The Male Gaze and Patriarchy

What is the male gaze (as described by John Berger)
 In "Ways of Seeing", author and art critic John Berger discusses the interesting topic of the concept of the male gaze.  The male gaze can simply be stated as the primary male's masculine point of view of seeing women as objects of interest in the arts world.  In addition to my definition, John Berger stated about the male gaze that,  "One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear.  Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves". (Berger 47)  

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The male gaze is in pervasive art and is there to demonstrate the unknowingly male actions that contribute to male engagement with women in today's popular culture. The male gaze not only appear in paintings but its almost everywhere.  The male gaze can be found in the common regular lifestyle of an ordinary person just from picking up a book, watching a television show or movies or even just driving on the highway.  The male gaze are often seen through advertisements for products trying to present the idea of what is found sexy or attractive.  In addition to these advertisements motives, one may argue for John Berger statements of  with, "A man's presence  suggests that he is capable of doing to you or for you."(Berger 45-46) and that,  "By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. "(Berger 46)  These ideas are often implied while the male gaze is being presented.
 

(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnk2gRprUYdMcC4gCP2fWxR3i03WmCVp7xNJIwKiy9J1-K3FzHY-lKG4kwFuV6vMONfF7Vy3dJ3Lvq4oQUPMaRon8uozTiryEeWsj6saPwhzjev1nrOCqFhUCHz6EOhiSi07j8LhRpt6GB/s1600/vintage_coca_cola_advertising_13.jpg)         This Coca Cola ad shows John Berger's idea about men presence of how they are capable of what they can do for you versus the concept that a woman's presence of her own self attitude.

(The movie: "Disturbia")  The movie Disturbia used the male gaze for a significant part of the movie.  The main actor was on house arrest and often was shown spying on his attractive neighbor.  He often appeared to be viewing the female neighbor more as an object of interest rather than a human being.

Patriarchy
Patriarchy can be easily summed up to a male dominated world.  As described by Bell Hooks, "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." (Hooks 18) 

 Below are links that I found interesting surrounding the topic of Patriarchy
Grab Patriarchy by the B*lls

Global Gag Rule 

 Reality/ Own Personal Understanding
If I was totally being honest, the male gaze never really came across my awareness until taking this course.  I always was living with these blinders where I never thought more of a simple action of gazing at or upon women could be so disturbing.  For example, I just thought the simple reactions of the quick eye contact of passing the opposite gender, whether it was at school or out shopping, and seeing that often the females would look away into a random blank locations was just a normal thing.  Furthermore, now I could see that maybe as people, we are structure and taught to react in these ways because of the way our popular culture and history was constructed. The more you think about it, patriarchy is being taught at an early age to most boys and girls. Just for an example, one of my favorite childhood movies, The Sandlot introduces key examples of male gazing and patriarchy.  Patriarchy was often used in the movie just to bring justification to oneself among the boy characters, and most notably introduced the infamous reply, that stuck with me through my childhood, that suggested somebody played baseball similar as a girl and it was the worst thing to ever hear.

(https://goo.gl/images/Evjrjr) The Sandlot's male gazing scene

 

 

One of the most notable scenes from the movie, was actually a scene that male gazing occurred.  At a young age, you're not taught to analysis a movie and aspects behind it scenes.   But now understanding these concepts and meanings moving forward, it actually does makes it interesting to see what point of view are they trying to offer to our popular culture.








By: Jon-Carlos Sosa