'The Male Gaze' in media visual text was a theory created by feminist Laura Mulvey famous for her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 1973. The Male Gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male, it highlights the women's curves and other sexualised body parts such as legs and lips using cinematography and slow motion effects. She claims that in media text such as music videos, the women included don't bring anything to the narrative and are to be seen and not heard, used solely as objects/props/a trophy for the man to win. Despite this, there are many videos that contradict this theory such as Rihanna's 'Rude Boy' music video in which Rihanna is the main focus of the video and the men are in fact the sexualised props.
The video that I will be analysing is another example of a contradiction to Mulvey's theory, but i'll also be commenting on how, in some ways, it conforms to the theory. The video in question is Halsey's music video for 'Ghost', the lead single to her debut album 'Badlands.' Halsey has always been one to disregard stereotypes in pop culture since her embark onto the music scene, regarding what she wears and also in who she is as most common popular pop artists are heterosexual white females, Halsey is a bisexual biracial female and this makes her stand out in the industry.
Her music video for Ghost gathered a lot of attention including praise but also a lot of controversy. When deciding on her narrative for the video, a love story, with the director; he made a comment about casting her male love interest. Upon hearing this, Halsey was aggravated about how he assumed that the couple in the narrative would be heterosexual, instead they casted an asian female to play Halsey's love interest for her video set in Tokyo. The sexual chemistry between the two females caused a lot of stir but it was also praised for Halsey being so brave as to break the music video stereotype by having a video centered around a lesbian couple instead of the 'norm' and a heterosexual couple.
Going back to Laura Mulvey, her theory is heavily criticised for being so
hetero-normative, claiming that whatever a female does in a music video is for a man's pleasure, completely ignoring the homosexual viewers, especially the
men, who would have no sexual interest in the female in the video. Her theory claims that any women that watch are simply comparing themselves to the women in the video, again ignoring any females in the LGBTQ community that watch.Ghost both contradicts and conforms to Mulvey's theory. It conforms slightly due to the sexual scenes between the two female protagonists who are scarcely dressed and due to the scene where Halsey is briefly seen clothed in a bath. These conform because the heterosexual men watching would sexualise the two females but really the music video is more of a contradiction to the theory than not. The video includes no males whatsoever, and the lesbian couple are there for each other and not for any men in the video. The video revolves around their relationship, and how Halsey copes when her love interest leaves midway through the story and is more about the love between them rather than any sexual aspects included in the narrative. Halsey and her love interest also don't conform to society's stereotypes of females, or of lesbian females. They wear short blue and pink wigs in the video which is unalike other videos, and the love interest is asian as opposed to white. They are also portrayed as regular females as opposed to some media texts that portray lesbians as 'Butch'/Masculine.
Halsey's video for Ghost is very cleverley done in the sense that it completely eliminates all the main music video stereotypes/tropes. It features a biracial lesbian relationship as opposed to a heterosexual white one like most videos, it manages to create an entire video, that includes sex, to not be about the sexual aspects but instead be about the relationship between the two girls and its unfortunate end and it disregards any negative stereotypes surrounding homosexual females. Ghost is an excellent example on why Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory has a lot of faults and although it does make a lot of sense regarding many popular music videos, it doesn't necessarily apply to every one.
