The Gaze

On page 76, the book states Laura Mulvey’s opinion on images of women in classical Hollywood cinema. She proposed that “conventions of popular narrative cinema are structured by a patriarchal unconscious, positioning women represented in films as objects of a “male gaze” (76). However, the book does not go into other reasons why women in classical Hollywood cinema were typically beautiful.

Not only do men want to see beautiful and sexual women on the screen, but so do women. According to Baudry, when someone is watching a movie, he or she “undergoes a temporary loss of ego as he or she identifies with the powerful position of apprehending the world on the screen” (75). Although people relate to more “normal” looking characters, most men and women prefer to identify themselves with someone who is deemed more attractive.

Furthermore, it is a common idea that carnal beauty is visible evidence of spiritual beauty. This can be tracked all the way to Plato who believed that “mortal beauty was a reflection of ideal beauty” (Etcoff, 40). Ugliness was seen to be a sign of someone bad or dangerous because it was a “stigma branded onto the body by a wrathful God” (Etcoff, 41). Therefore, it is natural for film makers to want to choose more attractive, sexual actresses for their movies. Less attractive people would be seen as an evil and therefore would take away from the heroine characters that the film makers are trying to convey.

*The essay by Etcoff that I cited is something that I had to read for writing-140. It’s called “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty” by Nancy Etcoff**

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