Ju Dou Male Gaze

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Recommended: Critical analysis of depiction of women in films

This essay will first discuss the idea of ‘male gaze’ in cinema studies with relevant examples in films and its specific function. Then I will move on to analyze the representation of female body as sexual objects with reference to Ju Dou and The Red Detachment of Women. I will firstly argue that Ju Dou utilizes the male gaze, costume design and colouring to represent female body as objects sexual desire. I will then move on to analyze how The Red Detachment of Women represents sexuality of the female body at a symbolic level with mainly costume designs and the sexual connotation of the colour red in accordance with Chinese culture.

First and foremost, ‘male gaze’ is a concept introduced by Laura Mulvey (1975). It occurs when the audience …show more content…

A woman, as the gazed, is subjected to objectification in films when her body is structured in accordance to patriarchal ideology to appeal to the males. Thus, it means that the empowerment of the woman being gazed at is dependent on men. The scene in Ju Dou in which Ju Dou, who is well-aware that she is being looked at by Tianqing, intentionally reviews her body to him as a way to empower herself under the abuse of Jinshan as she knows that he is the only person she can rely on in the Yang compound, is a perfect example of the male gaze. Yet, at the end of the day, her empowerment is cringing on Tianqing’s existence in the family and his affection to her. The fact that male gaze is a lot more prevalent than the female gaze in the mainstream media also underlines such asymmetry. The emergence of the concept ‘male gaze’ is due to the embedment of patriarchy in the societal system of beliefs in which males or masculine individuals have been exerting the social power or dominance. It also has relation to the fact that heterosexual men have been dominating the film industry especially for the position as directors or producers. As time elapses, when such notion goes unchallenged, it evolves to become the social convention and is regarded as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’, which is reflected in movies, one of the cultural products in our

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