Gender Analysis and Theorists

Objectification - Seeing or treating a person as an object

Archetypes - behaviour and appearance matches the appearance as a stereotype

Stereotypes - labels attached to someone based upon a social factor

Hegemony - leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

Voyeurism - A perversion in which a person receives sexual gratification from seeing sexual images.

Lura Mulvey: "The Male Gaze" 1975

• One that deals with how an audience views the people presented 
• How a man looks at a woman
• How a woman looks at a women
• How women look at themselves

Visual pleasure and narrative cinema:

• Women are used for the visual pleasure of men
• Made to seem like sexual objects
• Women took the passive part of a film, men play an active part
• In film audience they have to view characters from the view from the perspective of the heterosexual male
• Camera lingers on the curves of the females Women presented as sexual spectacle 
• Objects of pleasure for the characters and audience
• The way women are viewed in cinema is presented as unequal
• Men fetishise women which is referred to as 'fetishistic scopophilla'
• Used to avoid castration

Criticisms of Mulvey and The Male Gaze Theory

• Some women enjoy being looked at such as beauty pageant contestants
• The gaze is not always used sexually but also to compare body image or clothing etc.
• The theory does not consider female spectators, only heterosexual males
• Since the 1980s there has been a large increase in the sexualisation of the male body

Miriam Hanson: "The Female Gaze" 1984

• Women also view men as erotic objects of desire
• Increase in the sexualisation of men since the 1980s

Jonathan Schroeder, Theorist 1998

"To gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the subject".

Charlie's Angels Representation of Gender

Examples of empowerment:

1. Their sexuality 
2. Owning a Ferrari 
3. Motor cycle
4. adrenaline sports  
5. Rescuing men 
6. Surfing
7. Display of strength to punch through a window
8. Taking an active role

Examples of sexuality:

1. They have to answer to a male boss
2. Sexual outfits
3. Surfing innuendos 
4. Stripping