Laura Mulvey

The Male Gaze

   Laura Mulvey is a feminist film-theorist that looks at many ways in which (mostly) women are used in a voyeuristic/sexual presence in order to sell the product. This is used throughout media, whether it is on a film, a music video, a television advert and even in magazines. It has been proven that using such 'sexual' pictures, as the ones shown in the video below, does actually sell the product very well indeed.

  "Influenced by Freud & Jacques Lucan, Mulvey sees the representation of woman in film & literature (and therefore society in general) as being dominated by a male point of view. Her belief is that the world is a patriarchy and that men have the ‘active’ roles and woman ‘passive’."



   Although it is argued that gender equality has been reached in the modern 21st century, it doesn't look like it has with the media. Mulvey says that Men normally play the 'Active Roles' in films - which tend to push the film along, and make the storyline. Whereas women on the other hand play the 'Passive role' - which often helps the man, but sometimes hinders plan which results in a dramatic and heroic save from the man. This all comes from the quote found above, and it all stems from the old-view that men are superior and women are inferior. Obviously it is a lot less controversial than that now, but it is still clearly evident, and I will use Mulvey's ideas to analyse and evaluate to use of 'sexuality' as an advertisement in the video 'Wrecking Ball' by Miley Cyrus. 


Wrecking Ball

   Miley Cyrus is known for being a disney Popstar and is also known as Hannah Montana. Kids have grown up watching these shows and going to concerts etc. and that is the reason why this video has caused so much controversy. Even if it was only slightly promiscuous and sexual it would have cause quite a bit of uproar, but it is a lot worse than that in terms of the severity of the 'nakedness' and 'suggestiveness' of the performance that makes it that much more of a shock. 

   I would say that this video both did and did not work in terms of advertising the product (the product being the song/album). Because based on Mulvey's theory, the whole point of having a rather voyeuristic performance such as this is to advertise, gain audience and publicity to then make money on the amount of records sold. It didn't work because it was so ridiculous that people ended up disliking Miley to which she now has a negative reputation as a singer/popstar. However it did work, because of exactly the same point. No matter what way you look it, this video did get loads of hits and a lot of sold records and whether or not the audience liked it or not  it doesn't matter, as the money still goes to Miley Cyrus and her Record Company. 

    This is one of the many promiscuous shots in the video and relates to the lyric, "I came in like a wrecking ball.". Granted, Miley has hardily anything on in this shot, but it's still enough to cover up her sexual assets and not make the video go 'too-far' and make it not child-friendly. However the shot below, she is having to use her arms in order to cover up, which surely shows the extremity of her performance, and the ways and lengths in which she'll go to get publicity. 

  This takes Mulvey's ideas on the 'Male Gaze' completely to the next level, and makes the whole video about the suggestiveness of the singer, rather than showing it more subtlety. Mulvey says a lot of media's target audience is based on a heterosexual man, and in this case it clearly is. But due to it being target so immensely, it is argued that it is narrowing its audience even further to only men, and seeing as the audience a few years beforehand was mainly girls, this isn't a good decision.
   
     The lyrics themselves also enforce Mulvey's points. The song is about a breakup and the lyric, "I came in like a wrecking ball" (the word I being the most important) and the tears running down her face, show that the male in the relationship played the 'active role' to which she just stood there being 'passive', but is also the one who ruined it.