When I read about the numerous types of feminisms, one example of second wave feminism is Laura Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze in cinema from 1975. For this post, I include this still from Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007) featuring Megan Fox.
In this frame, Fox is inspecting a vehicle’s inner workings while the camera focuses on her arched back, her revealed skin, and the motion of her body. Even though the action of the scene follows Fox inspecting a car, Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze argues that the camera is most interested in framing Fox’s body for maximum sexual pleasure.
In film studies, I learned about the lasting legacy of Mulvey’s feminist film theory work which critically examines how looking is constructed in movies. As a filmmaker, Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze usefully describes the filmmaking conditioned required on set in order to construct a frame like the one from Transformers. On the other hand, when I am in the audience, I feel equipped to identify the filmmaking devices used in order to frame a woman for maximum sexual gratification. Unfortunately, in contemporary cinema, the male gaze is still constantly utilized to signal that a woman in the frame is sexually desirable or will become a romantic interest.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
