Friday, 20 September 2013

Reference To Looking & Voyeuristic Treatment

Laura Mulvey wrote about her theory of the "male gaze" uses in video and, thus, mass media. It argues that the audience of a film or video are encouraged to look at it from a male perspective through  three elements:

1. The gaze of the camera and the camera looking at the female body.
2. The gaze of the male and how the audience will witness a man looking at a woman followed by the camera looking at the woman.
3. The gaze of the audience and what the audience are looking at.

These points are expressed very well in the video for 50 Cent's song "Candy Shop", which features a male actor looking at objectified women which is then followed by the camera looking at them in the same way, as shown below.




However, in the music video for Primal Scream's song "County Girl", the female actor actively objectifies herself, but is still very much the subject. She does this in order to get what she wants from various males in the video and she still remains the dominating party as shown here:


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