Is Mulvey's representation of 'the gaze' present in contemporary culture and what impact has this theory had, drawing on popular music and art?
This essay will discuss, as the question states, whether Laura Mulvey's theory of the gaze, is present in contemporary culture, by drawing on examples of popular music and art. It will begin by looking at a case study of Lady Gaga and Madonna as they are seen as similar artists, or rather Lady Gaga appears to of been heavily influenced by Madonna. Although they are similar in the way they represent them selfs physically, ever changing, extravagant, fashion forward, do they represent themselves the same through a psychoanalytical way of looking at them, this will be analysed using the gaze theory. This analysis will be generated by looking at two music videos the artists have done that are very similar, these are; Lady GaGa - Alejandro, and Madonna - Express yourself. The essay will then move onto to look at how women represent themselves in the contemporary artist world, and how it differs from past. Drawing on the findings a conclusion will be met and the question set answered.
Although from different eras both Madonna and Lady Gaga have a massive following. Gaga is seen as refreshing and new compared to other contemporary pop stars, but really she is just doing what Madonna did first, but maybe taking it further and with a different message to what Madonna did. Both pop stars are very used to the voyeuristic nature of the career they have chosen, but how have they chosen to play up to that? To start, a short reading of Madonna's video 'Express yourself'. The video tells a story of Madonna, who is married to a powerful factory owner. The scenes are set either at the factory where it is greasy, raining and consists of only strong, muscular men, or at Madonna's home. At the home there is a cat, which escapes, and is rescued and returned by one of the factory workers. At the start it is not clear if Madonna is in fact in charge of the factory, witch would make her dominant and challenge the gaze, but her husband is brought in who is the powerful one who is in charge of the factory and also Madonna as she is captive to him. Madonna spends most of the music video in her underwear, throwing flirtatious looks at the camera, according to Mulvey this conforms with the gaze, and makes Madonna merely a prop for the male to look upon,
"The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Women displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle; from pin-ups to strip-tease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, and plays to and signifies male desire."
(Mulvey 1975 p.19)
The audience feels comfortable watching Madonna parade in her underwear for a number of reasons according to the theory of the gaze, the first being that they are not personally viewing her, they are seeing Madonna through the eyes of her husband, the audience passes it's gaze through the dominant male. For instance there is a scene in the music video where Madonna is shackled naked to the bed. Each time it goes on to this scene the husband is shown before watching, so therefore the audience can comfortably watch as they are the husband.
"This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify. As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence.'
(Mulvey 1975 p.20)
There are also other scenes where Madonna is dancing around in her underwear but she does so behind a transparent screen, so you only see a silhouette, the audience can see her but she can't see them, so therefore she does not know the audience is viewing her, which according to the gaze once again makes the audience more comfortable in their voyeurism. Another concept which is illustrated by Madonna is the use of mirrors, Madonna is displayed looking in the mirror, which allows the audience to look on due to the fact that she is also looking and admiring herself. This analogy for the gaze was developed from Lacan's mirror theory,
“In the mirror stage, Lacan compressed the two phases into one. At the very moment when the ego is formed by the image of the other, narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in which the image of one’s own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension: the other in his image both attracts and rejects me”
(Julien, Jacques Lacan's return to Freud 1994 p.34)
This is a stage where the child looks in the mirror and recognises their own reflection for the first time, and that is when the ego is born, but the mirror image is not just a reflection of themselves, it is an all round better person than their normal selfs. This is an important moment according to Mulvey as it is the moment we begin the life long journey of image, and self image. It also ables us in terms of viewing, and films to identify with characters and become them, such as before when it was mentioned that the audience will view this music video through the eyes of the powerful husband. We are able to do this due to the moment of recognition as a child when looking in the mirror.
Other significant things in this music video that relates to the gaze is the phallic imagery. Through out the music video there id reference to phallus shaped objects such as machinery pipes letting out steam, and also the shot of the elongated chain that shackled a nude madonna to her bed. This type of imagery is in conjunction with the gaze theory, drawn from Freuds castration theory.
"It is man's narcissistic fear of losing his own phallus, his most precious possession, which causes shock at the sight of the female genitals and the subsequent fetishistic attempt to disguise or divert attention from them"
(Mulvey 1973 p.10)
So the subtle placing of a phallic object around a naked or near naked woman aids in comforting the males gaze, and without a phallic object the male would experience castration anxiety. It distracts the male unconscious from worrying about himself getting castrated. These objects can be very subtle such as a heel, pencil, cigarette etc. or the chain extending from Madonna's shackle for example. Madonna's music video for 'express yourself' is full of examples of the male gaze, she welcomes it. The only part where the gaze is slightly challenged is where Madonna attempts to dress up in an androgynistic way, but then she flashes her underwear and the look goes from having a message, to just doing it to be sexy and different.
Now to look at Lady Gaga's video, 'Alejandro'. This music video is an ode to Madonna's 'express yourself', it has similarities, such as the factory setting, one female, and the androgynistic dance break but that is about it. This video does not try to be the same as Madonna's it's more starting where she left off. The story of Gaga's music video is not as linear as Madonna's, but filled with very strong rejections of the male gaze. Gaga like Madonna, is the only female in the video, but unlike Madonna, she is control, Gaga is the dominant one she is playing the role of the main male protagonist, she is challenging the male gaze, and re channeling it on the males in her video. The men in the video are barley-dressed, they appear more sexualised then Gaga, they are lower down then Gaga, she is watching them from a higher level showing she has more power than them. One scene in the video is set in an institutional looking room with beds in, and on the beds are men in black underpants and high heels hanging onto a rope dancing and gyrating in a very feminine, womanly way. Gaga then enters wearing only underwear, but not overtly desirable underwear, Gaga is the sexual aggressor, it doesn't matter what she is wearing, she is in charge. Throughout the whole scene Gaga does not stop looking at the camera. She is challenging the gaze, she knows she is in her underwear and is not welcoming people to look, but daring them, making the audience feel uncomfortable. Whereas the male dancers all have matching hair styles cut in a bowl shape with a dark fringe covering their eyes. As the audience can not meet their gaze, due to the hiding of the eyes it makes the male dancers easier to watch, they are also dancing in more of a womanly, sexy way compared to Gaga who is dancing very rigid, with direct eye contact with the camera, this again put Gaga in a roll reversal with the men being seen how women are normal seen in music videos and Gaga instead challenging the male gaze upon herself. Like in Madonna's music video there are phallic representations in Gaga's video, but with different representations. Madonna uses the phallic symbols subtly to make the male feel more comfortable when viewing her, whereas Gaga uses the phallic symbols to challenge the male and show that she is in power. In the last view scene Gaga is wearing white latex underpants with a large, bold red cross coming off the underwear, this is a very direct phallic reference, unlike that of Madonnas references in 'express yourself'.
From looking at both music videos it is clear to see that Madonna and Lady Gaga are representing women and the gaze in very different ways. Madonna plays the poor venerable woman who is locked away and only worthy of a man, she accepts the gaze and want to be looked upon. Contemporary Lady Gaga plays the dominant role in her music video and the men play a more feminine part, they accept the gaze, but Gaga rejects and challenges it.
When it comes to looking at the gaze within contemporary art it is best to start at the beginning. Art used to be a male dominating discipline. Men created art, men bought art, men viewed art. The only role women played in art was to be a prop so the male could make them into are and therefore an object to be viewed.
"Largely excluded from creative traditions, subjected to patriarchal ideology within literature, popular arts and visual representation, women had to formulate an opposition to cultural sexism and discover a means of expression that broke with an art that had developed, for it's existence, on an exclusively masculine concept of creativity."
(Mulvey 1978 p.111)
One of the first Women artists to challenge the male gaze within art was Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian Baroque painter, born in 1593.
"While many writings in traditional art history developed a discourse that tended to undermine Grentileschi's art, feminist historians sometimes came close to heroising Gentileschi the artist. The former discourse diminished her artistic merit; the later foregrounded its excellence."
(Bal 2005 p.ix)
Gentileschi art was not respected in her time due to the fact she was a woman. Some of the images she depicted showed the anger Gentileschi felt towards the male dominance, take for example the painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes, which depicts two women beheading a man. The image is biblical, but is also said to be personal to Gentileschi and represents her repressed rage. Gentileschi's work is now seen as outstanding for its time, the fact that a woman artist was painting in such a way during a time when the discipline was male dominated, is what stunned feminist historians.
A contemporary artist that challenges the male gaze as Gentileschi does, is Sarah Lucas. Sarah Lucas is a British artist who takes on the male gaze but challenges it.
"women's studies are not just about women - but about the social systems and ideological schemata which sustain and the domination of men over women within the other mutually inflecting regimes of power in the world, namely those of class and those of race."
(Pollock 1988 p.1)
Grizelda Pollock claims that women's art has more depth and social and ideological meaning behind it. This is certainly true when it come to Sarah Lucas's work. Take for example Lucas's photograph ' The artist Eating a Banana' (1990). In this photograph lucas is seen eating a banana, which is a phallic object. This photograph could have easily become a photo for the male gaze, but Sarah Lucas instead challenges the gaze by looking straight at the camera, with a 'so what' look, it's aggressive and shows that she is not going to conform or care for the male gaze. This is shown again in Lucas's self portrait, where she has two fried eggs over where her breasts are. It's making a comment again of, 'so what' drawing attention to that fact Lucas has small breasts and using the analogy fried eggs, but teaming this with a front on challenging look and strong body language makes it clear that Lucas is challenging how males perceive her/women.
After looking at the case studies it is clear that the male gaze is definitely still present within contemporary culture, but the representation of the gaze is changing. It appears that women now have a choice on how they want to play the male gaze, they can now reject and challenge it freely and to such levels that couldn't / wasn't done in the past. When Madonna's music video for 'express yourself' was released, it was probably seen as a bit different, challenging the male gaze by dressing up like a man and doing the crotch grab, but comparing it to the extent the gaze can be rejected and challenged in contemporary culture today, makes Madonna's video appear very ordinary and very much so conforming to the male gaze theory. Without Mulvey's theory, there wouldn't be such artists as Sarah Lucas or Tracey Emin who use the gaze theory to make comments on the way men perceive women. Within the music industry, without Laura Mulvey's theory, female pop stars wouldn't be able to market themselves in certain ways. Gaga is respected by people for not being overtly sexy and not caring how men view her, if they think she's good looking etc.
“I love the rumour that I have a penis. I’m fascinated by it. In fact, it makes me love my fans even more that this rumour is in the world because 17,000 of them come to an arena every night and they don’t care if i’m a man, a woman, a hermaphrodite, gay, straight, transgendered, or transsexual. They don’t care! They are there for the music and the freedom. This has been the greatest accomplishment of my life- to get young people to throw away what society has taught them is wrong. Gay culture is at the very essence of who I am and I will fight for women and for the gay community until I die.”
(Lady Gaga 2010)
The gaze theory has abled women to make a comment on society and manipulate and make comment on the way they want to be seen, in a challenging but creative and subtle way.
Bibliography:
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Lesley Kinzel (2010). Madonna, Lady Gaga, and breaking the male gaze: A close reading of "Alejandro". [ONLINE] Available at: http://blog.twowholecakes.com/2010/06/madonna-lady-gaga-and-breaking-the-male-gaze-a-close-reading-of-alejandro/. [Last Accessed 10.01.2013].
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