REPRESENTATION: Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze'

How I Would Reflect On This Theory in my Work/Influence On My Work:
I would possibly think to exploit this theory in my own music video e.g. by having Close Ups of a female getting touched by a male character.

Laura Mulvey is a british, feminist, film theorist.
She created the "male gaze theory" in her 1975 essay called "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".
The 'male gaze' consists of three perspectives:

• the person behind the camera 
• the characters within the representation or film itself 
• the spectator 

Mulvey believes that gender power asymmetry is a controlling force in cinema and constructed for the pleasure of the male viewer, which is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideologies and discourses.

The male gaze theory happens when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man e.g. having shots of the curves of a woman's body. 

The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object both for the characters within the film and for the spectator who is watching the film. The man comes across as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze of a man. This adds an element of patriarchal order, and is often seen in "illusionistic narrative film". 

Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the 'female gaze', reflecting an underlying power asymmetry.