Sexism

Laura Mulvey’s theory suggests that the male gaze denies women as a human with feeling, downgrading them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance sexually. Her theory suggests that woman can more often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only view themselves from a man’s perspective.

A woman in mainstream film texts is something that is vital. Often a female character has no real importance herself, it is how she makes the male feel or act that is the importance. The female only exist in relation to the male. The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies within our society that people follow. Hegemonic ruling or dominant in a political or social context.

Laura Mulvey argues for women that they are being represented in the media as sex objects through the male gaze. Which then leads women to be objectified by other women as they are used to mean also doing it.

In Visual pleasure, Laura Mulvey states that the role of female characters only have two roles in in a narrative. Number one as an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view. Number two as an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view.

Mulvey also uses the term scopophilia, which means ‘love of watching’. As we sit in a darkened movie theatre, of people on the screen who are unaware that they are being watched. This comes from Freud’s study of the psyche.

Female objectification is related to the gaze when a person’s gaze are objectified, and treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed or possessed by the voyeur. Objectified characters are devalued and their humanity removed.

A patriarchal society is where men dictate the rules over women. Mulvey argued we live in a patriarchal society in which men set the most of the rules and construct the visions,  that males are dominant over woman. The worry is a passive audience will be influenced by this representation of reality and copy it and it will actually become reality if it hasn’t all ready. 

This pop video created such an outrage as we were used to Miley Cyrus as the innocent Miley Stuart. As the world was used to seeing Miley in her hit TV show Hannah Montanna, who has a sweet innocent little girl, which is a huge contrast to the Miley in this music video. Wrecking ball has broken records with 38,000,000 views in only one day, this may be due to the fact that she is naked in the video. The lyrics of the song have a lot of meaning as it describes her hurt and pain, but the video makes it more sexual.  

The video consists of extreme close ups of her face as she cries, her facial expression represents her sadness after breaking up with her long term boyfriend Liam Hemsworth. The extreme close up is a  typical shot type for music videos.


The music video is very literal with the songs lyrics, as Miley sings ' i came in like a wrecking ball' in which she is on a wrecking ball as it swings in a medium long shot. Which does make sense with the lyrics.  


This continues throughout the video as Miley is no longer a innocent little girl, but now a broken women. This is shown through her being a sexual object, which gets her message across. As her clothes were white, which represented purity, has now been taken off and she is naked.


Sinead O’Connor warned Miley not to let them 'prostitute you', although it seems like she is being exploited.  Which agree's with Laura Mulvey's theory of women being sexualised. 



Lily Allen's hard out here video is meant to be seen as a feminist video as she is tired women being seen in a certain way and being sexualised, but the video appears to be a parody pop video.  

The video starts with her being operated on as it shows how many women try to make themselves perfect throw plastic surgery in order to please men.  In which she disagrees with as women shouldn't have to exist only for men. 


Her lyrics are in direct contrast with the rest of the music video. As her lyrics state that she 'dont need to shake my ass for you cause i've got a brain' although throughout the music video. Her back up dancers are shaking their bums. 


Some of her lyrics does represent her and the music video, as she states she isn't a size 6 but she doesn't care. She is fully clothed and she is still gaining attention. 

The whole song and music video is a contradiction but with meaning.