Picture the moment in a packed cinema when the latest action spectacle pauses on a female character, her image held just long enough to register as something more than plot movement. That pause carries decades of cinematic habit, and it brings us straight to one of film studies most enduring tools for understanding how images work on us.
In this article we will break down Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory from its origins in 1975, follow its path through cinema history, and test its continuing relevance against the biggest releases of 2025. By the end you will recognise the mechanisms of looking that operate in mainstream films, evaluate how directors either reinforce or resist those mechanisms, and apply the same questions to your own viewing or creative work.
Laura Mulvey and the Birth of the Male Gaze Theory
Imagine settling into a theater for the latest 2025 blockbuster, the screen lighting up with high-octane action and stunning visuals. Amid the explosions and twists, a female character pauses, her camera-angled pose lingering just a beat too long—framed for admiration rather than agency. This moment echoes a theory from 50 years ago: Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking concept of the “male gaze.” Even in our era of diverse storytelling, Mulvey’s ideas remain strikingly relevant, shaping how we critique power dynamics on screen.
In her seminal 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey dissected Hollywood’s classical style, arguing that cinema positions women as passive objects of a heterosexual male viewer’s pleasure. Today, as blockbusters dominate with budgets exceeding $200 million, from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga sequels to superhero spectacles like Captain America: Brave New World, the male gaze persists, evolves, and sometimes subverts. This article explores Mulvey’s theory, its historical roots, and its uncanny endurance in 2025’s biggest films, equipping you to spot it in your next viewing.
By the end, you’ll grasp the theory’s psychoanalytic foundations, analyze real blockbuster examples, and understand modern counter-strategies. Whether you’re a film student, casual viewer, or aspiring director, decoding the gaze reveals cinema’s hidden ideologies—and how filmmakers challenge them.
The essay first appeared in the journal Screen at a time when feminist thinkers were already questioning how popular culture reproduced everyday power relations. Mulvey drew on existing psychoanalytic writing to show that the pleasure of looking in classical Hollywood was never neutral. She described how the camera and the audience together treat the female figure as an object arranged for visual enjoyment, while male characters drive the story forward. That basic split between who looks and who is looked at still appears in marketing materials and editing choices today, which is why the framework keeps returning in discussions of new releases.
Psychoanalytic Influences and Critiques
Freud’s voyeurism posits looking as instinctual pleasure, while Lacan adds the gaze as an object causing anxiety, reversing subject-object dynamics. Mulvey applied these to cinema’s apparatus: the darkened theater mimics the primal scene, with the projector as a stand-in phallus asserting control.
Early critiques came swiftly. Some accused Mulvey of essentialism, assuming all viewers are heterosexual males. Others, like Mary Ann Doane, extended it to the female spectator’s masochistic identification. Yet Mulvey’s framework endures, influencing scholars like E. Ann Kaplan and bell hooks, who added racial intersections.
Later writers pointed out that the theory needed expansion once questions of race, class and queer spectatorship entered the conversation. bell hooks, for example, introduced the idea of an oppositional gaze that viewers outside the assumed white heterosexual male position could adopt. These additions did not discard Mulvey’s original insight; they showed how the same structures of looking could be experienced differently depending on who was watching. That flexibility helps explain why the concept still surfaces when critics discuss ensemble superhero films or prestige horror in 2025.
The Historical Evolution of the Gaze in Cinema
Pre-Mulvey cinema brimmed with examples. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) obsessively reframes Kim Novak’s Madeleine/Judy through Scottie’s eyes, her swirling hair and poised neck fetishized. Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) toys with the gaze via Gene Tierney’s portrait, blurring image and reality.
Post-Mulvey, filmmakers self-consciously engaged. Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) parodies voyeurism with split-screens and mirrors. The 1990s brought grunge irony: Basic Instinct (1992) flaunts Sharon Stone’s leg-cross as both empowerment and exploitation.
By the 2010s, #MeToo amplified discourse. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017) flips the script with female protagonists wielding the gaze. Yet blockbusters lagged, with Marvel’s early phases framing Black Widow’s suits for spectacle.
These earlier films demonstrate that the patterns Mulvey identified were already visible long before she named them. Hitchcock’s repeated close-ups on Novak function as textbook illustrations of the fetishistic side of the gaze, turning anxiety about the female body into polished surface. When later directors such as De Palma quoted those techniques with mirrors and multiple frames, they invited audiences to notice the construction rather than simply enjoy it. The same awareness now appears in 2025 marketing campaigns that deliberately echo or question those older visual habits.
The Male Gaze in 2025 Blockbusters: Persistence Amid Progress
2025’s slate—dominated by franchises—tests Mulvey’s legacy. Global box office hit $33 billion in 2024; projections for 2025 exceed that, fueled by spectacles like Avatar: Fire and Ash, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and Superman. Here, the gaze thrives in high-stakes visuals demanding objectification for narrative drive.
Consider Thunderbolts* (2025), Marvel’s anti-hero ensemble. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova features in marketing posters: cropped torso, leather-clad, eyes averted—classic to-be-looked-at pose. Trailers deploy slow-motion spins, fragmenting her form while male leads like David Harbour command forward stares.
The commercial pressure on these films remains enormous, and that pressure often translates into visual choices that prioritise immediate impact over balanced character presentation. When a trailer lingers on a single performer in a particular costume, the decision reflects both storytelling tradition and the need to create instantly recognisable imagery for global audiences. Understanding Mulvey’s terms gives viewers a way to name what they are seeing rather than simply absorbing it.
Case Study: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Gaze Dynamics
George Miller’s 2024 prequel (streaming into 2025 relevance) epitomizes tension. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa endures shaved-head vulnerability, her wide eyes and scarred face inviting pitying scrutiny. Motorcycle chases frame her body against explosive backdrops, echoing scopophilia. Yet Miller subverts: Furiosa’s later agency—wielding weapons, directing looks—shifts her to subject status, challenging Mulvey’s binary.
- Voyeuristic shots: Early captivity scenes use shallow depth-of-field, blurring threats to isolate her face.
- Fetishization: Chrome arm prosthesis gleams phallically, reclaiming lack as power.
- Narrative payoff: Her vengeful stare punctures male tyrants’ gazes.
This hybrid reflects industry shifts: studios balance fan service with inclusivity mandates.
The chrome arm sequence in particular shows how an object associated with lack can be turned into a source of visual power. Miller keeps the camera’s attention on the arm during key action beats, yet the arm also becomes the instrument through which Furiosa asserts control. Viewers therefore experience both the older fetishistic pleasure and a newer recognition that the character is no longer defined solely by being looked at.
Another Lens: The Substance (2024-2025 Awards Buzz)
Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror hit dissects Hollywood’s gaze head-on. Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle injects for youth, her grotesque transformations parodying fetish excess. Mirrors multiply fragmented bodies—breasts, hips exaggerated to absurdity. The film indicts voyeurism: viewers complicit in her self-objectification, echoing Mulvey’s apparatus critique.
The repeated mirror shots force the audience to confront the same fragmentation Mulvey described, yet here the effect is deliberately unsettling rather than pleasurable. Fargeat’s approach demonstrates one practical route out of the traditional gaze: make the mechanism visible so that enjoyment itself becomes uncomfortable.
Subverting the Male Gaze: Modern Strategies and Applications
Filmmakers now deploy “counter-gaze” tactics. In Barbie (2023, cultural echo in 2025), Greta Gerwig uses fish-eye lenses for male Barbieland absurdity, flipping patriarchy. Rachel Morrison’s cinematography in The Substance employs fish-eye distortion, destabilizing pleasure.
Practical applications for creators:
- Reframe subjects: Use over-the-shoulder shots from female perspectives, as in Promising Young Woman.
- Fragment strategically: Pair close-ups with empowered context, avoiding gratuitous lingering.
- Incorporate meta-commentary: Characters acknowledge the camera, like in Scream series revivals.
- Diversify viewpoints: Multi-camera setups or audience surrogates of varied genders/orientations.
Theorists like Jack Halberstam propose a “female gaze” in queer cinema, emphasizing relationality over objectification. Streaming platforms amplify this: Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) queers Poe with matriarchal stares.
In production, intimacy coordinators (post-#MeToo) ensure ethical framing. Deepfakes and AI-generated visuals pose new challenges—synthetic gazes could eternalize objectification unless regulated.
These strategies are already appearing in both independent and studio work. When directors place the camera beside a female character rather than in front of her, the audience shares her line of sight instead of treating her as the object of it. The same principle applies when editing avoids cutting away to reaction shots that simply admire a body. Such choices do not eliminate visual pleasure; they redistribute it across a wider range of perspectives. As explored further at Dyerbolical (https://dyerbolical.com/about-us/), these adjustments matter because they affect how future audiences learn to interpret bodies on screen.
Conclusion
Laura Mulvey’s male gaze, born in 1975’s feminist fire, illuminates 2025 blockbusters’ contradictions: persistent scopophilic thrills in Furiosa and The Substance, tempered by subversive flips. From Freudian roots to Miller’s chrome-arm fetish, the theory decodes cinema’s power structures, urging viewers to question who controls the look.
Key takeaways: Spot voyeurism in framing, celebrate counter-gazes, and apply these lenses to your analyses or scripts. For deeper dives, read Mulvey’s Visual and Other Pleasures or Tanya Krzywinska’s gaze studies. As cinema evolves with VR and AI, Mulvey’s legacy ensures critical eyes stay sharp.
Bibliography
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6-18.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Doane, Mary Ann. Femme Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1991.
hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992.
Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. Methuen, 1983.
Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Duke University Press, 1998.
Krzywinska, Tanya. Sex and the Cinema. Wallflower Press, 2006.
Gerwig, Greta, dir. Barbie. Warner Bros., 2023.
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