Research: The Male Gaze, Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey released her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 1975. In it, Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. While this was more true in the time it was written, when Hollywood protagonists were overwhelmingly male, the base concept of men as watchers and women as watched still applies today, despite the growing number of movies targeted toward women and that feature female protagonists.

What I found most sup rising was how much it seeps out of the genres you would expect to find it in. You have your hip hop, R&B and rap that you'd expect to find it in, and then your standard 'Robin Thicke' rape culture music, but it also goes into happy boy band pop and fun upbeat music videos. I think that it is a lot different now, artists like One Direction sing about loving girls with things like arms and a functioning nervous system so that each member of the audience relates to the song. 

In this shitty generic pop song, stereotypical boy band The Wanted sing about wanting to have sex with  this women because she 'walks like Rihanna'.