This video looks at how the male gaze operates in popular chick flicks from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. While the genre assumes a woman spectator it consistently employs the camera to reinforce the surveillance of the women’s bodies and choices; the audience is made to consume the women from a patriarchal point of view. This video draws on footage from classic narrative cinema with a male lead to establish the male gaze in girlfriend media. You will be submersed in the women’s bodily fragmentation, where both classic narrative cinema and chick flicks scan and dismember the women in order to assign talent and skill to their desirability. Equally, you will be introduced to the ways in which chick flicks contain women’s intimacy by visually establishing a patriarchal heterosexual bond between them. One woman is repeatedly made ‘blind’ as a ‘hero’ approaches her. Additionally, this video will look at the chick flick tendency to visually align the spectator with a patriarchal villain. This video is heavily influenced by Suzanna Danuta Walters’ and Richard Dyer’s work on the male gaze.

-Ingrid Ireland