Nina Menkes examines the pervasiveness of the male gaze in the film canon and its chilling real-world consequences. Originally coined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, the term 'male gaze' articulates the way in which women have been filmed as objects to be looked at on screen by male characters, for an assumed male audience by often-male filmmakers. Menkes builds on the critical feminist writers like Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, Bell Hooks, and Angela Carter by deconstructing 175 film clips from 1896-2020.