Laura Mulvey, in her groundbreaking essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), introduced the concept of “the male gaze,” which examines how mainstream films construct narratives through the perspective of male viewers. This approach objectifies female characters, reducing them to objects of male desire and stripping them of agency. The male gaze operates by emphasizing the female body through the camera lens and aligning the audience’s perspective with that of male characters, thereby reinforcing gendered power imbalances.
In contemporary popular culture, the male gaze extends beyond cinema, infiltrating advertisements, fashion, and music videos, particularly within the globalized and market-driven entertainment industry. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the music videos of K-pop girl groups, whose highly visual style and choreography, while emphasizing female empowerment, often also implies a marketable gaze.
ILLIT (아일릿) ‘Magnetic’
In Magnetic, the camera frequently focuses on specific parts of the female members’ bodies, such as legs, waists, and lips, and these close-ups reinforce the sexy aesthetic with slow motion and high-contrast lighting effects. The lens design objectifies the female body as an object of visual pleasure, catering to the desires of the male audience. In addition, the MV lacks a clear storyline and is more sexually transmitted through the body gestures of the members, dance movements (such as hip twisting and provocative gestures) and close-ups, which visually highly emphasize the curves of the female body. This kind of narrative emphasizes visual stimulation rather than role building, making women more regarded as “objects to be watched” in videos. The scenes of Magnetic choose hotels as shooting locations, mostly luxurious interior decoration, soft and blurred lighting, to create a private and intimate atmosphere. This environmental design reinforces the metaphorical nature of the male gaze, positioning the viewer as a “voyeur.”
SUNMI ‘Balloon in Love’
Sun Mi’s Balloon in Love sparked controversy over the “Lolita” style and the “male gaze” due to its visual style. The provocative nature of the video through foot close-up, underwear style clothing and overall dreamlike girlishness can easily be interpreted as catering to the aesthetic of male audiences rather than purely artistic expression. In addition, the overall atmosphere and visual elements of the MV are considered similar to the “Lolita” style, which often involves sexualized representations of young women, reinforcing the “male gaze” by objectifying women as objects of desire through a male perspective. The lens specific language objectifies women as objects of visual pleasure, while also perpetuating the gender power imbalance in Lolita culture (Kincaid, 1998). Especially in popular culture aimed at younger audiences, such representations may reinforce appearance anxiety and gender stereotypes, with potentially negative effects on underage women (Gill, 2007).
In summary, the music videos of K-pop girl groups, such as Sun Mi’s “Balloon in Love” and ILLIT’s “Magnetic”, show the complexity and contradictions of the “male gaze” in contemporary pop culture. These works attempt to demonstrate female power and subjectivity through exquisite visual design and artistic expression, but some lens language, modeling and narrative methods still unconsciously cater to the traditional male aesthetic perspective, objectifying women as objects of visual pleasure (Mulvey, 1975). As a result, K-pop MV, in its quest for a balance between empowerment and pandering, is both a source of popular culture appeal and an area where gender expression needs further reflection and breakthrough. If the future creation can pay more attention to the expression of female subjectivity and the diversity of visual symbols, it may be more effective to challenge the inherent power structure of the “male gaze”.
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Reference List：
Butler, J. (2011). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.
Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), pp.147–166. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549407075898.
James Russell Kincaid (2000). Erotic innocence : the culture of child molesting. Durham, Nc Duke Univ. Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. London Afterall Books.
You can see a lot of close up shots on the female body on both of the music videos, especially “Balloon in Love”. I like how you mentioned about dancing for the male gaze, as there was a lot of curvy movement on their bodies to catch the attention of the male audience; I agree with the clothing, as they can be really revealing showing more skin than the video focusing on their performance. You did a good job explaining the male gaze in the K-Pop industry with Laura Mulvey’s theory.