Gaze and the media

According to the Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger (1486) a woman has a “dual” nature. "A woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep,"

The nudity of the women became to challenge many aspects in a daily life of the society ruled my men. With beginnings in paintings where impossible reflection would allow to get views of the part of women that would normally not be seen started to generate in society a need to see what is forbidden.

 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by  Édouard Manet is one of the early examples of the gaze as you can see an impossible reflection of the woman in the back mirror. 

The contemporary media soon became used as an extension of the male gaze at women. A social voyeurism in where the audience takes pleasure from looking at other people’s body creating photography and cinema a perfect way to approach to it. It’s a guilty pleasure shared by a mass, unspoken yet well accepted as it is only with an erotic purpose yet it draws a line from pornography.

From the beginning the male took an active role as the protagonist leaving a passive female as an accessory. Over time, the gaze of the media started to control the image of the body and this became subjected to trends and demands. This form of voyeur was affected by feminist movements which included the male body for the female eye, although in a smaller proportion.

 The prospect of a Paparazzi was created (after the 1960 film La Dolce Vita, and referred to it as an annoying buzzing mosquito) in the parameters of an audience demanding for fraction of privacy of celebrities.

Advertising

This is Sarah Dahl posing for the advert of Opium. This caused commotion all over the UK in 2000 receiving over 900 complains. The main complaint was the pose was not suitable for children as this poster was publicly exposed. In result they flipped the poster making the eye of the audience focus on the face. This at least allowed the ad to be shown in women’s magazines.

This advert was deemed to sexual for billboards. So the advertising company flipped the image on its side. Doing this meant the eye was no longer drawn to her body and instead more to her face ...

Television and cinema

In television, the biggest representation was the creation of Reality Television; It would allow a passive voyeur consumption of a type of reality leaving aside editing and granting the position as an all-seeing-eye and empowering the audience. Such extreme case would be consider as Big Brother; strangers confined in a house filled with mirrors. The audience had the possibility of watching them 24 hours no matter what they did and was also engaged with a decision making role by voting and rating the individual.

1970 French film Les Stances à Sophie. This is an example of the camera use and mirror arrangement trying to get as many angles as possible from the nude actor. One of the early voyeur cases dedicated to women in the cinema industry.

Video Games

Loaded Magazine (2000); Lara Croft making appearance in the front cover of a magazine in a pose that has nothing to do with the game.

This way of attracting male audiences expanded even to the videogame environment with strong cases like the character from Tomb Raider, Lara Croft. At the same time as being the strong part of the game story, the breaking sexual image she gives to the male audience caused by the erotic representation of her body is what made her into one of the overly sexualised objects in videogames. Her visual develop became a spectacle to be consumed and the audience took pleasure in the fantasy of her destruction. The development of the character varies and it is until the most recent entry that Square Enix decided to give a more “humanistic” look to the character.