The dominance of the male gaze in Hollywood Films

Lizentiatsarbeit von Isabelle Fol

Abstract:

The way in which media systems reflect our social environment and specifically how they represent and disseminate gender role models and have a lasting effect on the construction of identity is of long-standing interest both in Gender Studies and in the literary and the visual arts. In order to examine in particular the representation of women in the visual art of popular cinema, The Dominance of the Male Gaze in Hollywood Films will thus focus on the image of women in mainstream Hollywood films.

Although media and specifically television and films are often considered to act „largely as a social mirror”, films in fact often distort social reality and continue to reflect traditional stereotypical gender constructions. In fact, these traditional gender images are not simply mirrors of real life, but also ideological signifiers: In many mainstream films that pretend to depict reality a time lag separates true social circumstances from the film reality the movie produces.

Consequently, this time lag also manifest in filmic representations of gender roles means for the women’s movement that feminists have hardly been able to enact new images of women outside the patriarchal context of popular films or change female stereotypes and incorporate feminist thought into mainstream films. Thus, mainstream films do not propagate an image of emancipated women, quite the reverse: women are subordinate objects of the male gaze. This general assumption has led to this thesis, which will deal with the question of whether Hollywood films, as representative of mainstream culture, still disseminate patriarchal images of women dominated by the male gaze even though feminist thought has been part of our society for some decades now.

Located at the intersection of Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and Gender Studies, this thesis will mainly follow the theoretical approach of the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey who developed the concept of the male gaze in her essay „Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Mulvey’s concept shall contribute to the analysis of the thesis that the images of women in Hollywood films still correspond to conservative patriarchal stereotypes.

Within the scope of this still valid thesis, one of the major restrictions was to narrow down the film analysis to merely Hollywood film production. The reason for this restriction is first of all that Hollywood films, representative of popular taste, are globally consumed and thus have an undisputed impact on an international audience. The films’ far-reaching dissemination is also due to Hollywood’s economic resources and power, clever marketing strategies, commercial exploitation of their films, and star hype. As a consequence, Hollywood films are the most lucrative and internationally successful in comparison to, for example, European or Bollywood productions. Secondly, Hollywood has been ceaselessly perpetuating the so-called „American Dream”, which not only the American people still likes to believe in and aspire to. However, maintaining the myth of the „American Dream” also means propagating patriarchal ideology, including a hierarchical social order and traditional female roles. Also, in view of the fact that Hollywood presents these patriarchal role models in the guise of the ideological „American Dream” as desirable to the audience, I consider Hollywood’s conception and representation of the female sex especially problematic. To sum up, Hollywood films, predominantly box-office hits all over the world, are undoubtedly most effective in perpetuating the dominant patriarchal ideology and dissemination of traditional female gender roles, which contribute to the limitation of the ways in which women are depicted in culture and society.

Consequently, I will restrict myself to the analysis of Hollywood films and postpone a more elaborate account of the image of women in film productions other than Hollywood films to a later point. Additionally, it would be beyond the scope of this thesis to statistically prove the assumption that Hollywood still disseminates demeaning images of women, as for such a venture an analysis of at least about 250 Hollywood films would be required in order to be representative. However, on the basis of a reasonable selection of films and use of a film analysis codebook, my personal goal is to point out at least a statistical tendency which shall finally underpin the qualitative analysis of five films selected according to pre-defined criteria.

This thesis will provide evidence that, in spite of more than three decades of feminist film criticism, the male gaze continues to dominate the image of women in Hollywood films well into the 21st century. Hopefully, the film selection will help to illustrate how patriarchal female role models are still perpetuated, yet more latent manifest than at the time when Mulvey’s pivotal article was first published.

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