The Male Gaze

While the ideas behind the gaze were present in earlier uses of it, the introduction of the term “the male gaze” can be traced back to Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which was published in 1975. Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (so basically the gaze) comes from factors such as the as the idea of heterosexual men as the normal target audience for most film genres. While this was more true in the time it was written, when Hollywood protagonists were overwhelmingly male, the concept of men as watchers and women as watched still applies today, despite the growing number of movies targeted toward women and that feature female protagonists.

The "Male Gaze" is basically used not just in film but also in advertising, but is also targeted at females aswell nowadays. This may have been so they could expand thier audience and make mre money. But the male gaze is still mainly used in film to appeal to the genders, because it may sound cheesy but "Sex Sells".