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Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory

1272 Words6 Pages

“Men need her, love her, worship her and write about her. But they do so in relation to their own selves" writes Virginia Woolf in her essay, “A Room of One’s Own” which expresses the ironical paradox of a woman’s life. This statement represents exactly the position of women in a society be it urban or rural. These two issues of subjection and emancipation have often been the subject matter of filmmakers both male and female. Throughout the years, our views of the film as an art form have drastically changed. But, how much and how far has it changed? To analyze this Laura Mulvey, a feminist film critic has formulated the classic male gaze theory which helps one to see the film form from the lens of the original. The male gaze theory is a term coined by Professor Laura Mulvey in her famous essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. The theory simply says how women is denied of her identity and is just admired as an object for physical attraction. It is understandable that the presence of women is very vital for the mainstream cinemas but the fact that she herself is not important but the way she makes the man feel or make him act is important. Therefore she exists in relation to the male. Mulvey had made political use of Sigmund freud’s psychoanalysis theory in order to inaugurate her male gaze theory. Through which she was able to intersect concepts of film theories, psychoanalysis and feminism at one point in a sea. The theory is currently active and has been rigorously

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