The Male Gaze

Refers to the ways viewers look at images of people.'The male gaze' is described as a feminist reference to the way men look at women.
Forms of gaze:
- Spectators gaze
- Intra - diegetic gaze
- Extra - diegetic gaze
- Look of the camera
- Bystander
- Audience within a text
Direction of gaze:
- Towards others
- Towards an object
- To oneself
- To reader/camera
- Middle distance
Laura Mulvey's theory:
Visual pleasure and narrative cinema (1975)
Active male/passive female
'Women as Image'/Man as 'bearer of look'
Voyeuristic
Fetishistic
Critisicms with Mulvey's theory:
Failure to account for female spectator
Looks only at spectator being a hetrosexual male
Since 1980's, thers been an increse in display and sexualisation of male body