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Laura Mulvey's The Male Gaze And Objectification Theory

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The Male Gaze and Objectification Theory In her highly influential essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey proposed the film theory, The Male Gaze. It refers to the way film is generally structured around a masculine viewer and how the feminine view is notably absent even when women view fellow women in film. Describing the tendency in visual culture to depict the world and women from a masculine point of view and in terms of men 's attitudes, she argues that “the most insidious manner in which objectifying gaze infuses American culture is in people’s encounters with visual media that spotlight bodies and body parts and seamlessly align viewers with an implicit sexualising gaze.”3 She also brings in voyeurism which is defined as “deriving sexual pleasure from observing unsuspecting individuals who are partly undressed, naked, or engaged in sexual acts.”4 As much as this is a film theory, it has transcended new media and is rampant in print advertisements and commercials. Both Dove Chocolate and Godiva Chocolate are equally guilty of objectification of women. However, what is more prominent is their attempt to hide behind the pretence of a feminist, female-empowering message.
Objectification theory posits that women to varying degrees internalise this outsider view and begin to self-objectify, treating themselves as objects to be observed and evaluated based on appearance. Due to objectification, a woman’s body parts are isolated and separated from the
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