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Arts & Culture

The Male Gaze and the Critique of Voyeuristic Cinematography

Quick fact

Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' gave a name to this phenomenon: the 'male gaze.' She argued that Hollywood's visual style is built on the pleasure of looking, with women as the spectacle and men as the bearer of the look.

Why this is interesting

You watch a movie, and the camera lingers on a woman's body—yet you rarely ask who is behind that gaze. Why does cinematic pleasure often require a silent, male observer?