Laura Mulvey's "Male Gaze" Theory- Textual Analysis

'The Male Gaze' theory was developed in 1975 by Laura Mulvey in her work "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" she outlined the various ways in which the male gaze works in media texts. The concept of the gaze is how people are presented to the audience. From a feminists perspective this can be viewed in 3 different ways:

1. How men look at women
2. How women look at themselves
3. How women look at each other

The main idea is the representation of women as a sexual fantasy from a heterosexual male point of view.  An example video of this idea portrayed in the real media platforms today is Nicki Minaj's video for her song "Anaconda" on YouTube. 

This is the opening shot to her video, immediately the audience is confronted with the sexualisation of the three women due to their costume and posture and position. This clearly suggests that they are purposefully positioned to make them more appealing to the audience in a sexual fantasy manner which is most likely from a heterosexual males perspective using the Male Gaze theory.

This second medium close up shot shows Nicki Minaj obviously in a provocative position, using the theory it would be stated that she is purely that way due to women being seen as an image and the general objectification of women and their bodies. This statement can be emphasized by the sound itself as the main hook of the song which is from a male who remains unseen throughout the entire video can be linked to the needs of the male ego is: "My anaconda dont... My anaconda dont... My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hun". Which could also denote the idea that men are the controlling subjects as he is clearly an active male (in the song only, not visually) but he has hierarchy over the passive women in the videos because he is actively choosing and objectifying the females to satisfy the needs of his male ego. This could be further investigated to suggest that the reason the male singing the hook of the song isn't visually seen is because the audience may be in the position of said heterosexual male and they are viewing the video from his perspective.

In this long shot featuring the 5 women being fairly candid in the shot with the mise-en-scene being a plain white background with white chairs adds to the simplicity of the shot, but it also draws the audiences attention purely to the women. Using the theory it would suggest that men (in this case it could be seen as the audience) do the looking and that the women are there to be looked at, which can be reinforced by this particular shot since all the attention is being directed to them.

In this shot, featuring the only male in the video fellow artist Drake, the mise-en-scene still remains simplistic. One factor to focus is the proxemics between Drake and Nicki. Nicki's proxemics in relation to Drake's is much lower as she is seen crawling on the floor towards him. The theory would suggest that Drake is on a higher level to satisfy the needs of the male ego and it allows for the objectification of Nicki due to her costume. It also could suggest that the proxemics are portrayed in that way to show the male as the controlling subject as being higher up will give him more power. The blue lighting has male gender connotations and may have been added to possibly add masculinity to the shot because of the males presence.