The Gaze

• Used in film theory - 1970's
• Refers to the way viewers look at images of people in visual medium
• 'The Male Gaze' - feminist reference to the voyeuristic (for pleasure) way in which men look at women
• Jonathan Schroeder (1998) - 'to gaze implies more than to look at' - psychological relationship of power - 'gazer is superior to the object of the gaze'

Forms of gaze:

• spectators gaze
• intra-diegetic-people looking at each other within the media text
• direct address to the viewer
• look of the camera
• gaze of a bystander
• gaze of an audience within a text

Direction of gaze
Attention directed:

• towards others
• towards an object
• to oneself
• to the reader/camera
• into middle distance

Laura Mulvey - 'Male Gaze'

• 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' 1975

Criticisms

• Doesn't consider men looking at men or women looking at women in admiration
• Failure to account for female spectator (women looking at men)
• Only a heterosexual view (homosexual-men looking at men)

Catagorising facial expressions
Women:

• Chocolate box-half/full smile, hardly any/no teeth on show
• Invitational-emphasis on eyes, looking at camera, head to one side, hint of a smile
• Super-smiler-cheesey grin
• Romantic/sexual-pouting

Men:

• Carefree-small smile, relaxed (sport, health)
• Pratical-concentration (handyman)
• Seductive-pout, broody
• Comic-smiley, foolish, exaggerated
• Catalogue-looking in distance, vacant

Consider Laura Mulvey or Tessa Perkins in relation to your coursework