Ways of Seeing/Viewing

Throughout history, the most common way we have seen women being portrayed was through a male perspective. This is known as the male gaze. More often then not, a white cisgender heterosexual male would be behind the canvas, camera, or computer designing the media. Thus, the way the women is posed or designed is done for his viewing pleasure. This male gaze has been around for centuries beginning with European oil paintings. In John Berger's Ways of Seeing, he states that in these paintings of nude women, "the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture... everything must appear to be the result of his being there" (Berger 54). There is a serious issue when this occurrence becomes a theme.

Today in (and out of) media, this male gaze is still represented. This perspective is a pervasive form of vision in popular culture that unconsciously teaches the youth that: "...men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at" (Berger 47). This notion causes women to always be self conscious about their appearance and worry about how others view or judge them. For instance, when women get dressed and do their makeup before leaving the house, usually and even maybe without realizing, they worry about how to make themselves look their best to "look good" for other people. Or now commonly amongst teenagers and young adults, people post a selfie and worry about the amount of likes they would receive. It shouldn't matter whether the person receives five or five hundred. But it does. Thus, it should not matter what the random strangers who see you on the train or pass you in the hall think about you... but it does. "She turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (Berger 47). Therefore, the male gaze is the cause of this mentality the majority of women have.

In the video game, Tomb Raider, the protagonist is Lara Croft – and is shockingly a woman for once. However, because it was directed by a heterosexual man, of course she was portrayed in a sexualized manner for his pleasure. Not only is she dressed in revealing clothing, "the new Lara Croft is manhandled by natives, and grunts and moans her way through sequences" (Gamasutra). The game developers used sounds as well as visuals to shape the way Lara Croft was portrayed. In some instances, the camera pans down or is placed to get a good shot of her back side – which is not coincidental. And games in the Tomb Raider series are not the only ones that do this. In the Golden Axe Beast Rider trailer, the camera specifically has to pan down from the protagonist's butt to reveal the enemies she is up against. These unnecessary but conscious features included, are just a few examples of the male gaze in media. 

Source: Crystal Dynamics

Another gaze that derived from the heavy male influence in media and film was the oppositional gaze. As defined by bell hooks, the oppositional gaze "responded to these looking relations by developing independent black cinema" (hooks 117). The looking relations include the way white men were falsely portraying black people in cinema. When black people watched the films, they were aware that it was a portrayal of mainstream white supremacy. Thus, as a response, they began to create their own black cinema to work towards a truer representation of themselves in media.

 

Not only is the oppositional gaze derived from racism, it is also a response towards misrepresentation of gender and gender roles. According to Laura Mulvey, "Traditionally, the women displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen" (838).  This fact causes women to become insignificant characters that were only placed in the narrative to please a man. Therefore, this misrepresentation degrades the women's purpose and gives all the control to the man.

Fighting back these stereotypical race and gender tropes placed in media by men, women go into film and media to change the perspective of the stories told. But of course when change occurs, such as a rise of  black filmmakers, some people may jump to false conclusions or judgments. In a Huffington Post article, Julie Dash, a black filmmaker asked: "'When we do do films, everyone is looking for us to do a civil rights story!” Dash said. “Why cant we just make films like everyone else?"' The people who believe this and are opposed to the change have a narrow, limited perspective on it. This proves how close-minded they could be towards granting others true freedom of expression and speech.

These points changed the way I view media. I began to notice how some shows or movies feature this male gaze and pinpoint the women as their viewing target by dressing her up for their pleasure. I also noticed how some media is fighting back and trying to build off the oppositional gaze to create television shows or movies that tell their true story from a real perspective. Not only in media do these gazes arise. When I go out in public, I always noticed the unwanted looks and I have realized that unwillingly I become an object for others to stare at. Sometimes I might look back in attempt to get them to stop, or sometimes I ignore them to prevent them from getting my attention – if that was what they were seeking. Although we are making progress towards equal points of view in media, straying away from just the male gaze, this progression is happening very slowly since it is difficult for some men to adapt and except any form of change or equality between genders.

Works Cited

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze.” Black Looks: Race and Representation, Routledge, 2015, p. 117.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44

Berger, John. “3.” Ways of Seeing, British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 2008, pp. 36–64.