Reading this statement the my first understanding of the quote is defined as, having a society where “fantasies” are demanded by order and are also created by order. This might first be hard to understand but while looking through the work of Laura Mulvey we come to understand that “phantasy” is a mixture of sexual desire and self-image. Mulvey states, “During its history, the cinema seems to have evolved a particular illusion of reality in which this contradiction between libido and ego has found a beautifully complementary phantasy world.” (VP & NC pg. 308).…
Humans face struggles of different magnitudes and art focuses on a wide range of them. Whether large or small, people must deal with these problems in many ways; however, the first step in overcoming these problems is realizing who they - the people - are as individuals, as demonstrated in the film Destino and the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In the short film Destino, the female character spends her life searching for love. In the beginning of the film, she stares longingly at a statue of a man - who later comes to life; he is the same man whom she chases throughout the film.…
Time Stamp: Ex Machina 1:32:54-1:38:44 TITLE Composer of the male gaze, Laura Mulvey, explains how a heterosexual male views different aspects occurring in a film. The male gaze captures how male viewers depict females within the film. In Alex Garland’s movie, Ex Machina, there is an abundant usage of the male gaze occurring through Nathan and Caleb’s perspective.…
John Boorstin realized that through his “eye’s theory” there are three different aspects of a movie that affect your viewpoint of the film simultaneously: the voyeuristic, vicarious, and visceral. What Boorstin concluded was that these three forces impose a particular feel on the viewer. The Adjustment Bureau represents each of these “three eyes” the best. First, the “voyeuristic” eye to film is the philosophy behind the films production.…
Throughout the semester We discussed how the “woman” is portrayed in film, and how these representations have influenced the Gaze. Earlier in this semester I analyzed Bell Hooks “The Oppositional Gaze” which connected with me and I decided to expound on this approach to film. I intended to analyses how black female spectator’s perception of themselves and the society can be influenced based on the messages depicted within the film entitled Imitation of Life (1959); What is the role of the females throughout this film, how these roles are portrayed differently the between black and white character, ultimately I intend to highlight this gender-racial bias within cinema. As a black spectator the Imitation of Life (1959) connected with me, because it addresses serious issues like racism, female representations, capitalism, and other appropriate cinematic discrimination which was largely based societal issues; It’s essential to recognize that the how spectators “look” at the film is just as important as its content.…
The Cage During the late 1800’s, the first wave of the women’s rights movement was just gaining speed and followers. Women of this age were beginning to break away from the notion that they were children and that they did not have the freedoms of speech, religion, and the right to vote. The women who werewhere rising up to start this movement belonged to a generation with a completely different mentality from that of their predecessors who openly scoffed at their silly daughters for believing the notion that women could indeed have an opinion that differed from her husband’s opinion. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) the breakdown of how men visualized women and how women broke free from their cage is presented…
In feminist ideologies, the male gaze is the act of presenting women as objects of pleasure, from the perspective of heterosexual males. The male gaze is internationally prevalent throughout the history of art and film. The gender power asymmetry that dominated the nineteenth-century was a commanding force in how artists catered to the male viewer. This only further encouraged the pre-existing patriarchal ideologies and discourses. A Roman Slave Market by Jean-Leon Gerome will be formally analyzed in order to expound upon the presence of male dominated perspectives of women in art.…
In our society you're either smart or you're good looking, but you cannot be both. It happens to be a common stereotype when judging a person’s look. When meeting a person for the first time one usually assumes by the way they physically look on the outside determines who they really are as a person. For example, the typical high school teen movies such as: A Cinderella Story, She’s All That, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink.…
The gaze, the object, and desire raises the question and my attraction to our sexual fetishistic culture.…
For Freud, this is the birth point of any kind of fetishism. He claims that most fetishized objects have a certain ‘phallic’ symbolism, and that’s why most fetishists are men, who fantasize over some article of women’s attire. Taking shoes as an example, the stiletto heel of a shoe embodies the ‘phallic’ symbol, which is not exactly emblematic of a…
(Gratuitous Gilmore Girls reference) If you are a woman, chances are you are even more highly attuned to other people's gazes. After all, we have a lot more to figure out, specifically if the gaze is coming from a man who might be sexually interested in…
Yet, as the essay develops, the idea of the gaze develops as well. She quotes another philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, who says “the gaze of another is the ‘hell’ that other people represent” (Bordo 171). There’s this idea that once someone looks upon us, we act differently because we feel embarrassed. Similarly, with clothing, we dress to impress others. How we dress is influenced by the media or by what we see our friends wear as…
The article, ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre & Excess’1 by Linda Williams explores whether the forms of sex, violence and emotion found in the genres of pornography, horror, and melodrama (specifically the woman’s weepie) respectively, are as gratuitous as my film scholars and critics believe them to be. Setting out to disprove this idea, Williams’ investigates and compares the form, function, and system of the three genres. Ultimately, William’s central claims reveal the value in the supposed excess of these three genres that benefit a spectator in a variety of ways. Seeking to argue her idea, Williams’ firstly uncovers why elements of these genres are regularly deemed as excessive. This is presented with the contrast of Classic Hollywood and…
In this modern era, everybody needs to be looking great and appealing. As, Kimmel and Holler (2011) utilize the idea of Naomi Wolf to portray the “beauty myth” the stigma in which woman being caught by the high premium models of fashion markets. Kimmel and Holler (2011) use Naomi Wolf’s definition that the “beauty myth” is an inaccessible female excellence that uses the pictures of female magnificence as a political weapon against women. It depicts that “the ladies itself get caught in an interminable cycle of beautifying agents, magnificence helps, weight control plans, and activity devotion” (Kimmel and Holler 2011, 324).…
Sarah Lucas, born in 1962, is an English artist who is known for her works that include visual puns and bawdy humour. In 2000, one of her works was installed and presented at the Freud Museum in London. This installation came to known as "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". The installation was quite a contradiction to the interior environment of the museum itself. Yet, the significance of the location is not lost upon the audience once they disintegrate the different layers of meaning that comes forward with the installation.…