Exhibit Erroneous

 

Beige walls. Beige dresses. Black suits. A mundane crowd. It’s a crowded restaurant with nothing going on. We look around and see… red? With silk flowing down to the floor and light bouncing off every edge. Black stilettos base the dress and black hair tops it. Oh, what a sight with that red lipstick. But who’s looking at this smiling beauty? Ah! It’s the protagonist, looking at the women in red, with what Laura Mulvey would call a “male gaze”.

Scenes like these are often portrayed in movies and videos because of course, it's what caught the male protagonist’s eye and stopped the narrative. They must objectify the pretty girl even more, especially while she’s not looking. Its scenes like these have dragged a heavy audience to the theatres from time immemorial and continue to do so. It's something that has become quite prevalent in our lives that we often ignore or have gotten used to it, sadly speaking.

Movies indulging in these scenes are very much popular with people from all walks of life. One movie that has captured almost every audience member’s attention is Ayan Mukerji’s 2013 film, “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani”. What with its feisty storyline and intense chemistry between its protagonists, this movie could either be a favorite or a guilty pleasure; not many people can dislike it. “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani” exhibits most of the scenarios that would make up a hypothetical ‘perfect youngster life’. From scenic treks in the Himalayas to a picture-perfect destination wedding, all doused in youthful spirit and friendship, the movie makes you crave the supposed perfection it displays. But Naina (Deepika Padukone) falls prey to female objectification in this movie and she’s not the only one. Throughout the movie multiple women are victims of voyeurism; the film’s male protagonists, Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor) and Avi (Aditya Roy Kapoor) objectify and go after the women they find the most attractive. This inadvertently influences how their friends, who are women, also view their gender. There also happens to be a scene where Bunny notices Naina when she dresses differently compared to how she normally dresses and she seems freer and seems to be having more fun than usual. This scene is a justified example of the male gaze and voyeurism; Naina barely looks back at Bunny while he stares at her as though she exists there to be looked at. The implication of the women not noticing when they are being looked at by the men highlights the concept of visual pleasure in the narrative. These women are only the men’s romantic interests while the whole film revolves around Bunny’s attitude and Bunny’s problems and Bunny’s ambitions. Every time a woman who Bunny was romantically interested in entered the scene, there would be a pause in the narrative for a moment of gazing or for a song, clearly indicating the themes Laura Mulvey talks of such as the use of women in cinema for the role of visual pleasure.

Music videos aren’t innocent when it comes to their portrayal of women either. A lot of artists use women in their videos to make them visually pleasing for the audience’s eyes. Maroon 5’s “Animals” exhibits a woman (Behati Prinsloo) being stalked as though it is the most normal thing to happen. The stalking eventually happens in extremities where the man, enacted by Adam Levine himself, manages to get inside the women’s room and photograph her while she sleeps naked, as though she is lying there to be photographed. Throughout the video, the woman never looks at the man or the camera. She is always portrayed from the point of view of the stalker, an indication of the male gaze. Her outfits and lifestyle all make it a point to be a source of visual pleasure for the viewers. In the case of this music video, not only is she the object-to-looked-at of the protagonist but also the audience. Apart from the stalking and inappropriate desires the protagonist has of the woman in interest, there are also a lot of graphic and explicit scenes in the music video which point toward the objectification of the woman, for example, the scene where she bathes in blood. The song and the music video revolve around sexual desires and use the woman to portray the sexual theme of the song. This song’s video is a lot like other media sources where the woman is a source of deriving visual pleasure.

The voyeuristic representation of women has been dominant in visuals since the very first days. It appears to have been derived from the objectification of women from time immemorial that has seeped into cinema as a concept of voyeurism and exhibitionism. Though women have been represented unjustly for a long time, things appear to be turning around in the present day. More and more female artists are taking the stage and changing the notions of representation of women. There are also music videos nowadays that showcase man the same way women have been portrayed in cinema for a long time. It's been too long since women are portrayed badly, and it's high time it changed.