Psychoanalytic analysis is an approach to analyzing media artifacts in order to understand how the human drives for pleasure and desire play a role within them (Ott & Mack, 2014). The main premise of psychoanalysis is that people are behaving in a certain way due to the unconscious desires, needs and fears. One of the psychoanalytic elements important to the mass media communication is the male gaze theory. In this paper, I will explore how the male gaze is challenged and why are there contradictions in those alternatives that require more research.
Male gaze within the psychoanalytic analysis
Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst who most thoroughly developed the concept of the unconscious (Berger, 2013). According to Freud, all humans are born …show more content…
This developed into the field of study called the male gaze. The premise of the male gaze is that the viewer achieves scopophilic pleasure in one of two ways. The viewer either identifies with the male characters who gaze at the female ones in the movie or the viewer identifies with the camera gaze focused on the female characters. Female characters in the movies have usually been passive in contrast to their male active protagonists. They are dressed and set according to the beauty standards to invoke the feelings of pleasure by men. Mulvey’s view focuses on men as spectators, however it is challenged by many scholars who point out that various groups and bodies watch movies and therefore pleasure gaining becomes a more complex process. Nevertheless, this theory raised a bigger question about gender and sexualisation that caused a shift in the cinematic study to the form and narratives of films and media messages (Ott & Mack, …show more content…
The ideal of beauty is very often a thin, white, middle class, young body. However, this Barbie-like representation is challenged by the feminist take. Dove company ran a Real Beauty Campaign to challenge the standards of feminine beauty always portrayed in the media. They portrayed women of all ages, ethnicities and body types in their advertisements on television, print and digital media (see Figure 1) (Johnston & Taylor, 2008). Dove received a great response from their audience, gender scholars and the media. Throughout the campaign, they partnered with organizations like Girl Scouts and got involved in many self-esteem building programs for women. Real Beauty Campaign is an example of feminist consumerism. This theory believes that a company uses feminist ideas and themes in its marketing in order to sell products to women, presenting the power of buying as a tool of empowerment - identity and social change builder (Johnston & Taylor, 2008). However, many feminist scholars have criticized this
Male gaze within the psychoanalytic analysis
Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst who most thoroughly developed the concept of the unconscious (Berger, 2013). According to Freud, all humans are born …show more content…
This developed into the field of study called the male gaze. The premise of the male gaze is that the viewer achieves scopophilic pleasure in one of two ways. The viewer either identifies with the male characters who gaze at the female ones in the movie or the viewer identifies with the camera gaze focused on the female characters. Female characters in the movies have usually been passive in contrast to their male active protagonists. They are dressed and set according to the beauty standards to invoke the feelings of pleasure by men. Mulvey’s view focuses on men as spectators, however it is challenged by many scholars who point out that various groups and bodies watch movies and therefore pleasure gaining becomes a more complex process. Nevertheless, this theory raised a bigger question about gender and sexualisation that caused a shift in the cinematic study to the form and narratives of films and media messages (Ott & Mack, …show more content…
The ideal of beauty is very often a thin, white, middle class, young body. However, this Barbie-like representation is challenged by the feminist take. Dove company ran a Real Beauty Campaign to challenge the standards of feminine beauty always portrayed in the media. They portrayed women of all ages, ethnicities and body types in their advertisements on television, print and digital media (see Figure 1) (Johnston & Taylor, 2008). Dove received a great response from their audience, gender scholars and the media. Throughout the campaign, they partnered with organizations like Girl Scouts and got involved in many self-esteem building programs for women. Real Beauty Campaign is an example of feminist consumerism. This theory believes that a company uses feminist ideas and themes in its marketing in order to sell products to women, presenting the power of buying as a tool of empowerment - identity and social change builder (Johnston & Taylor, 2008). However, many feminist scholars have criticized this