“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

Coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975, the ‘Male Gaze’ is a staple facet of feminist film critique. You’ve seen it, even if you didn’t realise it — think long panning shots of tits and asses, women’s legs used to frame a shot. The camera is given the point of view of a heterosexual man, objectifying the women it depicts. Sometimes this comes in the form of long shots of disembodied body parts, or in others it’s the removal of agency of a female character, reducing her to pretty set dressing — called the ‘Sexy Lamp’ trope.

Compare the two shots above.  Both slow motion shots of Wonder Woman in combat, performing essentially the same attack: the first gif is from Wonder Woman (2017) and the second is from Justice League (2017). Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman movie is a fascinating illustration of the Male Gaze; it is conspicuous in its absence. The shot highlights the strength of the blow, and with her whole body in the frame, it highlights Diana’s athleticism. The second, directed by either Zach Snyder or Joss Whedon (as both worked on the movie, but let’s be real — I’m blaming Joss), is a slow-motion upskirt shot that says, she might be a Wonder, but she’s still a Woman.

Cast your mind back to the introductions of the first companions created by each of the new Doctor Who writers. Russell T. Davis introduces us to Rose Tyler with an overview of her life, dressing her in a very normal pink hoodie. Stephen Moffat’s first companion, Amy Pond, is introduced with a slow pan up her legs while she’s dressed in her police officer kissogram outfit. Or watch any of the Black Widow scenes in Iron Man 2, establishing her as purely eye candy — a reputation that took her multiple films to overcome. Sure, she’s undercover, but the whole sexy spy thing is still exploitation — just watch any of the James Bond movies (the earlier ones, in particular) or many of the undercover costume establishing shots of Jennifer Garner’s Sydney Bristow in Alias.

Comic books and literature are not immune to this; how many drawings of female superheroes have you seen impossibly contorted as to show their spandex-covered ass and boobs at the same time? This is such a ridiculous trope that there’s an internet project devoted to inverting it: The Hawkeye Initiative. Artists draw the archer Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner in the MCU movie franchise) in the same ridiculous poses as the female characters. The marketing for Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool sends up this trope, too.

The male gaze is about power and voyeurism, serving as a form of patriarchal reinforcement by teaching women to view themselves through the eyes of men. It informs and validates the idea that women present themselves for a male viewer at all times, building on the history of Renaissance nudes and contributing to rape culture. ‘What were you wearing?’ is a question rooted in this sort of visual stimulation and the implied power over all that is observed. The recent wave of sexual predation in Hollywood coming to light underscores how insidious this trope can be — and it makes me wonder that, now that we’re addressing the problems in the power structures, how will it come to influence the art that comes out of it?

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity’, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

― John Berger, Ways of Seeing