Mulveys Theory

The male gaze is a theory created by Laura Mulvey. It is the idea that in media, (predominantly film) women are sexualised through objectification for the pleasure of heterosexual men. It is the fragmentation of women as it only views them as parts and not as a whole individual person. Mulvey believes that traditional Hollywood films respond to a deep-seated drive known as scopophilia. Which is the sexual pleasure involved in looking. as the audience are encouraged to sexualise and objectify women on screen as if we were men looking at them. This is supported by the idea that there is a much higher percentage of men in positions of power in Hollywood that are controlling the content and henceforth the portrayal and objectification of women in media. 

Mulvey believes that while women are objectified in a sexual manner for the benefit and pleasure of men, men in media are shown as the spectacle and even though men are and can be heavily sexualised in media like women, the difference is with women it is degrading sexualisation while men are sexualised it's uplifting and to glorify them as powerful individuals because the people presenting this representation is. Mulvey makes a noticeable point that men in films are almost always at the centre of the action and narrative while also being presented as powerful and dominant playing an active role in the main plot. While on the other hand, women are presented very passively as they usually play minor roles in the narrative. Things usually happen to them rather than actually doing something themselves that affects the main plot of the film.

So to conclude she believes that the action and narrative in films are very much gendered in a binary manner, with men almost always playing the active role as the hero, while women typically are there to act as decorations and act as the damsels.

Mulvey can be applied to the representation of Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in 2010s Iron Man 2. Over the years since the film was released, Johanson has been very outspoken about the fact that she had problems with how her character was overly sexualised in this film and given no personality whatsoever. A scene that very clearly shows her through the male gaze is her first scene in which she enters a room with Tony practising boxing in his gym while Natasha is applying for a job under his company to assist him. While she is talking to another female character, Tony keeps staring at her and then he calls her over to him while he is shown through a low angle mid-shot making him look powerful in the situation which supports Mulveys claims that men and women are shown to us through the perspective of men as the men directing the film are making the characters that represent them better and more powerful than the women in this scene. We then are shown a low angle close up shot of her ducking to walk into the boxing ring and then slowly lifting her upper body back up to Tony's eye level. This shot in particular is very elongated when it didn't have to be in order to make it sexual for the pleasure of heterosexual men watching. It's very degrading because not only is she sercomming to what a man with no respect for her tells her to do it's done to make her look like a disposable object man can use. The following shots are them both looking at each other but Tony is straight-faced while Natasha is slightly smiling, there is no diegetic or non-diegetic sound which makes it feel even longer and as a whole creates sexual tension. Some would argue men are shown shirtless and sexualised too but through the 'female gaze' but this isn't degrading dehumanising like Natasha is in this scene. Later on in the film she has a fight scene where she takes on a dozen security guards. She constantly poses and looks at the camera while doing this