cannot discuss one without the other.  The lines that stick out for me when reading this article is when Hooks says, “black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our presence as absence, that denies the “body” of the black female so as to perpetuate white supremacy and with it phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is “white.”  What????  I must have read these lines more than 5 times.  Black women were not to be desired, only white women.  Black women were depicted as nothing more than servants.  What I found most interesting was Miss Pauline’s comment, that viewing the white films were a form of escapism from the reality of being black. 

 

 

 

 

In reading Berger, Mulvey and Hooks it makes me think about what my place is within social media and the role I play in perpetuating the cycle set on women today.  http://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/film/index.html

The Male Gaze + The Oppositional Gaze

The male gaze is a term that was first applied to art and paintings, but is now applied to film, photography or any kind of visuals.  The male gaze occurs when the viewer or the audience is put in the perspective of a heterosexual male.  The woman is the subject of the visuals, but rather portrayed as a woman, she is objectified for not only the audience, but for the creator of the visuals as well.  John Berger in Ways of Seeing states that “men act and women appear” (47).  Berger is starting that men are the active participants, where they are the creators and the viewers of these visuals, while the woman simply just “appear.” Laura Mulvey also points out the relationship between men and women in the media in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, where she discusses the male gaze.  She states “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female”.  (837)

Take this bra ad for instance. The woman has a fixed gaze into the camera or the viewer.  Although this is an advertisement to convince women to purchase the bra, to me, I think it speaks more to men than women.  The text of the ad, “I can’t cook. Who cares?”, seems to be speaking to men rather than women and telling them why to purchase their bra. Beger states that “every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation -  is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated” (47). The manner in which she is holding the straps of her bra reminds me of how farmers (or guys in general) would hold their suspenders when they mean business (or want to get to business).

Another example in popular culture that the male gaze can be applied to is a music video by Jennifer Lopez, If You Had My Love. The video features Jennifer Lopez is the object, where we, the viewer are supposed to relate to the male figure in the video, who is watching Lopez through the video cameras.  Lopez is performing for the male character, and for anyone who was watching the stream, as if she knows she is being watched by the world.

                   

In The Oppositional Gaze, bell hooks examines another gaze, similar to the gaze that Mulvey writes about.  The gaze the hooks discusses is the oppositional gaze, which pertains to race, and how it is portrayed in the media.   She states “even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve - to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze” (119).  Black women were portrayed in films and television shows, but not in the most accurate and realistic manner.  They were portrayed in an unrealistic manner to make white women to be more attractive and more desirable on screen and camera.  Although it may not seem present as much now, it does still exist and it is a problem that does need to be addressed.
Reading these journal articles reinforces the notion of “sex sells” that I was always aware of.  But reading Berger, made me open my eyes more, and realize that there is more to look at.  I never really thought about the relationship between men and women in terms of men “act” and women “appear”.
As a media maker, think I have to do my part and help educate others or to not include these stereotypes, and hopefully they will appear less in our society and the media that we all consume.  

Male gaze and Oppositional gaze

                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?

 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWKkll9rb8I

Post #2 Ways of seeing....

“To be born a woman has been born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men” – Berger page 46.

           The Male Gaze is a term used to describe how certain works of art such as photography, film, and other forms of media assume the male point of view.  Although most works don’t specifically reveal the point of view female characters are represented as objects to be appreciated. According to Berger females are aware that they are subjected to being just “things to look at”. Something that stood out to me was on page 46 where Berger states “How a women appears to man can determine how she will be treated” in other words how attractive a women is staple of her worth.  In media women are constantly told if your beautiful and thin success and prince charming come easy. We as women are brainwashed to be obsessed with our appearance not to make us feel good about ourselves but to look good  for the male gaze. While doing my own personal research i found an article about Cosmo magazine and how the magazine pretty much "sells out" the female gender by using keywords to manipulate our thought process. Such as instead of encouraging a female to exercise for health it is encouraged to exercise for a date to look good for a man.

        Within film Mulvey points out that a women is not only an object of  the male main character but the gaze is shared between him and the spectator. On page 840 it is pointed out that due to a women castration   we appear different to a male. In order to better process the difference of a women men tend to turn them into a fetish or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish that way it is not seen as a threat. Watching old movies is a guilty pleasure of mine and I have noticed that throughout the years of objecting women has become more obvious compared to movies then to now. 

(Marilyn Monroe in the film Bus Stop)

            In the film Bus Stop we see many examples to the points that Mulvey writes about such as the scene when Marilyn's character is introduced she is dressed in a show girl outfit and is sharing the gaze of all the men in the saloon with the spectator. Of course Marilyn Monroe herself is an icon of sexuality for just being who she  is. When I watch movies with actress Audrey Hepburn in them i see the difference between the two. Audrey possessed sexuality but it was more demur and was attached to the "little black dress". Even though both women were seen as objects of beauty and the male gaze they were showcased differently in film and photographs. In movies today we see most scenes with women providing close ups of T&A. When a women enters a scene it is usually in slow motion with shots scanning her figure. Throughout times it seems that it is almost normal to objectify a women before allowing other judgement to surface.
         Bell hooks shines light on how throughout history of how the oppositional gaze had been affected. The black community laced positive representations of blacks in the media thus any ideas of blacks came from a white point of view. Black women had very little opinion as spectators until Hooks dug deeper into the issue. Since most television programs were "white" it was thought that only a white women would be one to be desired by both men white and black.  Hooks also points out that the black women and their female form were always "ready to serve" even to a white women. The ironic thing about the white supremacy in television with actresses is that even white people longed to be whiter (page 119). Since there were poor stereotypes of black women in the early years of television it was harder to progress. Today some stereotypes still influence our judgement of not just the black community but others as well. 

http://www.beautyredefined.net/cosmo-magazine/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/women-and-objectification_n_1701275.html

(A article i found on how the brain processes women in parts of the body not as a whole)