Media Magazine

Furiosa and the 'male gaze': is Fury road a game changer?

This article is written by Nick Lacey

I chose this article for many reasons. The main reason is because I feel that woman taking leading roles is a huge step for the movie industry as audiences are only use to males taking leading roles and woman are only their for the 'male gaze'. Also woman taking the lead role is a very different and challenges many of the conventions. 

This article is mainly about woman taking leading roles and not following typical conventions like the male gaze, especially in the film "Mad Max:Fury Road" with the character Furiosa.

This article starts of to talk about females getting leading male roles. In the essay it says "Amongst forthcoming high profile blockbusters are the reboots of Ghostbusters & Ocean 11 with woman replacing male roles". 

The article goes on to talk about how Furiosa's looks are not emphasised - "Director (George Miller) camera refuses to objectify furiosa". It then starts to talk about how we see Furiosa can complete task that audiences members see has 'male jobs'. "Furiosa drives a truck and knows technical aspects of the rig - typical convention of men.

"Furiosa is not shot sexually, Immortan Joe's four 'wives' are though. They are all stick-thin, beautiful and in one scene you can see their nipples when they get sprayed with water. Being generous we could say that this is justified by the narrative. But while it could be argued despot Joe would likely choose attractive woman for his harem"-  This suggested that the film still applies the male gaze theory but it challenges many other conventions.




In this scene we can see that Furiosa is in complete charge over everyone - including the men. We typically think that max would be the better shooter because of typical conventions but we see Furiosa take over and have the better shot.

Nick Lacey covered a wide range of points in this article but I still think more points could be made.