The Male Gaze is the gaze that objectifies the feminine, a gaze which removes agency from the spectated and morphs the way one presents themselves to appease this gaze. According to Mulvey in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" what the Male Gaze does is that a woman's "desire is subjected to her image," (Mulvey, 834) it does this by "[splitting the] pleasure in looking...between active/male and passive/female," (Mulvey, 837). There are many ways in which the feminine is subjected to the dominant male gaze which the media prioritizes. There are certain tropes which appear in pop culture: The Good Wife, she's loyal, a mother and dependant on her man. The Sex Doll, she's there for male satisfaction and not her own. The Witch "Bitch," the woman who refuses the male gaze and therefore is cast as evil or masculine, (I mean how many rumors did you hear about female pop stars with penises?) These tropes seeks to enclose women in boxes, therefore it becomes hard to combat this fully if one seeks to be part of
popular media because the target audience is the white male which dominates our society.
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| The Comical Gay Negro Trope: Tituss |
My own personal struggle as a afro-latino genderfluid queer male is finding representation which suits me in a heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Most of the time I fail to find myself in the media and turn to instead critiquing how I wasn't represented, that is the oppositional gaze. In "The Oppositional Gaze" my mutha bell hooks, she quotes Annette Kuhn to the define the joys of the oppositional gaze "the act of analysis, of deconstruction and of reading 'against the grain' offer an additional pleasure--the pleasure of resistance." (hooks, 123). hooks critiques Mulvey because Mulvey fails to understand that this unified woman experience does not exist if race is a factor. I find myself agreeing with hook because I also don't see my self as the observer or the observed when a white woman is victim to the male gaze. For a queer example, as an Afro-Latino male I cannot relate to the white male characters or the black gay characters in the media. More often than not the black gay serves as comedic relief (Think Tituss from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Most of the time they are depicted as flamboyant or "DL" men and their sole purpose is to either laugh at or hate. Compare this to how the character Connor Walsh is depicted in How To Get Away With Murder, who is depicted as a regular white male who's only difference is that he like penis. What representations like this fail to mention is that as a person of color in the LGBT+ community you are cast aside if you are of color or "too fem." It fails to discuss the unshared experience. This is what bell hooks is talking about when she discusses Mulvey, the failure to express the unshared experience makes hook create one, the oppositional gaze.
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| Marina Chopping Up The Male Gaze as a White Feminist |
Today we see some artist like one of my favorites Marina and The Diamonds who seek to flip the male gaze, turning the mirror on the dominant male spectator in her popular music video
How To Be A Heartbreaker. In this video Marina places herself as the observer and the subject, the song sings about being as sexually exploitive as men are to fight against the way men treat women as disposable hookups. She decorates the video with white men to prove her point but fails to depict any commentary on race or sexuality in the video. This would be The Mulvey approach, she is taking on the role of the spectator which a person like me or bell hooks cannot do because we are not white, and I'm not heterosexual (Sorry Marina!)
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| White Man's Whore trope from Hard Out Here |
We also see how white women who do add race into the equation can use PoC as props.
Hard Out Here by Lily Allen is one of my favorite songs, but the video failed me by being problematic. Lily Allen is know for her satirical songs, like an all time favorite
The Fear, which more often than not have a feminist message or approach. In her video for Hard Out Here, however, she carries on her message by critiquing Hip-Hop culture by placing herself as the pimp in the scenario. Yes she does personify the capitalist male gaze in the video (white man in suit), and she does give him a good spanking and make him twerk, but by decorating the video with women of color and positioning herself as the pimp she then becomes the one oppressing the women, she is seen pouring liquor on their asses, and throwing money on them, as well as wearing the iconic big fur pimp coat. Although she does comment on the objectifying of women she fails to comment on race even though she uses black culture as a backdrop.
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| Literally destroying the Phallic |
Finally we get to the grandmaster of 3rd wave feminist monuments. Nicki Minaj's
Anaconda tackles both race and the male gaze. This is a response to Sir Mix A-lot's
Baby Got Back which objectifies women with curves. Mix raps about how he "Loves big butts and he cannot lie" and Nicki Minaj respond to this by using her own objectifying language and replying "Dick bigger than a tower, I ain't talking 'bout Eiffel." Although traditional feminist could easily tear this video apart by pointing at the way the women are dressed and what they are doing, they miss the message. Nicki depicts women this way because like Lily she must appease the male gaze first to be relevant, then turn it on it's head.
Anaconda as her reply to
Baby Got Back, and even the fact that she samples it, implies that she
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| Onika obliterating the male gaze |
saw that agency was being taken away from female sexuality and she was reclaiming it. Even though she echos Sir Mix A-lot by saying "fuck the skinny bitches" it is meant empower thick women (even though it does so by stepping over skinny women, skinny women aren't constantly told they are unappealing because of their body type. It's like saying all lives matter.) Nicki here displays her oppositional gaze by showing she has agency, she gets eaten out in HER car, she cuts the banana because it won't fit, she doesn't let Drake touch her and leaves him in that chair because she has control over her sexuality, leaving Drake stupefied. The Oppositional Gaze is to critique when one is misrepresented, and that is what Nicki Minaj does.
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