Blogging task on Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a gender representation analyst and she realises that media constructs certain stereotypical representations on the two gender groups and these representations are portrayed in media products such as music videos.  She describes what she calls ‘The Male Gaze’ when discussing representations of women in the media. She realises that representations are simply the points of views of the people representing something, and in the example of the music industry, these would be the point of views of the producers/writers/camera men which are mostly male dominated roles. So we as consumers are shown males point of view of women and what they think a woman should look/be/act like thus being the male gaze. In music videos, the micro features help create these representations. Certain camera angles/shots are more commonly used when shooting to show them as either inferior to the males in the video (achieved through high angle camera shots) or very sexualised (achieved through close up body shots or tilts coming up from the female body). Also woman are mainly seen in these videos in very little clothing whereas most of the time the men are fully dressed.

An example of the male gaze is shown greatly in a lot of music videos. One example is Rihanna- you da one

This is a prime example of the male gaze in action. There are many long shots showing the artist Rihanna in very few clothes. There were also many close ups of her body and many tilts as well.

However times are changing now and woman are starting to reject the representations given to them and are now starting to become more equal to men. There are now more and more videos coming about where the gaze is rather neutral and no one is seen as sexual objects. An example of this would be Azealia Banks- 212

There are man close ups that don’t go any lower than the shoulders. There are also many extreme close ups of her lips and she recites her lyrics, this would normally be ignored with the male gaze unless the lips are covered in lipstick which doesn’t happen in this video. We see the artist is wearing shorts however the shorts do not show her legs and never go any further than the knees.

There are now even some videos that have what is known as ‘The Female Gaze’ where men are seen as the sexualised objects in the videos  however these are not as common and are harder to find.