Gaze isn't necessarily framed by gender lens

Cinema engages the human form with the surroundings, the scale, and the characters, which derive meaning through the fascination of the spectator.

- Anuradha Vellat

One of the formative works on gaze and visual art consumption, Ways of Seeing—a 1972 TV series created by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb for BBC Two—offers an exhaustive summary of themes that underscore visual depictions. "Men dream of women; women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women; women watch themselves being looked at," Berger says at the beginning of Episode 2—Women and Art. He makes a case for how heterosexual patriarchy dominated the arts through classical European paintings, some of the earliest platforms for visual consumption before photographs and cinema made their way—a status quo maintained to date.

In a recent interview, Malayalam actor and the star of Payal Kapadia's critically acclaimed film All We Imagine As Light, Kani Kusruti remarks that the male gaze is not limited by the gender that defines it. In simple words, the male gaze transcends boundaries of sexuality and identity to accommodate demand and supply nurtured by norms of performativity and perception. It has been reinforced too many times and has now become naturalised.

Take for instance, Bollywood directors Farah Khan Kunder or Pooja Bhatt, whose films Main Hoon Naa and