Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position.

The gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer):

• The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text, i.e. the reader(s) of the text.
• The Intra-diegetic gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text.
• The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall, the viewer.
• The camera's gaze: is the film director's gaze. The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or object in the text.

Theorists Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen posit that the gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; the direct gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed.


The Male Gaze and feminist theory:


In the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the "male gaze" as a feature of power asymmetry. The concept has been strongly influential on feminist film theory and media studies. In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze.

Beyonce's music video featuring lady gaga, is a good example of how the 'male gaze' is used in a music video. Both females are dressed in very revealing clothes, and use rather suggestive dance moves. At 2:54 Beyonce is crouching down stroking a very large gun (phallic object) which is sure to capture the attention of men. Also at 4:47 the camera focuses on Beyonce's body and cuts out her head which again looks at the male gaze and feminist theory "a scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body".