Laura Mulvey's notion of the male gaze
Louis Althusser
- Marxist arguing power exists in different forms
- Via repressive state apparatus (police, economy etc)
- Via ideological means e.g. culture, power of the media exerting a form of hegemony over the public and creating dominant ideologies
How does interpretation fit into this?
- Coined by Althusser in 1971, notion of interpretation is practice of 'misrecognising' yourself or 'false consciousness' - Marxist
- Image presented by the media is an ideal one, which is impossible for us to maintain
Do you feel that you 'misrecognise yourself?'
- Does the media construct identities for you?
- Does it reflect who you are or tell you?
- Do you become complicit in allowing yourself to be presented in certain ways, as a result of being a 'consumer' of the media?
What do Marxism and feminism have in common?
- Both challenge the cultural power of the media to represent reality
Laura Mulvey and the notion of 'the male gaze'
- Coined in 1975, height of feminist studies
- Argues camera is always from a male perspective and has led to objectification of women - binary approach to gender implies that men are active, rendering women as passive
- women were 'complicit' in their objectification, allowing themselves to be 'constructed by men' (similar to false consciousness)
What are arguments against theories?
- Marxist theories present cultural power of media as a form of control and not a flexible instrument, responding to changes
- Is feminism a dirty word? Are women, as a result of their biology all the same? This monolithic approach has been criticised as it does not take into account factors like ethinicity and age
- Critics who assert that we live in a post feminist age, and sexism of the past is now only presented in an ironical way
- David Gauntlett - 'We live in a post traditional society'
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