Theory - Mulvey's Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory directly links and applies to the perfume adverts I have been working with, as well as the majority of media we consume on a daily basis, from cinema to TV and as mentioned, adverts.

Mulvey argues that women are used and included in images, whether moving or still, for the sole purpose of being looked at and therefore desired by male viewers. They are thus controlled by the gaze, fulfilling gazer's voyueristic, sexual needs. The women become objects, their personalities and humility cast as irrelevant, the viewers subjects who dominate over the objects as a result.

In the adverts this idea is explicitly apparent. The women depicted are nothing more than sources of pleasure and objects of desire, to be looked at and lusted over and nothing more. Even though the products are for women, and the adverts exist to persuade a female audience to buy them, the pictures are still there to appeal to the male gaze. Scopophilia is the sexual pleasure from looking, voyeurism, and also acknowledges the pleasure of being looked at; the female audience is supposed to desire to become the women depicted in the adverts, so that they as a result become the objects of said male gaze.

Many have argued that we are so conditioned as a society and so frequently and constantly exposed to the male gaze concept that we rarely if ever notice it's existence or really consider it's implications. Often times we won't think twice about a sexy female form being shown on screen or on a billboard or in a magazine, we won't see it as anything out of the ordinary or inherently negative. I hope that by taking the images out of context, working into them with textures and rehashing them into other mediums and forms of visual imagery, an audience will be more aware of the male gaze and the nature of the images we so commonly consume. Even if my work isn't necessarily commenting directly on the concept or the imagery I am working with, I hope that it at least brings the images into the light out of the dark of familiarity and cultural and social conditioning.