Charlie Palfreeman A2 Media

Laura Mulvey wrote the essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in which she created the term ‘male gaze’. This went one to be a widely popular and discussed phrase in media. The ‘Male Gaze’ follows the theory that when the viewer is put in the perspective of a heterosexual male in a film, the camera will focus on the curvaceous features of a woman’s body. This theory carries through to other types of visual media, including music videos. Male hip-hop artists will often have women in their music videos to attract the male audience their music is aimed at. The ‘Male Gaze’ theory can also be applied to music videos by female artists. Many female singers, including Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj, use their bodies to attract a heterosexual male audience. This is carried out by the camera often focusing on the "assets" the artist has more than other parts of her body.