The Male Gaze and Violence Against Women in regards to Horror

Traditional cinema places the spectator is from masculine viewing position. A male gaze that forces female characters to maintain passive roles as the objects of desire. With horror the women are often victims with violence inflicted upon them as punishment from their male spectators predominately after sexual acts, this also being carried through partially  in slasher films with traits like virgins are safe from killers ect.

JEMIMA STEHLI: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Undressing Infront of male friends, giving them the choice of when to take the images. A representation of the male gaze that a woman has set up.

In my interim work my model was a woman and the Camera or spectator was a male. In horror slasher films there is a often a male character that hunts the woman and attacks her. The male gaze is present in the work. The male in the images posture can show how they are experiencing the scenario. With some awkwardly laughing and other appearing powerful and in control. “As viewers, you are left wondering what might have happened. So I think there are two different ways that you experience the work. Part of you is thinking about what it might have been like to be one of those people in that room and another part of you is seeing the structure of the image and where you are in relation to it. For me the work is also about desire—the desire to experience something, the desire to make something, and the desire to imagine what might have happened all mixed together” Stehli

I’ve included her work here to show the visual of male gaze and how it can be perceived what my work lacked in last time was a clear view. I want to develop a better understanding of gaze to have my work be perceived in the way I intend it to a man hunting a women.