Mulvey - The Male Gaze & Queer Gaze

The Male Gaze is a theory placed forward by Laura Mulvey: a feminist film theorist. It theorises the idea that due to the male dominance in the industry of cinema, the result is that the audience are most often subject to a view of females on screen from the perspective of the heterosexual male. This, in her view, does not accurately portray the characteristics of women. Instead women are often objectified in film. The whole premise of the male gaze theory is that of how women are represented differently to men in the media and popular culture. A common saying goes that in mainstream cinema, "men are to be admired and women are to be desired". In general, mainstream popular cinema is aimed at heterosexual teenage males as these are the primary audience as they spend the most on consuming cinema and merchandising. Men in cinema are often portrayed as the heroic type and are not sexualised anywhere near to the extent of women.

Criticism of this theory

Forms of male gaze
There are numerous forms of gaze which take place in films, according to Mulvey. These include but are not limited to the five key forms of cinematic gaze: the intra-diegetic gaze, the extra-diegetic gaze. the camera gaze, the editorial gaze and the spectator gaze.  The first, the intra-diegetic gaze, takes place when a character gazes at another character or object in the text. This form of gaze is typically shown via the point of view shot from the gazing characters perspective and is utilised with shot-reverse-shot editing technique.

The camera gaze is perhaps one of the most well recognised forms of gaze in films by audiences. A common example of this form of gaze is in the 2007 Michael Bay film Transformers whereby the camera is looking up at the main female stars figure as she opens a car bonnet. Unlike the intra-diegetic gaze, this gaze is not also from a characters perspective. This scene in particular has become an iconic figure for the debate of the male gaze. Some argue that despite it objectifying and fetishizing Megan Fox's character it also shows the character as confident, knowledgeable in the predominately 'manly' field of engineering and free to express herself in whatever way she likes.