Does The Female Gaze really exist?
You might be surprised to know that there's no such thing as "The Female Gaze", only "The Male Gaze" and those who subvert it.
There isn't actually a scholarly term for The Female Gaze.
It lacks the scholarly analysis and theoretical foundation. First we need to backtrack a little bit and look at Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", where she first introduced the concept of The Male Gaze. Mulvey argues that mainstream cinema works under a male dominated perspective.
The Male Gaze theory
The Male Gaze works under three aspects: The objectification of women, power dynamics, and the narrative structure. It often reinforces the male protagonist's point of view in which women function as catalyst for male desire, or obstacles or conquest to be overcome. Almost every woman appears to be there for her body.
Mulvey argues that in a world ordered by imbalance, pleasure in viewing is divided into the active male and the passive female. The woman becomes an object, an idol in the eyes of the male protagonist, the camera and the audience.
The problem that lies within the concept of The Female Gaze is that The Male Gaze is inherent to cinema.
The Male Gaze exists because it supports the ideology of the man in power, aka the patriarchy. It inherently presents a power imbalance and it reflects the real life objectification of women. Because films are produced in the patriarchal context this ideological structure defines the outcome.
Putting women behind the camera, centering around the female protagonist, or having women objectify men doesn't magically counteract or deflate over a century of history of cinematic production. The structure of filmmaking has not fundamentally changed. For this reason, the female gaze cannot be like the male gaze.
Argentinian cinematographer Natasha Brea argues The Male Gaze has colonized the medium from the start: "You could say that it's become the official language of cinema. If there is a female gaze, it's never had the opportunity to fullyd evelop and become something that we can analyze," which brings me back to my point that it's never had a scholarly analysis or theoretical foundation.
The Reductiveness of The Female Gaze
In this fantastic essay, Emma Syea argues that The Male Gaze is objectifying, reductive and dominates our visual culture.
The way that the so-called Female Gaze has been conceptualized still propagates the usual stereotypes about female identity. The act of liberating from The Male Gaze has turned into a limiting view about women. Moving away from The Male Gaze simply isn't just replacing it with the female one. It's about overcoming the gaze altogether.
This further propagates the female stereotype, one which has historically ensured that women are limited to the roles of the "facilitator", the "supporter", the "caregiver", or the "nurturer".
This is the same stereotype that paints women that display any kind of emotion outside of the passive-benevolent ones as "ice queens" or "psychos", or "hysterical". It places the onus back on women to behave in a certain way, by stressing that the female gaze deals with a set of emotions rather than actions.
It seems that we're in danger of falling back into the trap of The Male Gaze, of how men see us. This may be a Trojan horse for the reductiveness of femininity. By opposing the male gaze with the female one, it encourages us to think back in binary terms.
It sets a presumption that each gaze is homogenous, and leaves no room for anyone that is gender diverse, non binary or queer.
Denying The Male Gaze vs The Female Gaze
Certainly there are films that still deny the power of The Male Gaze, and see women as subjects rather than objects viewed for pleasure. While not replicating The Female Gaze exactly, they still challenge the dominant masculine world views that's often seen in film and media. Film critic Mary Beth McAndrews coined this term as "the transformational gaze".
Moving away from The Male Gaze is necessary, so how do we actually overcome this?
We call out the instances we see of The Male Gaze.
We must continue giving female filmmakers, cinematographers, and writers the credit that they deserve.
While I have been discussing this from a very patriarchal, heteronormative, white and binary perspective, we also must give credit to people of color, queer and gender diverse filmmakers.
Attaching a trendy buzzword does not do this justice. We must leave behind this notion.
It creates a whole world of possibilities and facilitate serious critical engagement. It avoids pigeon-holing women into these specific categories, leaving us much more room to create, rather than gaze.
References:
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)
Emma Syea, “The false freedom of the female gaze” (2022)
Mary Beth McAndrews, “The Girl With the Pink Star Earring: The Transformational Gaze of ‘Revenge’ [Through Her Eyes]” (2020)
Kira Deshler, “Does The Female Gaze Exist?” (2023)