Mulvey's Male Gaze - Audience Theory

The Male Gaze theory is suggested by Laure Mulvey (1975) where she hows how the male point of view is adopted by the camera for the benefit of an assumed male audience. This is through the practice of a camera 'lingering' a females body, and therefore customises females to be viewed as 'sexual objects' to gratify men.
She argued that male figures are the central active characters and the male audience identifies their viewing of women as passive figures. Female audience are also positioned to identify with the male gaze and functional through the 'males' eyes'.


From this exercise I understand the key representation theory 'The Male Gaze' and have identified the strengths of effect of this particular theory. Alongside, applied it to another trailer production, Byzantium.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/byzantium/#videos-large

In the film Byzantium, women are shown to seductive through the use of camera shots(angles&movement), Editing, Sound and all other minor aspects included in the trailer.

At the beginning of the trailer the close-up of the girls eye's as if she's luring him into her. And has one long thumb nails that gives the suspense of purpose of activity of what the nail for.

The same girl is shown to be wearing a red colour and has red wavy hair, with red lipstick applied onto her lips. This colour red represents passion and love.

In various scenes, men are shown to be dominate due to the ration of what men are to women. Men are also shown to overshadow of a female figure. We see this through the positioning of a when the women is seated and is surrounded by three men stood behind her. Both of these point emphasises through the camera shot and minse-en-scene. This overall view presents women as second best and always followed behind a man.

A scene is shown where a girl looks at her reflection but her reflection is faded through steam, which gives the sense of unclarity and shows unimportance to this female figure.

Dialogue - 'secrets haven't you', this could be encoded as a theme of secrets that can be found, portrayed or represented in any genre of film.

Towards the end of the trailer, shows a lady assisted with sound and lighting indicating a night club.
Through the use of hard base beats and colourful flashing lights.

With this, the camera focuses directly on the side of a female emphasising her curves and figure on her body.

The technique of double gander is presented when we see a reflection that ensures the distinct binary opposition of good vs bad. 

Overall, the male gaze theory shows me what exactly the representation of women are in films. However this theory can be challenged as not every movie will consist of a male being heroic and female being seductive or set to be second fiddle to a male figure.