Directing Through the Female Gaze
Written by Sofia Guzman
“It’s a breath of fresh air to find complicated female characters in different types of media, either good or evil.”
If you occasionally find online forums on films and shows you’ve likely encountered the terms male gaze and female gaze. The term male gaze was coined by Laura Mulvey to describe the way in which some media is intended for the male viewer as it objectifies female characters.The intended audience for these kinds of films and shows are heterosexual men who are able to take visual pleasure from female characters. These characters are intended to be there as objects of male desire without having any agency of their own. The differing viewpoint is termed female gaze which changes the perspective as it strays away from trying to cater to heterosexual men. Many believe that the female gaze is just catering towards women’s visual sexual preferences (for example, the movie Magic Mike), but it is in fact much more than that and it reaches the inner feelings and sexuality of women in a way that is not objectifying and only purely visually pleasing.
ROME, ITALY - FEBRUARY 25: Director Domee Shi attends the "Red" premiere at Cinema Moderno on February 25, 2022 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images)
There are many examples of films that were directed through the lens of the female gaze, such as Little Women and Booksmart. Many of the films that would go in this list are likely criticized for being too “girly” and get the most critiques from people that do not identify with the characters. A recent Pixar film with an all female production team, Turning Red, seems to have gotten backlash as people are saying that 13 year old girls do not act as the main characters (in the movie they are all obsessed with a boy band called 4Town and fangirl over the simplest of things). Many parents also deemed the movie inappropriate because, guess what…it mentions periods. Young girls should be able to find media they can relate and learn from; a lot of media diminishes female characters and their personalities. Turning Red shows bubbly and vibrant young female characters with different passions and personalities. This film is able to show young girls that they are not only background characters or objects in the lives of others.
This is not the first time when a movie based around teenage girls gets backlash, although this next one is intended for older audiences. Jennifer’s Body was not received well by many as trailers made it seem to be more graphically sexual in nature. Megan Fox stars in this film along with Amanda Seyfried as two girls in a toxic friendship. Fox’s character turns into a boy-eating demon and destroys many lives with her need for flesh. This movie has a popular cult following, but the marketing for the movie ruined its chances of getting a more positive reception as the trailers sexualized Megan Fox in a way that it seemed to be catering towards hetereosexual male teenagers and seemed to portray a different plot. The trailers were focused on a male gaze perspective while the actual movie is a female gaze piece of media as it portrays the downside of a toxic teenage friendship between girls.
TORONTO, ON - SEPTEMBER 11: Actress Megan Fox speaks onstage at the "Jennifer’s Body" press conference held at the Sutton Place Hotel on September 11, 2009 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by George Pimentel/WireImage)
In lots of male oriented media, female characters are either portrayed as perfect or don’t give them much personality. It’s a breath of fresh air to find complicated female characters in different types of media, either good or evil. In fact, it is not uncommon to find that people tend to hate powerful or very personality-driven female characters. In films and shows with heavy male gaze tendencies tend to use female characters as objects rather than, well, characters. This can be seen with Megan Fox again in Transformers as she is mostly there to pleasure a male audience.
It’s not much of a mystery to understand why media with mostly female fans is not taken as seriously as media catered towards men. In fact, Twilight and Transformers are both not critical pieces of media in any way, but Twilight seems to be made fun of more than any other male oriented media. Most content aimed towards young girls is deemed as silly and immature, likely because of our society’s sexist roots. I feel like we should embrace media oriented to us and not deem it as guilty pleasures, even if they are simple romance films and shows. ❀
