- Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and the sexual fantasy from a male point of view.
- This concept came from the book "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" by female film theorist Laura Mulvey, published in 1975.
- Laura Mulvey tried to make political use in a study of cinematic spectatorship.
- Mulvey notes that people find pleasure in looking at other people's bodies and can do so in the darkness without being seen looking.
- She declared that 'pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.
- In traditional cinema, 'men do the looking and women are there to be looked at.' Women are controlled by men and are passive objects of desire for the men in these movies.
- The cinematic codes of popular films 'are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic need of the male ego'. Mulvey termed this as 'Male Gaze'
- These movies remove the feeling of guilt in the men using certain techniques. They also represent the figure as reassuring to men rather than dangerous to build up the physical beauty of the object and make it more satisfying in itself.
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