Representations- The Gaze

The gaze is a technical term used in film theory in the 1970's to refer to the ways viewers look at images of people in any visual medium . Feminists refer to the male gaze to the way men look at women.

Forms of Gaze-

• Spectators Gaze.
• Intra-diegetic Gaze.
• The direct address to the viewer (extra-diegetic gaze)
• The look of the camera.
• The gaze of the bystander.
• The gaze of an audience within a text.

There is also something called 'The Fourth Wall' this is when an actor looks straight into the camera and makes talks/ makes a gesture to involve the audience. This shatters the illusion that it is real.

Direction of Gaze-

• Attention directed towards others.
• Attention directed towards an object.
• Attention directed to oneself.
• Attention directed towards the reader/camera.
• Attention directed towards middle distance.

Laura Mulvey - Key Theorist.

• Laura Mulvey wrote a book called ' Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' in 1975.
• She believed that Females are passive and Males are active.
• She also wrote that she thought women are the image and men are the 'bearer of the look'.
• Talked about Voyeuristic and Fetishistic looks.

Criticisms of Theory-

• Has failed to account for the female spectator.
• Hasn't considered about gay men.
• Since 1980 increasing display and sexualisation of the male body in TV, cinema and advertising.

Categorising  Facial Expressions-

Women-     

• Chocolate Box.
• Invitational.
• Super-smiler.
• Romantic or Sexual.

Marjorie Ferguson (1980) 

Men -

• Carefree.
• Practical.
• Seductive.
• Comic.
• Catalogue.

Trevor Millum (1975)