Research: The 'Male Gaze'

Researching music

"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly"

Laura Mulvey's theory in my opinion is most definitely the most factual. In today's society woman are being used as objects to sell and promote goods for example on and advert for selling a car a woman is on the car half naked with the caption 'take her for a ride today' this is kind of like a pun it has two meanings. The sexual element is to encourage men to purchase this 'car' but the ultimately has nothing to do with. This is the same for music videos, women are used to sell music through visual pleasure of the mean and in most videos are made to look inferior. However even women artists also deliberately choose to fall into the male gaze although they look directly into the camera and are not being passive, they still aid mens visual pleasure to make their videos a success.

Akon - Beautiful

In this video Beautiful, Akon the artist is describing 'one' woman, however there a repeat shots of different women (although he is singing about one woman) with the main focus as their body.

this is a classic example of selling his music too visualisation. Many men would watch simply to gain visual pleasure.

Kevin Little - Turn me on

This video is also another classic with the conventions of the male gaze. Not only women are the main focus of this video by camera shots of there bodies ect but the actual lyrics relate to the visual.

In a nutshell his song is revolves around sex/sexual tension with woman being the 'giver' of this satisfaction they are being objectified through the camera shots and edits.