90% of the movies Americans watch are from the perspective of a man.
Here's how the "male gaze" has impacted women's representation in Hollywood.
Here's how the "male gaze" has impacted women's representation in Hollywood.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00🎵
00:29I don't want to be seen in a male gaze anymore.
00:34I don't want to exist in a man's world.
00:36The male gaze has been associated with a neutral gaze for a very long time
00:40because the vast majority of films are produced by men who look at women.
00:46And it's just to say that this gaze has an origin and also has a relationship with male domination.
00:53I feel very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze.
00:57I'm not interested in that view. I'm not interested in doing that.
01:00And I'd just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked.
01:04🎵
01:13My shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically
01:22out of the influence of the women's movement.
01:25So that films that I loved, films that had moved me, I was suddenly watching with different eyes.
01:36The voyeurism, the place of the male star protagonist in fighting off being the object of the gaze
01:48and creating the energy of the story, the woman as spectacle, it was somehow all there.
01:55🎵
02:08I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation
02:12because inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy and she goes,
02:16What do we do now?
02:19Now do you know any woman in any crisis situation who has...
02:24🎵
02:31Any woman in any crisis who has absolutely no idea what to do?
02:36It molds your mind when you're growing up and you're only seeing things from a male point of view.
02:40And I think that our culture would do better to have more respect for the female perspective.
02:45🎵
02:48I think Hashtag Me Too has focused the discussion on the object of the gaze,
02:55particularly how casual representations of sexual violence against women in film and television, for example.
03:02I think the conversation now is less about who's the bearer of the look on a technical level.
03:08In other words, how we're being positioned by the camera as spectators.
03:12And it's become more about just how women need greater access within the industry,
03:16access to power, to opportunity, to material resources as filmmakers, cinematographers, producers.
03:23🎵
03:27The female gaze implies a centering of female looks,
03:31but also of female stories, of women's lives and experiences in general.
03:36We want to tell stories that reflect our lives back at us.
03:40And many, many, many women watch television.
03:43And many, many women go to the movies, sometimes more than men.
03:47And so we want to see those stories. We want to see ourselves.