The male gaze. It’s a phrase women know all too well. In fact, we feel it almost all times of day. At work, at school, walking down the street. The male gaze has no time or space constraints. But there’s nothing quite like seeing it in a movie, to know that this may be the only way you as a woman will ever be depicted. The term “male gaze” was coined in by British film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975, but it’s been felt for far longer.
Throughout time, it’s been quite obvious that the male dominated industry of cinema has provided depictions of women through a male narrative. It simply wasn’t accurate, but it’s all society allowed for. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s when the French new wave movement arose that legendary Agnes Varda was able to make her debut. With her 1961 drama Cleo from 5 to 7, Varda gave the world something that had scarcely been seen before: the world through a woman’s view. And not just a trivial storyline with the one dimensional problems male directors had so often given their female characters up until this point, but the true nuances, pains and struggles of being a woman in Paris during the 1960s.
Cleo from 5 to 7 embodied an authenticity surrounding female identity that cinema goers craved.
Fast forward to today, and the movie industry is a corporate machine. Big budget superhero movies dominate the box office and reboots are being dished out left and right. It can be hard to find a moment for authenticity. But among these seemingly autonomous big budget plants, women like Greta Gerwig, Alma Har’el and Lulu Wang leave me hopeful.
The female gaze, a term coined as a counter to its male vernacular, is the idea of a film narrative through a woman’s eyes. In the film industry, where women only make up 2 percent of producers, 19 percent of executive producers, 16 percent of editors, 11 percent of writers, 11 percent of directors, and 4 percent of cinematographers, this unobstructed lens can be hard to come by.
But the female gaze is not limited to a woman’s work. Male allies have shown that the female gaze is not confined to the female perspective. We can have well-written women directed by men, if they take the time to listen to the women around them. This has been proven by directors like Noah Baumbach and Yorgos Lanthimos, who actively collaborate with women to stay true to the premise of whatever conflicts their films explore. Cinematographers like Agnes Godard have reshaped the landscape for the female gaze through her long held collaborative partnership with director Claire Denis. It’s amazing how the different ways a camera pans over a body can have such different meanings. The female gaze doesn’t mean that subjects can’t be sexual or can’t show their bodies—it just means that you’ll see it differently. You’ll see it through a woman’s eyes. You will feel what a woman feels.
Recently, director Lorene Scafaria stunned movie-goers with her heist film Hustlers. Compared to the likes of Martin Scorsese’s crime thrillers, it depicted women, in what might say is a compromising position, but gave them the power to control the story. It was purely female driven from start to finish in not only a male dominated genre, but one that often minimizes female characters as secondary.
The reimagining of the female gaze began with Varda, but it doesn’t end with Gerwig, Har’el or Scafaria. There is still quite a ways to go for women in the film industry, but with the steadily growing opportunities for representation and collaboration, we continue to find ways to poignantly reconstruct our narrative.
