Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London….

Mulvey argued that most popular movies are filmed in ways that satisfy masculine scopophilia. Although sometimes described as the “male gaze”, Mulvey’s concept is more accurately described as a heterosexual, masculine gaze. Visual media that respond to masculine voyeurism tends to sexualise women for a male viewer.

Laura Mulvey was born in Oxford on 15 August 1941. After studying history at St. Hilda’s, Oxford University, she came to prominence in the early 1970s as a film theorist, writing for periodicals such as Spare Rib and Seven Days.

1975

The female gaze is a feminist film theoretical term representing the gaze of the female viewer. It is a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s term “the male gaze”, which represents not only the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer but also the gaze of the male character and the male creator of the film.

First and foremost, it results in fundamentally unrealistic body expectations that are both unhealthy and, thanks to visual editing, simply unattainable. This can lead to eating disorders, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, it has led to the hypersexualisation of young girls.

1. A term coined by feminists in response to the claims made by Mulvey that the conventions established in classical Hollywood films required all spectators, regardless of their sex, to identify with the male protagonist and to adopt the controlling male gaze around which such films were held to be structured.

In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the gaze is the anxious state of mind that comes with the self-awareness that one can be seen and looked at. The psychological effect upon the person subjected to the gaze is a loss of autonomy upon becoming aware that they are a visible object.

In 1975, film critic Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘the male gaze’. It refers to the presentation of women in visual arts and literature from a male, heterosexual perspective where women are depicted as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.

Awareness of the influence of the male gaze is key to freeing yourself of its power. Simply considering its pervasiveness and influence may offset a significant amount of its impact, allowing you to see yourself and function in the world simply as you are, without relegating yourself to the supporting role.

The gaze – or the male gaze, more specifically – is a discourse that disects how we look at visual representations in film, advertising and art.

The “female gaze” is a term used in recent years to describe art that subverts the ubiquitous male perspective. Like many buzzwords, it is often misapplied – but not so in the case of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is unmistakably made from a female vantage point and with a feminist sensibility.

In theory, a queer gaze would deconstruct such gender-based power dynamics, changing not only the object but also the intent of the male and female gaze. In descriptions of mainstream cinema and art, the term “queer gaze” is often used interchangeably with the lesbian or gay male gaze.

Laura Mulvey

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.

Self-objectification is defined as the adoption of a third-person perspective on the self as opposed to a first-person perspective such that girls and women come to place greater value on how they look to others rather than on how they feel or what they can do.

The “Oppositional gaze”, first coined by feminist, scholar and social activist bell hooks in her 1992 essay collection Black Looks: Race and Representation, is a type of looking relation that involves the political rebellion and resistance against the repression of a black person’s right to look.