Laura Mulvey and The Male Gaze

In Laura Mulvey’s essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey utilizes psychoanalysis theory to show how our subconsciousness of society shapes the way we view films. The most interesting thing I found in her essay was the Male Gaze. I have read this actually in two other and I always find something new. But I want to focus on the Male Gaze. Her main argument is that the female of the film is used to provide a pleasurable experience for men. She uses the movie Vertigo as an example of this gaze. In many of the scenes, we are looking through the male’s eyes, which is placed on the woman. We see this in a lot of films, and I don’t think it is something that will go away. For example, in Charlie’s Angels, many scenes are focused on the angels’ rear ends. Oops? Can the Male Gaze also be seen in other medias too? The answer to this is absolutely. For example, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there is a scene when Esmeralda is being taken to the gallows. During this scene, Victor Hugo spends an awkwardly amount of time describing her “long black hair….more lustrous than the raven’s wing” or how about her “half-naked shoulders” and “bare legs”. Even though we cannot physically see these things, we are supposed to imagine it in our heads, but from the male’s perspective.

Can this gaze be switched to the female’s perspective? I believe it could be. Take for example the movie Magic Mike. We are seeing the male’s perspective, but from the female view (amazing eye candy, but this is what Mulvey is getting at, no?). Overall, I thought this was a great read and it really enlightened me. Here’s a picture of Magic Mike for your viewing pleasure.

First Run of Distinction

Even though Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu is highly confusing to me, Bourdieu brings up a lot of points that I think are very interesting. In the “Knowledge without Concepts” section, one of the points I found interesting was when Bourdieu discusses the sense of limits. He says, “The sense of limits implies forgetting the limits”(241). I’m not sure why this stuck out to me. I feel like he is trying to say in order to realize what are limits are, we must forget them for a short period of time. Another thing that stuck out to me was “bodily hexis, a basic dimension of the sense of social orientation, is a practical way of experiencing and expressing one’s own sense of social value”(243). I had to look up the meaning of hexis, but basically is it a stable arrangement or disposition of a person’s self. I think if you have a stable hexis, you are able to express your own sense and realize what exactly your social value is. Overall, I thought this piece was really confusing to me, but I would love to really break it down and see what Bourdieu is trying to say about judgment of taste.