Audience Theories

Laura Mulvey 'Gaze Theory:

In the eassay ''visual pleasure and nrrative cinema'', Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of The male Gaze as a feature of power asymmetry. in film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a womens body, for instance.  The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human agency, relegating them to the status of objects, hence the women reader and the women viewer must experience the texts narrative secondarily, by identifying with a man's perspective. Basically, we watch media through a 'male camera'.

Mulvey identifies three ''looks'' or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he percieves the female chracter. The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third  ''look'' joins the first two looks together it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. this thir perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking to the male character in the film.