The male gaze: Laura Mulvey

http://www.slideshare.net/fleckneymike/the-male-gaze-laura-mulvey

key points from the slide show:

• it can be thought of in three ways: how men look at women, how women look at themselves, and how women look at other women
• she believes audiences view characters from the perspective of a hetrosexual male 
• links to the idea that women are objects 
• sexualising of the female body even occurs when it has nothing to do with the product being advertised
• criticisms: some women enjoy being looked at
• a key theorist belief: Jonathan Schroeder (1998) "to gaze implied more than to look at- it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze"

starting my visual journal

these are some of my first few pages from my visual journal, in response to some of the quotes I pulled out of my essay. I thought this would be a good starting point and from here I can go in a few different directions.

'WOMEN WERE MERELY SEEN AS PEOPLE WHO TEND TO THEIR HUSBANDS, AND ALMOST AS IF THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A COOKING OR CLEANING APPLIANCE'

In my essay, I talk briefly about the way women are sometimes used and seen as objects, so I thought I would create some images exploring this quote in a more literal sense. I thought collaging would be the perfect media in which to create these images, and it's something I haven't really worked much with in the past!

"DURING THE MID 20TH CENTURY IT WAS VERY COMMON TO SEE ADVERTISEMENTS THAT SHOW A MALE OWNERSHIP OVER WOMEN"

Another idea I had for a visual response was to illustrate the way that it was very commonplace for males to be automatically entitled to women. I thought using a vending machine would be a good way of showing this, and adding the sign in at the side. I think this puts across quite a powerful message.

quotes from my essay

at first this seemed like a really strange task to me; picking out quotes from something we'd already written ourselves? I'll be honest, I didn't really see the point.

Alas, from doing it, it has helped me with the first steps towards my visual journal, and coming up with an idea for a visual outcome. 

I picked out quotes that I thought would be useful in creating some visual responses, and quotes I thought best represented my overall theme. 

The key ones for me were:

• "women were merely seen as people who tend to their husbands, and almost as if they are nothing more than a cooking or cleaning appliance"
• "in order to gain social acceptability, women are under constant pressure to correct their bodies and appearance"
• "during the mid 20th century it was very common to see advertisements that show a male ownership over women"

artist research: COLLAGE

BEN GILES

MARIANO PECCINETTI

FELIPE POSADA

I thought gathering some artist research of some other artists who have used collaging in their own work would help me out with some ideas of how to go about starting to create mine. 

• I really like the way Ben Giles has used the slightly duller background image and contrasted it against the brightly coloured flowers. 
• I feel like this focuses more attention on the flowers and makes the use of collage stand out a lot more
• I love the surreal feel of Mariano Peccinettis' work, although this doesn't really correlate directly to my own project I thought I would add it in as I think its a great example of collaging 
• I think the use of blank spaces works really well too
• The work of Felipe Posada relates the most to my own with the use of the naked woman; although the meaning is probably totally different to mine, I think the aesthetics will be quite similar 
• I like the look of the woman against the other objects, and it's making me excited to start creating my own!