'Male Gaze' Laura Mulvey

In her essay entitled 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Laura Mulvey put forward the concept of 'Male Gaze' to illustrate how the way Hollywood films were made oppressed women and thus promoted patriarchy. She argued that the way Hollywood films were made meant the audience identified with the male protagonist, with the female character simply there to be looked at, and the camera angles and viewpoint of the male characters perpetuated this. Mulvey identified three "looks" in film which serve to sexually objectify women;

• The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character.
• The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. 
• The third is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. This allows the male audience to view the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film.

I think Mulvey's 'Male gaze' concept is evident in the Hollywood films of the 50's, 60's and 70's but has perhaps lessened as the Feminist movement has moved on. However I do think it's still relevant to film as protagonists are still mostly male and all big Hollywood films have beautiful women in them and the camera does tend to do a cheeky head to foot shot of them. Therefore the sexual objectification of women is still apparent in many films, but I think in a different way to the 'Golden Age' Hollywood movies with Marilyn Monroe etc. For example, the beautiful women in Hollywood movies these days tend not to be passive and to have an important role as well as "to be looked at". 

Bluebeard Plot Summary

Bluebeard is a French folktale written by Charles Perrault and first published in 1697. Bluebeard is a rich ugly aristocrat with a blue beard (no way) who has been married several times, however no one knows what has become of his previous wives and he is widely avoided by local girls. He visits a neighbour and wants one of his two daughters to marry him. They both initially refuse, but he eventually persuades the younger sister to marry him and she comes to live with him in his castle. He announces he has to go abroad and gives his new wife a bunch of keys to all the rooms in the castle, which contain his treasures, however he tells her not to use one key which unlocks a small room under the castle. She promises, so naturally she goes straight to this room as soon as he leaves and shock horror finds her husbands former wives hanging from hooks on the walls, she panics, drops the key in blood and then gets the hell out of there. She tells her sister, Anne, what's going on (as she's visiting) and plans to flee but Bluebeard comes home early. He sees the blood and knows his wife has broken her vow. He wants to behead her on the spot but lets her have a half hour to say her prayers with her sister. Mistake. Just as he's about to kill them, their two brothers arrive and kill Bluebeard. As he had no heirs, his new wife inherits his wealth and they all live happily ever after. The character of Bluebeard may have been based on a real aristocrat called Gilles de Retz, who was a self-confessed serial killer of children. Lovely.

On a completely unrelated note, I would like to thank Wikipedia for all their support over the years, how ever unreliable it may sometimes be. 

Vague Settings in Fairy Tales

I think there a few important reasons why vague settings are generally used in fairy tales.

• For one, the setting of "Once upon a time" or "far far away" helps the reader suspend their disbelief, they believe this is a tale which doesn't refer to any specific time or place and therefore may take place somewhere where talking animals, magic and princesses are the norm. Whereas if a fairy tale were to begin "Somewhere in Europe in the 1600's" then it would make it difficult for the reader to detach themselves from reality.
• Another reason why I believe fairy tales have vague settings is that this makes them universal to all cultures, time periods and morals. Fairy tales present us with a common ground of "a forest" or "a castle" and therefore whatever they aim to tell their audience cannot be narrowed down by cultural, historical or geographical boundaries, but can be applied to, and understood by, all. 
• However in the same way, vague settings may be used to highlight that fairy tales are not real and that the belief systems and morals expressed within them aren't supposed to be mimicked by the 'real world' as they are unique to that land "far far away". 

There you have it, why I think vague settings are used in fairy tales.