Laura Mulvey: male gaze

Laura Mulvey used the ideas of Jacques Lacan (rewrote Freud) to argue that 'classic realist' films - classic Hollywood narrative - are inevitable in constructing the spectator as a male. Significantly, the majority of films have a male 'hero'/ protagonist and consist of women who were merely there to be sexually objectified, who are not allowed to desiring sexual subjects themselves. "Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at." She argued that there are two modes of looking..voyeuristic and fethishictic. Both which generally reveal the male 'castration anxiety' (which is unconscious).

The 'male gaze' theory is a coherent explanation for the dominating subordinate female roles in films, yet attitudes to women have changed and although film has not been so quick to reflect these films such as Alien and Tomb Raider have. It also assumes a passive audience (similar to effects theory) and is essentialist- treating the spectator as only male and hetrosexual.