Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a british feminist film theorist. She is a professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck university.In 1975 Mulvey published an essay in the influential journal screen entitled visual pleasure and narrative cinema.

Mulvey's theory is a logical argument from two assertions:
 1.cinema reflects society
 2.society is patriarchal

Patriarchal means that a society is male dominated. In her essay Mulvey argues that we do live in a patriachal society and therefore cinema television and other media cultures reflect a patriarchal society.

'The Male Gaze'
'The gaze of the cinema is the male gaze' this is the statement mulvey used to support her argument.

The male gaze is active and the female gaze is passive within the narrative male characteristics direct their gaze towards female characters.

'The Triple Gaze' the spectator is made to identify with the male gaze because the camera films from the optical as well as libidinal point of view of the male characters.

This is how triple gaze works...

Other ways women are seen through the 'male gaze' is through music videos for example Rihanna's music video for 'shut up and drive'

Suture is classic hollywood narrative and editing or positions the audience in a certain way making only one preferred reading possible, however unconscious the audience are is of that position.

In classical hollywood cinema the male protagonist has agency he is active and powerful, he us the agent around whom the drama unfolds. The female character is passive and powerless, she is the object of desire for protagonists and audience.

Mulvey argues that women have two roles in a film one being an object of erotic desire for the characters and the second being the object of erotic desire for the audience.

This is shown through many films for example Transformers, with Megan Fox