The (Fe)Male Gaze
This year marks the 50th anniversary of film theorist Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay «Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.» To mark the occasion, Oslo Pix Film Festival presents three films that, each in their own way, engage with the themes Mulvey described in the landmark year for women: 1975.
Mulvey’s essay was groundbreaking in showing how film contributes to upholding patriarchal structures. But what did she really mean by the male gaze – a term that continues to shape film discourse to this day?
Mulvey argues that both the visual style and narrative structure of film are shaped by a male gaze—through the camera’s perspective, the male protagonist, and the audience’s identification with him. As a result, the woman on screen is often reduced to a visual object, while the man looks, acts, and drives the story forward.
She also outlined two forms of visual pleasure in the cinematic experience: scopophilia and narcissistic identification. The former refers to the pleasure of looking at others as objects – often in a sexualized way –while the latter concerns identifying with characters on screen. Together, these mechanisms lead to women being desired and controlled, without threatening the man’s position as subject.
Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958)
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), the protagonist Scottie reconstructs a woman to fit his desires. Her value lies not in who she is, but in how she looks and what she represents. She becomes a projection of male desire. The film structures the audience’s gaze through Scottie’s perspective, making us complicit in the act of objectification.
Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (1995) – initially panned, later a cult classic – follows the character Nomi Malone in Las Vegas. A textbook example of the male gaze, but one that allows for complex readings. The film, saturated with female nudity and sexualized imagery, is packed with scenes designed to evoke visual pleasure – scopophilia in Mulvey’s terms – while also seemingly playing with that very effect. Is the film ironic, or does it reproduce what it critiques? Through the lens of Mulvey’s theory, Showgirls becomes a mirror reflecting the ambivalence of mainstream cinema.
Paul Verhoeven’s SHOWGIRLS (1995)
Mulvey’s article primarily analyzed classical Hollywood cinema, but it was also written as a call to action—a challenge to the status quo. She aimed to break away from traditional narrative structures and counter the dominant gaze, which led to her own experimental film, Riddles of the Sphinx (1977).
Over time, many have questioned her theory – especially the assumption of a universal male spectator – and called for a deeper understanding of how women actually watch films: the female gaze. Mulvey has also been criticized for underestimating women’s agency and overlooking the fact that many female characters on screen are more than mere objects. Scholars have since emphasized how factors such as ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality shape how audiences perceive and identify with what they see. This has inspired a wave of films that play with, subvert, or reclaim the traditional gaze.
Claire Denis’ Beau travail (1999) breaks with the gendered hierarchy of the gaze. The camera turns toward the men, but without objectifying them. Instead, it creates space for a poetic and ambiguous visual language, where desire and identity are not confined to male heterosexuality. Denis demonstrates how one can subvert the conventions Mulvey criticized – in practice.
Today, some may find Mulvey’s text too generalizing, but it opened our eyes to how we look, who is looking – and how film shapes desire, identity, and power.
Through these three films, we see how the gaze has been used, challenged, and transformed.
