Thriller Gender Roles

Michal Jacksons’s seminal music video, Thriller exemplifies the theme of scopophilia, through showing passive women as an epitome of pleasure and attraction. Generally, women have been portrayed as sexual objects throughout the history of cinema and art. Although, women have been protesting for their rights since the last century, they are not considered equal even today. In most of the movies, men use women for their pleasure and sexual satisfaction. It is rare to see movies with female leading roles, doing the major and highly risky tasks. Women might be weaker than men physically, but that does not mean women can be objectified.

Thriller can be a great paradigm to support the idea of the dominance of active male characters. According to Mulvey, “The man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen… represented by the woman as spectacle” (Mulvey 809) For instance, throughout the movie, the female character was appalled by Michael Jackson. The active male protagonist uses the massive female lead to scare the audiences with horror. The commencement of the passiveness of women is present in the first

However, it is obvious that high heels can prevent a woman from running fast and there is a possibility for her to fall down. Any woman would have taken off her high heels before running from walking zombies. She did not take off her heels because of the shape it gives to her. “the male gaze is an objectifying gaze, one that shapes whatever object it views- especially women’s bodies- according to its own “masculine” desires, standards, and projections” (Cahill 48). This can support the ideas of Laura Mulvey. According to Mulvey, the camera shows women as a sex object, through characters as the damsel in distress, a femme fatale, and manic pixie dream