🥈 Introduction
The male gaze, as conceptualized by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, has long dominated cinematic storytelling, positioning the camera—and thus the viewer—within a patriarchal voyeurism that objectifies female subjects and shapes narrative perspectives. However, contemporary horror cinema has begun to interrogate and dismantle this ingrained visual and narrative convention. Two illustrative exemplars of this paradigm shift are Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014). Both films, through meticulous narrative construction and formal cinematic techniques, strategically subvert and deconstruct the traditional male gaze, compelling audiences to confront trauma, grief, and female psychological subjectivity from perspectives that resist objectification. This essay offers an incisive analysis of how these films undertake this complex deconstruction, examining thematic depth, cinematic articulation, and their broader cultural implications.
🥈 Thematic Analysis: Female Subjectivity and Trauma Beyond Objectification
At the core of Hereditary and The Babadook lies a profound engagement with female-centered trauma, but these narratives diverge significantly in how they reinscribe or resist the male gaze. Hereditary revolves around Annie Graham, a mother grappling with familial grief and inherited horrors. Unlike traditional horror archetypes where women are visually dismembered or fetishized, Annie exists as a complex psychic site. The film foregrounds her interiority—manifested through fragmented family memories and psychic disintegration—thereby refusing to reduce her to merely an object of visual consumption.
Conversely, The Babadook situates Amelia, a bereaved single mother, at the epicenter of psychological horror wrought from suppressed grief and maternal fatigue. The malevolent entity—the Babadook—serves as an externalized metaphor for her internal trauma. Crucially, the film eschews the conventional sexualized female body trope, instead ‘gazing’ with empathy rather than domination. The monster is not a vehicle for eroticized spectacle but a catalyst for psychological revelation, repositioning the female protagonist as an active subject navigating her own trauma.
🥈 Technical Analysis: Cinematography, Framing, and the Inversion of the Gaze
Hereditary employs a restrained, precise cinematographic approach that subtly disrupts spectator expectations ingrained by the male gaze. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski’s use of static, symmetrical framing often situates Annie centrally but pronounces spatial alienation, resisting objectifying scopophilia by invoking disquiet over visual mastery. The prolonged take of Annie’s emotional breakdown, for example, denies titillation, instead generating an uncomfortable intimacy.
Similarly, The Babadook utilizes dim, constrained interiors and unsettling close-ups that emphasize Amelia’s psychological enclosure. The camera adopts a subjective alignment with Amelia’s perspective, often blurring objective visual clarity, thereby evoking a disorientating experience for the audience. Notably, the film’s mise-en-scène avoids voyeuristic eroticism, opting for a stark aesthetic where the female gaze is redirected inward. This inversion challenges traditional cinematic spectatorship, disrupting the patriarchal ordering of visual pleasure.
🥈 Comparative Analysis: Cultural Context and Narrative Strategies
Both films emerge within a cultural milieu increasingly attentive to feminist critiques of cinematic representation, yet their narrative strategies differ. Hereditary embeds its deconstruction within a familial and occult framework, utilizing supernatural horror allegorically. The male gaze is subverted by collapsing the family’s patriarchal legacies, where male figures are either absent, ineffectual, or complicit in the supernatural trauma. This aligns with a cultural reckoning with inherited patriarchal structures.
The Babadook, drawing from Australian independent cinema traditions, prioritizes intimate psychological horror arising from a singular female experience. Its narrative resistance to the male gaze is more radical in centering maternal subjectivity and eschewing sexualized imagery. The film’s cultural impact lies in its challenge to horror conventions that often marginalize or fetishize motherhood.
🥈 Conclusion
Through rigorous thematic engagement and innovative cinematic techniques, Hereditary and The Babadook exemplify the deconstruction of the male gaze in contemporary horror. They shift narrative focus from female objectification towards a nuanced exploration of female psychological subjectivity and trauma. By doing so, these films not only disrupt conventional modes of horror spectatorship but also contribute to a critical cultural dialogue on gendered representation in visual media. Their significance extends beyond genre boundaries, marking an evolution in cinematic language that affirms complexity and agency over reductive visual paradigms.