Mulvey's Theory

Mulvey's theory (1975) talks about how women are portrayed in a males gaze. She talks about how the media produce from a perspective that is almost always male, and that the we the audience of  the media have trained to see ourselves through the 'male gaze'.

The male gaze is broken down into three elements:

• the gaze of the camera: the camera that looks at the female body
• the gaze of the actor:shots of males looking at women and then the shot of the female body being looked at
• the gaze of the audience: what the audience look at ( even female audience members were position with a male gaze)

Applying this to a few music videos:

 50 cent's Candy shop would favor Mulvey's Theory and females appear to be a passive objects. They are viewed by all three of the ways Mylvery explains, it's never from there point of view. However saying this you could view it as that the females aren't completely just expressed as an object and not in control because 50 cent is entering to their territory, and you could say that this is the norm for the females in that situation; 'comfort zone'. It could been seen both ways but this video does support the theory.

Country girl the female is the main subject of the video and only applies to the first and last element of Mulveys theory. the women in this video 'runs the show' and is in control of what shes doing and the people around here; for example when she hitting people with glasses and wrecking the bar, she tends to be more active rather just passive and represented as an object to men.

Turning the theory upside down in Lady Gaga Video Alejandro at first it seems like the role of females and males opposite; that it's from lady gaga point of view and the males are passive and the objects. However the males in this video aren't necessarily attractive to females there are aimed at other males focusing on the queer guys, and this is where Lady Gaga challenges the theory, however ironically it still for the 'male gaze'.

Taking this all into consideration we have to remember that Mulveys theory applied to the time around 1975 and that mass media has changed a lot from there we now have access to so much more such as videos and movies online, internet, more TV channels etc also socially times have changed from what it may have been in the past.