The Female Gaze

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Wow... I go to have supper and look what happens. It probably wouldn't be helpful for me to engage with the poster directly so I have a useful summary link for male gaze theory: not one that I invented or accept without question, but like all discussions, it's a good starting point.
"...
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain, best known for her essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Her theories are influenced by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan (by using their ideologies as “political weapons”) whilst also including psychoanalysis and feminism in her works. Mulvey is predominantly known for her theory regarding sexual objectification on women in the media, more commonly known as The Male Gaze” theory.

Being one of the most notable film theorists in the world, her ideas and clear proof of misogyny in film opened up the eyes of many, and in 1975, something that people simply accepted was finally questioned. Although Mulvey‘s theory has helped identify issues with gender in film, why do we still have the same issues decades later? Why do we still see the same roles for women in film and television regurgitated over and over again?..."

Mulvey's essay started a conversation, and is still quoted today. Cinema and fiction are not documentaries or sworn statements, but neither can they be wrenched from our timeline.

I think it's an evolving topic. Now we've come to realize that we have to take into account that we don't just have a male pole (teehee!) and a female pole, but a spectrum that needs to be represented, and I think we're nowhere even close to identifying what those perspectives are. The best way to find out is to encourage diversity. Then we'll get to see what we've been missing.

When I say "encourage diversity," I may be overstating it. Just getting out of its way would probably be enough. What's astounding is that the money people are so slow in coming to grips with it. Part of Hollywood went to Atlanta because Hollywood wasn't racially diversifying. That's money out of the Hollywood execs' pockets. They still haven't learned their lesson. People are diverse. They like diverse perspectives.

 

[stickygirl]

all the best, love
iggy

So, where we were?

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

all the best, love
iggy

So, where we were?

Scraping troll dust off our boots.

 

[stickygirl]

I think it's an evolving topic. Now we've come to realize that we have to take into account that we don't just have a male pole (teehee!) and a female pole, but a spectrum that needs to be represented, and I think we're nowhere even close to identifying what those perspectives are. The best way to find out is to encourage diversity. Then we'll get to see what we've been missing.

When I say "encourage diversity," I may be overstating it. Just getting out of its way would probably be enough. What's astounding is that the money people are so slow in coming to grips with it. Part of Hollywood went to Atlanta because Hollywood wasn't racially diversifying. That's money out of the Hollywood execs' pockets. They still haven't learned their lesson. People are diverse. They like diverse perspectives.

I think money, ie investment, follows the safe bets and in cinema, that means established directors with track records ie more of the same. Surely writer-directors are the most likely creators who can keep control of their own concept and produce original story lines but evidence shows it tends to be lower budget films ( unless you're Peter Jackson or Christopher Nolan ).

Most of my top ten films are directed by men but my preference has been for thoughtful and yes, empathetic films. To sit in a library and never leave the reference section would make Jack a dull boy. but it's important to recognise the importance of the reference section.

 

[capnjs]

I think money, ie investment, follows the safe bets and in cinema, that means established directors with track records ie more of the same. Surely writer-directors are the most likely creators who can keep control of their own concept and produce original story lines but evidence shows it tends to be lower budget films ( unless you're Peter Jackson or Christopher Nolan ).

True.

It isn't only conscious sexism, racism etc. that prevents us from seeing unique voices. It is hollywood's prioritization of money over art, as well as their over-reliance on the established creators (men) that prevents other voices from being heard.

And on the chance that a person of color or woman does make something and it happens to tank at the box office for any number of reasons? Well, in that case, studios look at it as confirmation that those voices aren't what people want, which will cause them to rely more heavily on the familiars, take less chances, and it'll make it that much harder for the next person who wants to be heard.

 

[stickygirl]

True.

~~edit

And on the chance that a person of color or woman does make something and it happens to tank at the box office for any number of reasons? Well, in that case, studios look at it as confirmation that those voices aren't what people want, which will cause them to rely more heavily on the familiars, take less chances, and it'll make that much harder for the next person who wants to be heard.

Oh hell yes - films have to pay their way or we'd have nothing. Same with books. Smaller budget films can afford to take risks and fail: Under the Skin, the 2013 sci-fi film managed to attract Scarlett Johansson and tanked in the box-office. I think that's why European films have been able continued to flourish with avant garde, art films and they have a very different character to USA ( UK ) films. Hurray for that.

I don't know how things are in the US, but we're seeing a lot of European generated tv shows in the UK. That kind of diversity is refreshing. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was written as a Swedish book series, that finally was remade with our friend Daniel Craig playing a central character. It was certainly different, very dark - not my cup of tea, but I could see its appeal.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Oh hell yes - films have to pay their way or we'd have nothing. Same with books. Smaller budget films can afford to take risks and fail: Under the Skin, the 2013 sci-fi film managed to attract Scarlett Johansson and tanked in the box-office. I think that's why European films have been able continued to flourish with avant garde, art films and they have a very different character to USA ( UK ) films. Hurray for that.

I don't know how things are in the US, but we're seeing a lot of European generated tv shows in the UK. That kind of diversity is refreshing. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was written as a Swedish book series, that finally was remade with our friend Daniel Craig playing a central character. It was certainly different, very dark - not my cup of tea, but I could see its appeal.

I don't really pay attention to who directs and produces things on BBC, but they sometimes do some great movies. That sort of venue might be a good place for directors and producers without proven track records to establish themselves. I wonder how open that avenue is?

 

[stickygirl]

I don't really pay attention to who directs and produces things on BBC, but they sometimes do some great movies. That sort of venue might be a good place for directors and producers without proven track records to establish themselves. I wonder how open that avenue is?

Pretty good IMO - it encourages it through running low-budget, even home-made documentaries and short films: it's part of their remit as a national service. At the same time they do plenty of mainstream game-shows and soaps...
Well it's late and I have a couple of male effigies I need to stick pins in, so I'll sign off for now.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't really pay attention to who directs and produces things on BBC, but they sometimes do some great movies. That sort of venue might be a good place for directors and producers without proven track records to establish themselves. I wonder how open that avenue is?

The Beeb is increasingly showing content that has a very high female contingent in their production crews - writers, producers, directors, crew, strong female leads. I'm a fan of good police procedurals so that's where I'm seeing it - started with Prime Suspect back in the nineties, but more recently Scott and Bailey, Hidden, Keeping Faith, Hinterland (the latter has a male lead, but a similar feel).

They're all typified by well-rounded characters, crackling good writing; and there's always a really good balance between the humanity of the characters (usually with flaws and demons of their own) and the gung-honess needed for a car chase along a narrow road about to fall off a mountain.

The defining thing is probably their psychological depth - whether that's because there's a woman writing with a different perspective or just bloody good writing writing with empathy, I don't know. But the BBC has always been good at commissioning good writing, and there may be more women writing.

 

[Ginlover]

So we have the male gaze and the female gaze which thou given a sex is actually more about how something is described or seen. I'm female but I know I have a naturally male gaze when looking at life - pragmatic and logical, when I write I have to think about adding the emotions. I know several men who have a much better female gaze in their stories.

But that's an aside because the great learning in this thread is there is a third gaze. It was touched on when the film JoJo Rabbit was referenced. The Childs Gaze. That film does it beautifully btw.

Childs gaze is also the petulant one, the person who creates a scene just to get attention. They dont care if the attention is positive or negative they just want attention. Their minds are not mature enough to understand negative attention is not a great way to continue to get the attention they crave.

Luckily as people mature they progress on from the Childs gaze, thou I'll admit I personally think behind a keyboard some adults slip back into their childs gaze, desperate for interaction and attention they will argue black is white if it feeds their child gaze.

I feel thougherly enlightened by now understanding the Childs Gaze.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

So we have the male gaze and the female gaze which thou given a sex is actually more about how something is described or seen. I'm female but I know I have a naturally male gaze when looking at life - pragmatic and logical, when I write I have to think about adding the emotions. I know several men who have a much better female gaze in their stories.

But that's an aside because the great learning in this thread is there is a third gaze. It was touched on when the film JoJo Rabbit was referenced. The Childs Gaze. That film does it beautifully btw.

Childs gaze is also the petulant one, the person who creates a scene just to get attention. They dont care if the attention is positive or negative they just want attention. Their minds are not mature enough to understand negative attention is not a great way to continue to get the attention they crave.

Luckily as people mature they progress on from the Childs gaze, thou I'll admit I personally think behind a keyboard some adults slip back into their childs gaze, desperate for interaction and attention they will argue black is white if it feeds their child gaze.

I feel thougherly enlightened by now understanding the Childs Gaze.

A very inspired analysis!

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think money, ie investment, follows the safe bets and in cinema, that means established directors with track records ie more of the same.

Yes, but with some important qualifiers about what counts as a "safe bet" (see my previous link about men who get to keep on making flops).

Most of the decision-makers here aren't staking their own money, so the question isn't so much "will this film make a profit?" as it is "could I get fired for greenlighting this?" It's safer to be the guy who greenlit an Adam Sandler flop than the guy who greenlit something unconventional that flopped equally hard.

Hollywood perceptions are weird - for instance, if I asked people to name the biggest flop in movie history without looking it up, I expect most would answer Waterworld. But that film ended up making an $89m profit!

Surely writer-directors are the most likely creators who can keep control of their own concept and produce original story lines but evidence shows it tends to be lower budget films ( unless you're Peter Jackson or Christopher Nolan )..

Even for Peter Jackson, I would've said. His early films were all original concepts, but since he went big with LotR he's mostly been doing remakes or bestseller adaptations.

 

[Seduc1ove]

So we have the male gaze and the female gaze which thou given a sex is actually more about how something is described or seen. I'm female but I know I have a naturally male gaze when looking at life - pragmatic and logical, when I write I have to think about adding the emotions. I know several men who have a much better female gaze in their stories.

But that's an aside because the great learning in this thread is there is a third gaze. It was touched on when the film JoJo Rabbit was referenced. The Childs Gaze. That film does it beautifully btw.

Childs gaze is also the petulant one, the person who creates a scene just to get attention. They dont care if the attention is positive or negative they just want attention. Their minds are not mature enough to understand negative attention is not a great way to continue to get the attention they crave.

Luckily as people mature they progress on from the Childs gaze, thou I'll admit I personally think behind a keyboard some adults slip back into their childs gaze, desperate for interaction and attention they will argue black is white if it feeds their child gaze.

I feel thougherly enlightened by now understanding the Childs Gaze.

Ah yes that famous use of generalized gendered descriptors to label things non-gender specific. Love to see you tackle toxic masculinity, white privilege, white fragility, etc. This weird attempt to redefine negative or group specific terms as neither is honestly bizarre. You don't define the concept. Also no it's not defined as "pragmatic and logical".

I agree this thread and it's bigoted nonsense is an example of a child's gaze. I'm certain you meant otherwise. However you'll discover that attention seeking and immature are labels you mindlessly toss at anyone who disagrees with you. I dared venture to express publically an alternative perspective. Rather than even acknowledge the possibility your social constructs are bigoted. It's very common among your kind. Very similar in nature to the oft-maligned use of "fake news" by the right to deflect criticism they can't address logically.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hollywood perceptions are weird - for instance, if I asked people to name the biggest flop in movie history without looking it up, I expect most would answer Waterworld. But that film ended up making an $89m profit!

Michael Cimino's Heavens Gate would be my first guess.

 

[SisterJezabel]

Search Google Images for school boys and school girls and see the difference in gaze...

 

[Bramblethorn]

Search Google Images for school boys and school girls and see the difference in gaze...

And then there's comics, where some very successful "artists" routinely trace their female characters from cheesecake and porn...

 

[SimonDoom]

An interesting fiction writing convention that illustrates the different ways we look at men and women is the naming of male characters by their last names and females by first names. Ask yourself if you do this.

 

[Ginlover]

tl;dr 'Virtue Signalling' was a tired and ill-used phrase even four years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue-signalling-putdown-passed-sell-by-date

Okay you just gave me cold shivers. Twice I scrolled up to check the date on the article. Virus, quarantine and vaccination. As far as language goes those words as a method of description will or have become as common as Apps, web and I reckon Dadbod. The journalist's clever and unusual use of language is now so common place its universally understood.

Yup, cold shiver

 

[Bramblethorn]

tl;dr 'Virtue Signalling' was a tired and ill-used phrase even four years ago. (These days it's still beloved of TERFs & alt-right assholes. Which are you?)

What started off as a clever way to win arguments has become a lazy put down. It’s too often used to cast aspersions on opponents as an alternative to rebutting their arguments. In fact, it’s becoming indistinguishable from the thing it was designed to call out: smug posturing from a position of self-appointed authority.

Yup. I've seen "virtue signalling" used countless times, and never once has the accuser made the slightest attempt to show that the "signaller" is insincere.

Also, there's nothing particularly wrong with signalling virtue, as long as it's not done deceptively. I want to know who the nice people are so I can hang out with them.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I see Quixote's still searching for a windmill.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I see Quixote's still searching for a windmill.

Looking for a virtue they can signal.

 

[SimonDoom]

(also, pigs are great)

That they are.

I know you don't need any help. I wanted to make one last go at responding to her in a way I thought might, possibly, lead the discussion in a more fruitful direction.

We can see where that went.

 

[Bramblethorn]

To apply a label to something, it isn't necessary to show that the quality indicated by the label is "universal." If that were true, then we could not label anything, because in the real world nothing is universal. The real world consists of lots of complicated stuff. We sift through it and put labels on bunches of it because it is useful to do so. We call some people male and some people female because it's useful to do so, not because those labels correspond to "essentially" different things. We acknowledge that there's always fuzziness at the margins. There are people in this world who defy easy characterizations as male and female. We have to deal with that reality. It doesn't mean that the use of the labels male and female is no longer useful or valid.

I agree with this. I'd also note a nuance that sometimes gets missed in these discussions. Illustration:

As the signature suggests, that image was drawn by a woman: Olivia de Berardinis, usually just known as "Olivia". She's a very successful pinup artist who's had a long career drawing for outlets like Playboy. Some men aren't into that style of art. Some women appreciate it very much. But it's not a secret that Playboy's target demographic is primarily male - it's right there in the name!

The "male" in "male gaze" refers to who the art is made for, not who it's made by.

Obviously the "for" and the "by" are related, because a lot of artists create for people like themselves as the target audience. But thinking of "male gaze" solely as "stuff made by men" misses the point.

It's not "misandry" to observe that an awful lot of stuff is targeted at male audiences, or to wish that it wasn't crowding out the other stuff quite as much as it does. The fact that the actual audience doesn't align 100% with the target demographic doesn't change that.

MG isn't always about sexualising women, either. Sometimes there are no women involved at all:

Male gaze for male gays.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

This is the first time you've really made this argument in this thread, so I'll respond.

To apply a label to something, it isn't necessary to show that the quality indicated by the label is "universal." If that were true, then we could not label anything, because in the real world nothing is universal. The real world consists of lots of complicated stuff. We sift through it and put labels on bunches of it because it is useful to do so. We call some people male and some people female because it's useful to do so, not because those labels correspond to "essentially" different things. We acknowledge that there's always fuzziness at the margins. There are people in this world who defy easy characterizations as male and female. We have to deal with that reality. It doesn't mean that the use of the labels male and female is no longer useful or valid.

I would reckon that beyond the confines of this forum -- out there in the "real world" -- the overwhelming majority of human beings would say they believe that men and women see things differently. There's tons of evidence for this. There's tons of evidence that men and women do, in fact, see things differently, on average. It's not negative or bigoted or extremist or prejudiced to say so. It's not a matter of saying "all men are like this" and "all women are like that." I'm a non-essentialist. I never agree with that way of thinking.

You are just as much entitled to your point of view on this subject as anyone else, but it would be better if you would just offer it without attacking everybody. You cannot deny that your very first post in this thread accused the OP of being "insanely sexist." That's not a legitimate way, ever, to wade into a conversation like this.

I'm going to stay out of the argument about what constitutes the male gaze and the female gaze, as neither is a biological reality. To me they are cultural constructs, and in this case, consideration of the 'female gaze' seems to have been engendered by a desire to see a contrasting construct of the one first identified.

I appreciate your observation that the "real world consists of a lot of complicated stuff" and that we reduce it to categories to make it manageable. However, it is not a matter of categories with "fuzziness at the edges." The fuzziness is the reality; our categories are all constructs. Colors, for example, are things we create: color is a continuum. The really revolutionary proposal from Darwin wasn't evolution, it was the proposition that diversity, not similarity, was the essence of life. Unfortunately that part of his model didn't really gain traction.

In teaching human variation, I always showed my students that if you look for the difference between two a priori categories, you'll always find them. You need to look at the data as a whole; if there are differences, it will be apparent, as will its level of significance.

It's not surprising, seeing as the object of discussion here is a culturally-created construction, that the discourse has become a maelstrom of ad hominem attacks.

Have fun.

 

[SimonDoom]

The really revolutionary proposal from Darwin wasn't evolution, it was the proposition that diversity, not similarity, was the essence of life. Unfortunately that part of his model didn't really gain traction.

.

This is where I disagree with you. The lesson of Darwin, and of all science, is that there is no such thing as "essence." Essentialism is a categorical fallacy. Nothing is "essentially" anything.

Categorizing and labeling things is not fallacious so long as we understand exactly what we are doing. Lions can mate with tigers; but it is still useful and meaningful to talk about lions and tigers being different species. The line between male and female is not as clear as many of us would like to think, but it is still perfectly accurate and useful to describe them as being two different things. To some degree it's a construct, but it's a construct based upon real-world mean differences in populations of things that can be tested, verified, and falsified. Those aggregate mean differences do have significance in the real world. While it's true that any particular taxonomy system is a construct, it's not true that all taxonomical systems are equally valid from a scientific point of view. Reality wins over constructs. Some systems of categorization are better than others.

There is a large body of evidence that the group of people we call "male" and the group of people we call "female" are different right out of the womb. They differ in their genes, their morphology, and in their behavior. To me it seems unremarkable to say that men look at things differently from women, and it's something I believe, and it's something I think is to some degree hard-wired. I don't know to what degree it's hard-wired. It's something that requires more testing. I think wiring can be dramatically influenced by environment. But I believe the wiring plays a role.

Regarding the ad hominem attacks: I actually think this thread was doing just fine until one person wanted to make those attacks. The rest of us have had a discussion that involves some difference of opinion but without nasty personal criticisms. I thought stickygirl did a nice job trying to get this thread off to a good, constructive start.