Laura Mulvey theory

1.0: Introduction

In this blog post, I am going to research on a theorist called Laura Mulvey, what her theory is, and I am going to apply the theory in a analysis for a feminine fragrance television advertisement.

2.0: Basic background

"Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 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. She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position." (1)

A feminist is a theorist who highlights and fights for the oppresion and inequality for the female population. Feminists follow a theory called Feminism and they believe that society is a Patriarchal society, which means it is male dominated and they see women as the inferior gender.

Laura Mulvey conducted a theory which looks at how the film industry look at women and how they objectify the female gender in media.

3.0: Mulvey's theory

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist who came up with a theory through her essay called "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Her theory was called "Male Gaze".

The theory basically says in simple terms that in media, the men are predominantly the protagonists and the women are portrayed in a view of sexual objectification which exploits the gender. She says that through the media, they continue the patriarchal view of men being the dominant sex and females are used just to attract viewers and make the film more attractive/sexy.

"understanding how film creates such a space for female sexual objectification and exploitation through the combination of the patriarchal order of society, and 'looking' in itself as a pleasurable act of voyeurism, as "the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking."

"Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third "look" joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film." (2)

She published this theory in 1975, but the theory is based around the 1950/1960 era, which was the era where classical movies boomed in Hollywood. This was during the period of the second wave of Feminism was establishing.

"In the era of classical Hollywood cinema, viewers were encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film, who tended to be a man. Meanwhile, Hollywood female characters of the 1950s and 60s were, according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness." Mulvey suggests that there were two distinct modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" (i.e. seeing women as 'whores') and "fetishistic" (i.e. seeing women as 'madonnas')." (1)

4.0: Bibliography

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey (02/10/2012)

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_film_theory (02/10/2012)

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/michaelwalford/entry/laura_mulvey_and/ (02/10/2012)