1. First, watch the video lecture for this week
2. Next, read the required readings for this week.
1. Manlove, Clifford. ‘Visual Drive’ and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and Mulvey.
2. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
3. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Chapter 3 Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge.
4. Sassatelli, Roberta. Interview with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze, and Technology in Film Culture
2. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
3. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture Chapter 3 Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge.
4. Sassatelli, Roberta. Interview with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze, and Technology in Film Culture
3. Third, contemplate these questions on your own or with some friends
1. In Laura Mulvey in Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, the camera is described as a tool of voyeurism and viewers can be viewed as being voyeuristic sitting in a darkened room, unseen, while watching a film. What is the appeal of this sense of voyeurism?
2. Discuss the ways in which the male gaze has had an impact on film in recent years, are movies still structured and aimed towards male viewers? Why or why not?
3. Do you think it would be possible to create a financially successful, and culturally popular film, without any use of the cinematic gaze? Can you think of financially successful examples?
4. Do you think altering camera angles in turn could alter the way society views women?
5. In your opinion, how do you think a still photo and a moving picture film differ in respect to the male gaze?
6. In more recent years there have been an expansion of other gazes from different gender and sexual orientation standpoints. Can you think of different Hollywood films that are produced for any other "gazes"?
2. Discuss the ways in which the male gaze has had an impact on film in recent years, are movies still structured and aimed towards male viewers? Why or why not?
3. Do you think it would be possible to create a financially successful, and culturally popular film, without any use of the cinematic gaze? Can you think of financially successful examples?
4. Do you think altering camera angles in turn could alter the way society views women?
5. In your opinion, how do you think a still photo and a moving picture film differ in respect to the male gaze?
6. In more recent years there have been an expansion of other gazes from different gender and sexual orientation standpoints. Can you think of different Hollywood films that are produced for any other "gazes"?
4. Then, check out these case studies and given the lecture and the required readings for the week, answer the questions below.
1. With the rising popularity of shows such as “The Mindy Project,” or “Girls” in which the leading characters are female, and do not fit the popularized super skinny standard of Hollywood females, do you think that the “cinematic gaze” is shifting towards a more "real" body image for young women?
2. If you are too skinny you are shamed. If you are too big, you are shamed. Contemplate the "binaries" that set up the norms of bodies in visual culture. Do other binaries exist to set the parameters of normalcy for other identity groups in visual culture more broadly? Define these binaries.
2. If you are too skinny you are shamed. If you are too big, you are shamed. Contemplate the "binaries" that set up the norms of bodies in visual culture. Do other binaries exist to set the parameters of normalcy for other identity groups in visual culture more broadly? Define these binaries.