Throughout history, men have been the dominant figures within society. Men are the heads of economic, political, and cultural development. Because of the structuring of society to satisfy male ideals, women have been relegated to minor roles within society that reinforce the dominant male position. The rise of the feminist movement in the 1960's called into question the passive role women were forced to take. Feminist writers critiqued the conventions and devices used by patriarchial society in an attempt to expose the oppression of females within society. Like their male counterparts, they used the available tools, like Freudian psychoanalysis, to twist societal "truths" enough to spark debate and rethinking about a woman's place in society.

Freud's psychoanalysis placed the image of woman in a position of lack. The phallus becomes a signifier of power within society. Therefore, men, who possess the phallus, control society. The woman's lack makes her desire for the phallus symbolic. This desire is something that cannot be fulfilled since giving her the phallus would put her in a position of power. This is impossible because of her initial lack. Instead, the woman becomes an object that men use to live out their obsessions and fantasies. As an object, the woman has no power; she just becomes a bearer of meaning that has been assigned to her by the patriarchy.

Even within this model, the woman is a threat to the male. A woman's lack of a penis evokes the fear of castration in the male. The woman must then be controlled so that her image does not present a threat to patriarchal society. The main way control is exerted is through the use of the voyeuristic gaze or scopophilia. This involves taking another person as an object and subjecting them to a curious and controlling gaze. Here, the woman becomes the object of male desire. The male gets pleasure from looking at the woman, who in turn gets pleasure from being looked at. The image of the woman is constructed totally for male pleasure. Women fall into this mold by trying to keep the gaze and are controlled since they are trying to fit the image of woman.

The scopophilac aspect of control is readily apparent in mass media and cinema. Within advertising the images of women make them subordinate to the male gaze. In these images the women are dressed up and positioned specifically to receive the male gaze. At the same time, these women are placed in submissive poses. Their gaze is focused anywhere but back at the viewer, adding to the voyeuristic pleasure of looking at them.

Classical cinema also plays on the aspect of scopophilia to reinforce a woman's position as an object of male desire. In most cases, these films have been made specifically for the enjoyment of the male viewer. These films use the stars and stereotypes in a world that the spectator can gaze into. Within the film, the male is the active character and the female passive. It is the actions of the male character that forward the story. His power is reinforced since he is also the bearer of the look of the spectator. The story is structured so that the viewer identifies with the main male character, hence giving him the illusion of power.

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo blatantly deals with scopophilia and the controlling male gaze. In the film, the main male character, Scotty, is initially empowered by his role in society as a detective. This gives his gaze on Madeline a certainty of legal right and makes the woman guilty from the outset of the movie. Outside of plot devices that empower the male, Hitchcock uses the camera in a series of shot/reverse shot angles to show the power of Scotty's gaze upon Madeline. The camera angles also manipulate the spectator into identifying with the male lead. By having the female lead fall in love with the male, she becomes his property and is totally submissive to his will. The male gets to possess the object of his desire, as does the male spectator through indirect identification with the male lead character.

The idea of woman as an object for the fulfillment and empowerment of patriarchal society ia a throughly entrenched "truth" that feminists try to expose for critical debate. Using psychoanalysis, they try to disarm the meaning of woman as established by men. Feminists argue that sexuality and sexual difference are constructed through language and modes of representation that characterize a woman's place in society. Artists who work to question societal conventions about women use language against itself to rupture ideas of sexual identity and critique established male conventions.

One artist in particular who tries to unmask the patriarchal structures at work that oppress women is Barbara Kruger. She plays with the codes that work in mass communication and social constructions to rupture a "truth." She uses large black and white photographs that are structured like advertising images. On top of this she juxtaposes text that disrupts the traditional image devices. Her work attacks the conventions of male subjectivity that work to control the sexuality of women by reducing it to patriarchal patterns. The accusatory tone of the text ruptures the pleasure of the voyeurism that men would normally enjoy from that type of image.

Obviously, feminist critiques are directed at men to make them rethink the structure of society. the question is if it really makes a difference to how society is structured or if a major change in societal roles is necessary. The typical image of woman is associated with hysteria and paranoia whereas males are viewed as logical and rational. It is possible the establishment would easily dismiss all the attacks against itself as a paranoid reaction by a few women to something that does not exist or does not exist to the extent that they think it does. It is only through insistence and turning image and language against the establishement that feminists will be able to cause change and eliminate the oppression due to sexual difference between men and women.

Linker, Kate. "Representation and Sexuality" Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. 1984. 391-415

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. 1984. 361-373

Penley, Constance. "A Certain Refusal of Difference: Feminism and Film Theory" Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. 1984. 375-389

Rose, Jacqueline. "Sexuality in the Field of Vision" Art in Theory 1900-1990. Ed. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 1996. 1101-1106