Pop culture idealizes the way we view women in film. We have come to expect is that women are passive, sexual objects whose role in film revolves around a male gaze. “Babylon” by Mad Men reinforces this portrayal of women through the ‘Male Gaze’ as argued by Laura Mulvey and hyper-sexualization, argued by Phillips & Strobol. sThere are two examples in “Babylon” that I am going to discuss that support Mulvey’s idea of the male gaze and its implications on female roles.
The female body in “Babylon” is continually presented as an object solely for the visual desire of men. The female body is exaggerated and framed to conform to reinforcement of males dominating the way females exist in pop culture. We are first drawn to this by the detail …show more content…
It reinforces the culture that men are allowed to view women as objects, existing in their surroundings and has made it normal in our society for them to do so. It has controlled the audience in such a way that we have come to expect it; we expect that women are going to be objectified in this way because it reinforces the ideals in society that men are the better, more dominant gender.
We see this happen in “Babylon” in the scene, when the camera focuses Peggy, watching the other women applying their lipsticks and smiling at their reflections in the mirror, the camera then circles Peggy, leaving the other women blurred in the background. Without dialogue, this scene is set up in a manner that reinforces Mulvey’s male gaze, setting and portraying the women in such a manner that they are not there to talk or be engaged with but to be viewed in a desirable, feminine way. (Haslam. 187-188)(Phillips & Strobol. …show more content…
We don’t often notice that we are objectifying women in pop culture, as we just come to expect that men will look at women as sexual objects, as that is what is portrayed in film over and over again. It is what has become a social norm for pop culture and most people don’t recognize it. We accept that most of the time women are going to be portrayed in a way that revolves entirely around the pleasure of men and expect that women are standardized and characterized in this way. It has become what we see as the natural order of pop culture. We are allowing women to be carried on the sidelines of film, allowing men to carry story lines and reinforce the passive, weak portrayal of women in society. However, we do not realize that this is happening at all. Most audiences do not realize that in pop culture, we have allowed women to become hyper sexualized and objectified without batting an eye. (Phillips & Strobol. 161-165) (Haslam
The female body in “Babylon” is continually presented as an object solely for the visual desire of men. The female body is exaggerated and framed to conform to reinforcement of males dominating the way females exist in pop culture. We are first drawn to this by the detail …show more content…
It reinforces the culture that men are allowed to view women as objects, existing in their surroundings and has made it normal in our society for them to do so. It has controlled the audience in such a way that we have come to expect it; we expect that women are going to be objectified in this way because it reinforces the ideals in society that men are the better, more dominant gender.
We see this happen in “Babylon” in the scene, when the camera focuses Peggy, watching the other women applying their lipsticks and smiling at their reflections in the mirror, the camera then circles Peggy, leaving the other women blurred in the background. Without dialogue, this scene is set up in a manner that reinforces Mulvey’s male gaze, setting and portraying the women in such a manner that they are not there to talk or be engaged with but to be viewed in a desirable, feminine way. (Haslam. 187-188)(Phillips & Strobol. …show more content…
We don’t often notice that we are objectifying women in pop culture, as we just come to expect that men will look at women as sexual objects, as that is what is portrayed in film over and over again. It is what has become a social norm for pop culture and most people don’t recognize it. We accept that most of the time women are going to be portrayed in a way that revolves entirely around the pleasure of men and expect that women are standardized and characterized in this way. It has become what we see as the natural order of pop culture. We are allowing women to be carried on the sidelines of film, allowing men to carry story lines and reinforce the passive, weak portrayal of women in society. However, we do not realize that this is happening at all. Most audiences do not realize that in pop culture, we have allowed women to become hyper sexualized and objectified without batting an eye. (Phillips & Strobol. 161-165) (Haslam