The male gaze...or why I don't watch the US version of Being Human

[shadowkat]

This post on the male gaze, ganked from more than one person on my correspondence list - sort of clarifies one of the many reasons the US version of Being Human holds 0 appeal for me and is somewhat unwatchable. But it also depicts how prominent the male gaze is in American culture. I honestly do not know if this is true world-wide. Can't really tell from the exports. The Japanese cinema I've seen, specifically anime and the Chinese cinema - seems to indicate it is, albeit differently. French cinema - seems to be somewhat equal on the topic. British? Hard to tell - so much of the stuff that gets exported is parlour room dramas or costume dramas a la The King's Speech. There are a few shows like Doctor Who, Torchwood, Being Human - but not many. You tell me? Do you think the male gaze is a world-wide phenomena, just differently expressed? Because I really have no clue. Am hesitant to generalize because that way leads stupid assumptions.


Will state that the above post reminded me a lot of well this:

Can't find a picture of Naked Spike - so just imagine it. (I know weird, but it's late).


http://nerdsinbabeland.com/archives/2872

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FemaleGaze


Anyhow, it reminds me of some very interesting discussions I had with male friends and fellow fans of Buffy while it was airing during the sixth season. They were whining about Spike always being naked.
One friend stated, actually they both stated it - "I am only interested in seeing more naked Spike, if Sarah (Buffy) is naked too. We should get to see her too." To which I remember replying, hmmm, like we get to see Lilah in the all-together on Angel, but Wes fully clothed. "Well, that's different." Right. OR "like we see women on most shows with their breasts and buts, but never see the male genitilia.

What hit me in both conversations, was the shock and dismay from the guys at seeing Spike nude, Spike as a sex symbol, with his shirt off. Same deal with Riley, Xander, Angel, and well most of the men in the series - while women were fully clothed, albeit in sexy attire. It should be noted that Buffy's shows target audience was young women. Men - really weren't the target here. Actually I'm not sure the network cared if the men tuned in.

Grey's Anatomy and Sex in the City are similar - the target audience is women, so the gaze is female.
The guys are hunks. They are shown topless and nude. The women either under a sheet or fully clothed.
Same with Being Erica - we see the guys looking hunky, not the girls.

You can always tell who the target audience is. In daytime soap operas - men have their shirts off, the good looking men, the girls rarely are shown in anything revealing. Or that revealing.

So there is a female gaze...it just depends on if women are the target group. That's not to say we aren't a sexist society.

Is this objectifying? I'm not entirely sure. Yes and no. Being turned on by the human body isn't necessarily a bad thing. I guess it is how it is being used and depicted? I mean - look at American celebrities - from Marilyn Monroe to James Dean and well, Rob Lowe, Brad Pitt, Ian Sommerland, and sigh, Brittany Spears. They are to a degree "sex symbols".

Also look at your friends icons and ahem, banners. I mean - the banner I got at No Rest for the Wicked Awards of a sexy Spike was not work safe - so I couldn't post it to my lj homepage and still access that page at work. Was that objectification and the female gaze? Hell yes. Is it wrong?
I don't think so....? I don't think this is as black and white as we want it to be. I think it falls into ambiguous moral ground...a sort of cloudy gray area?

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Methinks the female gaze has always been there, and that it's even proeminent when it comes to tv shows because the target audience is usually more female than male (we'd need statistics but I have the impression that women watch WAY more tv than men in general).

Oh you aren't wrong. Or rather, this is true. I think on tv - we see the male gaze as attempt to lure the ever-increasingly elusive male viewer. I know for example that Glee did a couple of things to lure male viewers when their show aired after the Super-bowl (they satirized the things they had to add, which may have been counterproductive, Glee isn't exactly what I'd call subtle in their satire.).

Women do watch more scripted television than men. Men at least in the US, and according to statistical data (which isn't exactly perfect), tend to watch news, sports, and reality shows.
Scripted tv holds little interest for them. The ones who do watch scripted or tv dramas/sitcoms - watch mainly sitcoms or
procedurals or sci-fantasy. Each of those - tend to have male gaze often exaggerated or focus on male view.

I guess that many movies are aimed at young males in America which isn't the case in France for instance.

I know there's a huge marketing push right now in the US to lure the ever elusive 15-25 year old male viewer back to movies and tv. They've lost him to video games and the internet.
This may explain the fact that almost 70% of the films nominated for an Oscar or that came out in the US last year - were in some way geared towards young men or their desires.

Over here cinema is mostly for adults, either male or female. And of course we don't have any problem with nudity, including male genitalia.

I noticed when I visited France, Germany and Britian in the
1980s, the differences regarding this issue. Very subtle in Britian - which actually is closer to the US culturally speaking. But very clear in France and Germany - in France, taking your bikini top off on any public beach isn't a problem (at least in the 1980s). Here - very much so. Germany - explicit nudity was in ads featured on the sides of buildings.
US - it's less explicit and if it were that explicit? They'd get inundated with complaints and told to take it down immediately for being "offensive". The recent Skins ad campaign, where two teens are shown passionately kissing - had to be taken down from subways after a Hassidic man complained about it being offensive.

And really what's the point of remaking BH (but hell what was the point of remaking Life on Mars which turned out to be a fiasco from what I heard?!)?!!! I suppose it's a money thing?

No clue. Bewilders me as well. The latest is remaking old movies and tv shows. We have a reboot of Charlies Angels and Wonder Woman appearing this fall, also people are doing remakes of The Thin Man? Why?? You can't come up with something new?
I can come up with new ideas...why can't they?? One wonders if you have to be an idiot to be successful in the US entertainment biz?

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Yeah monokini was fairly common in the 80's but you wouldn't see many topless women on beaches these days, because of breast cancer.

When I was a kid, people didn't care about the damages sun exposure could cause (not only on naked breasts but also on young kids' skin) but things have changed, fortunately.

Personally I never liked monokini, mostly for aesthetic reasons.

US - it's less explicit and if it were that explicit? They'd get inundated with complaints and told to take it down immediately for being "offensive". The recent Skins ad campaign, where two teens are shown passionately kissing - had to be taken down from subways after a Hassidic man complained about it being offensive.

Well, there's big difference between Europe and America, it's called de-christianization!

Religious influence used to rule but was put down in the last two centuries. For how long, sometimes I wonder...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well, there's big difference between Europe and America, it's called de-christianization!

Actually he was orthodox Jewish. I may have spelled Hassidic wrong...it's very orthodox Jew - think long beard, hat, and all in black. The Islam community was also upset about it. The Christians weren't that upset actually. (at least according to the paper).

Religious influence used to rule but was put down in the last two centuries. For how long, sometimes I wonder

Hee. It probably helped that you sent half of your religious fanatics to the colonies. LOL! Keep in mind,
90% of Americans are the decedents of people who fled here/immigrated here due to a) religious persecution (there's a lot of French Protestants and British Puritans who immigrated to the Americas during a particularly bloody era of history, along with Russian Jews, and Dutch Amish), b) income tax evasion and/or property tax evasion (economic reasons),
and c)political persecution.

Regarding tv and film? I think there's an economic difference actually that we are ignoring - ie. US is a free-market economy, and tends to go after high wage earners with its media products. While, I get the feeling that French film and tv shows are less "money-makers" or "big money-makers"? For example in NYC- our biggest industries or the biggest money makers are finance and entertainment. Most tv shows succeed or get canceled based purely on how many advertising dollars they can attract. The best commericials or most expensive, the ones everyone wants are the car ads.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

No no you spelled it right, I know what hassidism is so I got that the man you mentioned was a Jew. I mentioned the de-chritianization because it's how we call it given that Christianity was the main faith in Europe, but it basically means that religion - whatever it may be-lost its influence over society as people became less and less religious and atheism progressed. It's a process of secularism. Also in the case of France there was the law on laïcité that was the result of a harsh struggle against Catholic Church that began with the Philosophers of Enlightnment.

Anyway what I meant was that the US are a country wherein people according to the statistical data are in majority "believers" , religion still has a big influence (even in politics)and churches are true lobbies, while European history moved from it in the 19th century.

And yes, there's also the fact that the colonials were very religious and America was a sort of promised land for them.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how true this is now? Because the US is actually moving further and further away from religion as a focus. You can't tell - because the Christian right is so vocal in the US that you don't realize they are a minority. They are by the way.

Most young people statistically in the US aren't practicing any religion. In the paper the other day - they mentioned more and more were going towards Buddhism, Scientology, or Self-Help or areas which were less Christian based. Unitarianism is actually on the rise. (My church has quite a few atheists.) And US government and culture is actually secular. We do not permit prayer in schools, and never really have, but even less so now.
(Although the Christian Right whines about that a lot.)

Granted a lot of this is based on region. Certain regions of the US are less secular than others. Kansas for example is a region that is very into religion and religious values, while you'll find certain areas of say California is less so. NYC is a hodge-podge.

And religion really doesn't have as big an influence in our politics as you may think - if it did, certain people wouldn't get elected and other's would. Example - one of the reasons Mick Huckabee and Mitt Romney struggled was religion, one was a former preacher (which turned people off) and the other was a Mormon (also turned people off), and there was a bit of an issue with the Rev. Jesse Jackson (his preacher status was a big problem).

John F. Kennedy winning was a big deal back in the day - because a Catholic becoming President was unheard of.

We are into religious freedom over here.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Very subtle in Britian - which actually is closer to the US culturally speaking.

I recently read a report of a study done in Britain a few years ago to judge people's attitudes to nudity in TV advertisements. They showed them various commercials, some British and others from other countries, and asked them their opinion on whether it was acceptable to be shown on UK TV.

In the context of this discussion, it was amusing that most of the adverts they showed with a lot of explicit nudity were French. :-) (Tahiti shower gel, Fa body spray, etc - these were all from the mid-90s.)

The results were that most people surveyed were comfortable with nudity on screen as long as it was felt to be appropriate to the product rather than gratuitous, but they were much more uncomfortable with sexual situations, even if they had less nudity.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The results were that most people surveyed were comfortable with nudity on screen as long as it was felt to be appropriate to the product rather than gratuitous, but they were much more uncomfortable with sexual situations, even if they had less nudity.

That is actually fairly close to the US or American take on the topic. Most Americans are okay with it, as long as it is appropriate and not too gratutious.
Our media doesn't really reflect the majority sentiment on the topic. Although network television might - the PTA (Parent Television Advisory Counsel).

My impression, at least in the 1980s and 1990s in the countries I visited (went to Britian three times in that period, France twice, Germany once, Turkey once,
Australia once) - was that France was fairly open on nudity and sexuality, with little issues. Germany - it depended on which side of the Berlin wall you were on.
West Berlin was anything goes (this was 1981) and East Berlin was nothing goes, everything repressed, nothing shown. I can't help but think West Berlin was a reaction to East Berlin? At least back then? No idea what it is like now - that the two are united. Britian was more or less the same as the US, generally speaking. There were differences, of course. Many of the people I visited in Wales at that time saw me as loose American girl who would sleep with anyone, because I was traveling alone and going in pubs alone (a big no, no, in certain places in the 1980s). BUT...that is true in certain regions of the US as well. And much like the US there was a huge difference between London and well a small village in Wales, just as there's a huge difference between NYC and say, Wichita, Kansas. So it's difficult to generalize due to regional differences that exist within each country.

Turkey was interesting, very different from the European and Western sensibility in some respects. But difficult to pinpoint how exactly.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh and time was a factor - since I visited each of these places at different periods. France and Britian and Germany in the early, mid, and late 1980s. Australia in the early 1990s. And
Turkey in 2000. Time would also play a role, I think.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I think the small town-big city divide is a real one - but bear in mind that Britain is densely populated and very urban, while I get the impression the US population is much more based around small towns. London shapes British culture; New York is seen as an outlier in American culture. I couldn't imagine the furore over the Janet Jackson Superbowl nipple incident happening in Britain, for example.

Plus, Britain has become a lot more liberal since the 80s, while the impression we get of the US over here is that you've been going in the opposite direction, with the rise of the Religious Right and so forth. Though that may be a false perception?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Plus, Britain has become a lot more liberal since the 80s, while the impression we get of the US over here is that you've been going in the opposite direction, with the rise of the Religious Right and so forth. Though that may be a false perception?

Hmmm. Yes and no. Depends on who you talk to most likely.
Will state, that yes the US is more conservative in some respects, but more liberal in others. National Health Care would not have made it through Congress five-six years ago.
And same-sex marriage is making in-roads in many states that would not have permitted it previously. We've also
made progress regarding women's rights.

But. The vast majority of Americans live in rural and suburban areas and those areas tend to be more conservative. Focus is less on getting along, and more on protecting what I own from interlopers. Lots of gated communities or closed communities due to the increased "surbuban sprawl", where you only interact with co-workers, relatives, and close friends.

With the information age - we also have a prevalence of what I like to call incendiary speakers - people like Rush Lumbaugh, Glenn Beck, Hannity and Holmes, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin on the Right, and on the Left, Howard Stern, Al Franken, Keith Oblierman, Rachel Maddox. With John Stewart and Steven Colbert glibly poking fun at them. Serious journalism has for the most part fallen by the wayside, mostly we have very opinionated talking heads. So it's difficult to discern what is really happening.

But, if you look at voter records and who is voting for what, and what is being passed - also religious attendance (way down in the US, although not nearly as far down as it is in Europe, but we do have the evangelical ampitheaters with the televized preachers, day care, food courts, and self-help classes, which I don't think Europe has. Seriously - there's an ad in the paper for the Journey Church which offers sex therapy for adult couples struggling with their marriages and how to have better sex. All the while preaching Rick Warren's message about "family values" specifically "conservative" families. Statistically the religion getting the most business right now is the evangelical Christian in the US - the mall church movement - which is mostly seen in suburban areas - since it's a bit hard to do a 2,000 seater in a city.)

What's causing this? Chronic unemployment, fear of terrorism, two wars that won't end. A feeling that you can't get ahead.

What's ironic - and this is expressed in books like What's the Matter with Kansas - that the very people who are suffering the most because of the conservative slant, are voting for it - pushing for it. George W. Bush was their hero.

Why? Lack of educational opportunities mostly. Unless you have money, you are unlikely to obtain a good education. And unfortunately that applies to about 75% of the US. And by good education, I mean grammar-middle school level, not even talking about college.