By Ghina Taan | Staff Writer
Ever watched a movie that was so intent on displaying women like they were cardboard cutouts? The moment they enter a scene, the camera automatically pans toward a specific part of their body, either the length of their collarbones or the curve of their hips, without any meaningful context. Well, if you were wondering whether this was the product of an unfortunate accident, then rest assured; research shows that it’s quite intentional and a known directing technique called the “male gaze.”
This term was first coined by filmmaker Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” and it refers to the way in which films are directed to cater to a male audience by objectifying and fetishizing women. What Mulvey sheds a light on in her article is the concept of “woman as image, man as bearer of the look”. Gender inequality is projected onto sexual imbalance, which is in turn projected back into a screen. Women are to play exhibitionist roles to satisfy the male gaze, where their sole presence on screen halts the entire events of the movie. Once in focus, the scene goes into a sudden slow motion as the camera travels down her body, and any pressing matters can now wait. Mulvey digs into this notion further; the male gaze is not only a property of the male lead but that of the spectator as well. The latter considers the male lead his “screen surrogate” and identifies with him, which allows him to gain power over the woman on-screen and indirectly possess her too.
In the wake of Mulvey’s article, women have made strides in the film industry by assuming roles beyond their portrayal as mere objects in the service of male leads. Nonetheless, this progress did not liberate women from this degrading spell—quite the opposite, actually. This trend has taken a more flagrant form and manifested itself in the unsettling phenomenon of “Headless Women,” which gained its highest momentum in movie posters. Marcia Belsky, a comedian, observed a concerning trend whereby an excessive number of movie posters feature women who simply do not have heads. This mysterious trend has plagued adult comedies and action films alike, and they cannot seem to get enough. Women here and there are fragmented into parts, with some posters taking special note of their bottoms, while others are content with the view up front.
In the poster for “Kingsman’s Secret Service”, for instance, one of the main characters in the movie, Gazelle, is only featured through her legs. The remaining characters take turns posing in the space between them, from Eggsy, the main protagonist, to the dog, who, despite his slightly less comprehensible script, not only got a feature, but also a head! Critics plead that this is a reference to James Bond’s “For Your Eyes Only” poster, but that hardly helps their case. By decapitating women left and right, they’re robbing them of the rational part, the part responsible for articulating emotions and verbalizing consent, which relieves them of the burden of their dehumanization.
As harmless as they may claim it is to display such sexism within the dimensions of a movie screen, what directors did not acknowledge then was that it is quite harmful, to the point that viewer discretion is advised. In the same way that the male spectator begins to identify with the male lead, the bearer of the look, the female spectator may, in turn, feel that she should perform for that look as well. It only makes sense; if you stare at the male gaze for too long, be it on movie screens or hallway posters, the male gaze inevitably stares back at you. Even when they’re off-screen, women remain on it; the cameras simply never stop rolling.
In the comfort of their own homes, they feel the presence of the ever-watcher. Whether they are mindlessly sitting on their laptops or halfway through a nervous breakdown, their acts can still fall within the outlines of a male fantasy. Margaret Atwood puts this to words perfectly in her book “The Robber Bride,” where she describes how women, consciously or unconsciously, cater to male fantasies, up to a point where they become “a woman with a man inside watching a woman.” Atwood’s critique of the patriarchal society we live in is a powerful one, and most accurate at that. She claims that the issue is so deeply rooted in society that, despite the resistance women may have against it, it remains a difficult trap to escape. This idea robs women of their agency, reducing them to social beings crafted to satisfy male fantasies, even in the solace of their own minds.
So is there a way out of this mess? In a society dominated by phallocentric views, it’s hard for women to remember that unlike the decapitated bodies on laminated posters, or the shiny cardboard cut-outs on movie screens, they still have a perfectly functioning neural system they can lead with. For starters, they can choose to reclaim their agency by carrying themselves according to a gaze that transcends the sexual and focuses on the multi-faceted layers that constitute their personality. Tending to male fantasies day in and day out is exhausting, because no matter what women end up doing, they will never be interesting enough for a man whose focus is only angled toward the parts he desires. Women, on the other hand, can step out of the lens at any moment and reclaim their story as powerful subjects instead of magnified objects.