SSC Film Studies

Fast and Furious - Male Gaze 

"AN EROTIC OBJECT FOR THE CHARACTERS WTHIN THE STORY, AND AN EROTIC OBJECT FOR THE SPECTATORS WITHIN THE AUDITORIUM" 

In fast and furious the Director has both objectified and fetishized the females in order to show the males attraction towards her. He has used symbols and the Male Gaze to show objectification in this clip. 

The director has used the cars to show power. He has done this to show the cars as very male objects, and that it gives the men something else to be attracted to, not just to look at but they can talk to them.. In the scene, the females are leaning over car bonnets, or lounging around with the boys, it makes them seem very forward.

The director uses the male gaze by cutting the females body with the camera angles in order to objectify her to the audience. He shows belly's or legs in particular, and the stomachs revealed fetishises them, this all adds to the male gaze and the "To be looked at ness"

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The male gaze theory has been developed by Laura Mulvey. This theory describes the way that the viewer or audience has been portrayed for the view of a male. What a male usually wants to see the camera shows this theory. Laura Mulvey explains how the camera makes the women look like the objects in the film rather than the possessors. The women are just there to look at and to enjoy the view but are not there to take charge or just be 'normal'. Most women in films have had parts of their body enlarged or exposed so that it pleases the male audience. Most films apply to this, because nowadays that is how you attract the audience. The women are either the over sexual in the film or the audience watching the film. 

"Director Justin Lin delivers more of the same high-octane, tedious, race sequences, macho posturing and sexist images but, as before, there's little plot under the film's flashy hood. By this third lap, the franchise is running on fumes." - David DiCerto

This comment relates to what Laura Mulvey said, as this film much relates to what the audience want an the way women are perceived at the very time its made. As the franchise started, it was very sexist up until the fourth film when people began to realise women are worth more, the director picked up on this and made the charters come out of themselves and become apart of the story line rather than just a pretty picture, giving the audience what they wanted.