THE LAURA MULVEY THEORY - The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey is a theorist that believes that everything is looked at from a mans point of view, epspecialy in TV and in Film. Her belief is that the men have the 'active' roles and the women have the 'passive' roles.

Traditionally the men will have the 'active' roles which be seen as the hero type figures, the ones who save the world and drive the narative forward. Whereas the women are said to play 'passive' roles and are used as an object of lust or erotic and slow the narative down, just acting as a bit of a filler when the directors can't think of anything else
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When you look at a movie or TV series, you will note that women are far more outnumbered in terms of roles and they are often sidelined, playing the characters of the dumb blonde that only gets one line or the 'bikini babe' seen taking her clothes off, a house wife not being able to make money for herself, or a disney princess relying on a man to save her life. Seeing a women in a 'male role' as such, meaning that she will be the lead  and the men will be sidelined is very rare and is not often portrayed enough in film and TV.

In the 'male gaze' of this era it is often split into two parts;
-Vouyerism - the notion of looking, the way body parts are portrayed in our society.
-fetishistic - a sexual interest in an object of the body

Mulvey pointed out that the female characters ofen have two types:
-Sexually active female
-Powerless female
These are both made for the gratification of male viewers because thats all they thought wtahced the TV back in the day.

Examples of Sexually Active Female in TV and film:

-Bond Girls
-House Bunny
-Barbra Windsor - Carry On Camping

This video clip shows scenes from 'Carry On Camping' and the vouyerism that Barbara displays

Examples of Powerless Female in TV and film:

-Sleeping Beauty
-Snow white
-Cinderella
-sarah connor - terminator

A video from 'Snow White' showing her singing 'someday my prince will come'

"women in any full human form, have almost been completely left out of film..." - Laura Mulvey
 

 The male gaze is very ofen diskplayed in music videos with the same characteristics but in my opinion I think the roles are even worse.
You get the wrappers like 50Cent and Ludacris talking about 'ho's' and there are girls dancing in next to nothing beside them, obviously portraying the 'ho'. One ,usic video that is very vouyeristsic is 'Holiday by Dizzie Rascal, showing a pool party with almost every scene showing some part of a womens body. This video actually shows a male gaze in action at 0:43 seconds as he checks her out when she walks past.