If it weren’t for the fact that the director of the film was Sofia Coppola, a woman, this shot would unquestionably be taken as a vintage example of the dreaded ‘male gaze’, the bête noire of feminists, who might see it ravenously honing in on a female body in a ‘pervy’ manner, objectifying Johansson at will for male voyeurism and domination. Still, the ideologically blinkered would find a way of arguing that Coppola’s ‘internalised sexism’ caused her to pander to the hegemonic male gaze.

Laura Mulvey coined the phrase, in her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”.She argued that cinema has been a medium for the dissemination of misogyny and patriarchal ideology, presenting women as passive erotic objects for the titillation of the actively-looking male heterosexual subject. Megan Fox bending over a motorcycle in very short denim shorts in Transformers 2, for example. For Mulvey, the male gaze is necessarily unethical because “all too often … female bodies are shown to be objects designed to please men and conform to mainstream ideals of femininity”.

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By Ralph Leonard

Increasingly in film, any supposedly sexualised representations of the female body receive a backlash; every once in a while a male critic will be pilloried on social media for writing a horny review that objectifies a starlet in a ‘creepy’ fashion. We are in danger of erasing the erotic from film altogether.

These objections have a subtle but alarmingly puritanical edge to them, reminiscent of a religious hatred of the body and sexuality, their appropriation for pleasure and fun being seen as an offence to decency, as well as fundamentally immoral. This view has been especially repressive for women — it paternalistically claims to protect their modesty and dignity, from the diabolic world of sex, deemed antagonistic to their maidenly nature. But, as we know, lust doesn’t only belong to men.

With sexual liberalisation, women gaining more autonomy and social power, and the rise of sex-positive feminism, the “the female gaze” has arrived. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, for instance, has been credited with helping to assert female sexual agency in her comedy Fleabag,in which her character frequently and openly fantasises about men she fancies, sexually objectifying the male body, bracingly representing women as actively desiring sexual beings, instead of simplythe objects of male desire. Films such as Gone Girl and Portrait of a Lady on Firehave also been championed as an antidote to the exploitative male gaze by privileging female desire, the latter pushing men out of the frame altogether.

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While this is a generally positive development, a simplistic dichotomy is often constructed between the female gaze and the (straight) male gaze, which according to critic Christina Newland, “has no radical mileage”. The female gaze is portrayed as edenic and spiritually dignified, in contrast to the demonic and depraved nature of the male gaze. “If male thirst simplifies women to bits of flesh, then female thirst tends to be all about fleshing out the person inside,” as one critic put it.

Feminist theorists assert that the male gaze is an instrument of women’s oppression. Of course, it canbe this. As we know, some men can be incredibly cruel when talking about women and their bodies, exploiting shame, anxiety over their appearance and the sexual double standard to humiliate them. Furthermore, the male gaze in specific contexts, where power relations are at play, can be a precursor for violence and abuse. Think of the sexist, piggish boss in 9 to 5, who takes pleasure in groping and sexually bullying his secretaries (who then proceed to get their revenge).

But the implication that the male gaze could only ever be brutish and oppressive is to have a truncated view of male desire. Women can’t be reduced to their bodies, but the vast majority of men don’t merely see women’s bodies as ‘pussy’ to be pounded or punching bags to be sparred with. It is something to be awed and respected as a source of erotic contemplation (just as the male body can be for women).

“The eternal feminine draws us on high”, wrote Goethe. The male gaze isn’t simply an expression of male sexual power over women. It is just as likely to be an expression of alienation, of vulnerability; a yearning for tenderness and a nervous assertion that beauty is good and to be preserved in the midst of an increasingly ugly and colourless world. It seems like the only people not permitted to soliloquise about the male gaze are men themselves.

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Invocations of the male gaze have become like truncheons deployed to condemn sexual desire and expression. Is every portrayal of the sexualised human form really inherentlydegrading? It’s almost a secular way of condemning the sin of lust, where any image of the female form that could conceivably be attractive to men (which, let’s be real, is most of them) is pandering to the male gaze, therefore the production of that image is ‘objectification’, therefore it is immoral.

The lengthy and graphic sex scenes in Blue is The Warmest Colour between the two lesbian protagonists were excoriated for supposedly being “male gaze porn” disguised as art house cinema, because the camera focuses in on the bodies of these attractive actresses for minutes on end in a way that was apparently designed to please straight men.

What? Are we really going to define beauty according to a narrow ideological agenda, because it a priori might appeal to those whom it apparently isn’t supposed to appeal to. This reveals the major problem with the progressive-feminist critique of the male gaze: it hinges on something so fundamental to the nature of film itself: sex appeal.

The stars, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux are obviously rather fetching. Their bodies, their faces were vital ingredients for the ravishing chemistry they were able to create on screen. So of course male viewers would be tantalised. Is that inherently a bad thing? While the “male gaze” jibe sounds enlightened and à la mode, it implicitly denies that the women (especially the lesbian ones) in the audience have a gaze of their own, or asserts that it has been colonised by the omnipotent male gaze.

Would the lesbian sex have been more ‘authentic’ if the women were less attractive (according to so-called male standards)? Or would it have just been less erotic and sexy? Maybe the male and female gaze aren’t as different as we think they are  — and that’s what really bothers critics.

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When watching anything, desire, sensuality, eroticism and aesthetics are all an intrinsic part of our viewing experience. I felt this acutely when I watched The Time In Between (El Tiempo Entre Costuras), a Spanish Civil War espionage series, starring Adriana Ugarte (best known for being the blonde haired femme fatale protagonist in Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta) and Hannah New (fans of Maleficentwill recognise her as Queen Leila). The show is terrific and the actresses talented. But I would be lying if I said that my viewing experience wasn’t enhanced by the simple fact that both women are clearly gorgeous.

There is no explicit sex scene, and none of the actresses appear nude, but nonetheless, I “fell in lust” with them, in particular Adriana Ugarte with her dancing eyes and “awfully kissable mouth” to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with her ability to grace the screen with a beauty and finesse reminiscent of Old Hollywood glamour. Maybe it was the haute couture 1930s costumes, or maybe it was my own ‘male gaze’, but I loved looking at her. Which brought to mind a truth about the viewing experience we’re sometimes too coy to acknowledge.

Actors are, among other things, their bodies and faces. Their good looks are a crucial part of their craft, as well as how they manipulate their bodies. It is no good deluding ourselves that this isn’t the case (and indeed that it shouldn’t be).

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By Jenny McCartney

We go to the cinema to be moved and inspired. We trust that our physical and emotional responses  —  tears, anger, fright —  are telling us something about what we are seeing on screen. Why not lust? Why not our hormones? Our libidos are as intrinsic to our humanity as our reason. The value of the Erotic thriller genre — from Body Double to The Handmaiden, films that use the erotic as a spectacle, partially designed to ravish your senses — would be diminished if this weren’t the case.

Our squeamishness in acknowledging that “eye candy” has a legitimate part to play in an art form as visual as cinema, originates from that residue of puritanism in our culture that views personal display and glamour as vain and immodest. It is part of the anti-body bias in Christianity which regards the flesh and all of its pleasures as intrinsically sinful and degrading, and which must therefore be repressed. Hence the notion that portrayals of sexuality in a public venue such as a cinema are just a little bit suspect.

But visual gratification is one of the reasons why we enjoy watching films. The bliss of watching wonderfully composed humans on screen acting out a story for our collective enjoyment is one of the foundational pleasures of film. We denigrate it at our own loss.

In a way, it hasn’t been. The first series went out on BBC2. Miranda Hart was not a household name at the time — and it took the Beeb a while to realise they’d got a slow-burn hit on their hands. It wasn’t until the third series in 2012-13 that it moved to BBC1. The final episode was aired on New Year’s Day, 2015 — and that was that.

Except that Hart went on to star in Call The Midwife, a successful Sunday night drama that funnelled a new audience to re-runs of the sitcom, which is also a permanent fixture on streaming services. So, Miranda never really went away — and has well-and-truly earned it’s forthcoming tenth anniversary special.

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A US remake, Carla, is in currently in development — following in the footsteps of The Office and The Thick of It. But one could argue that there’s already been a remake, of a sort: the phenomenon that is Fleabag. It’s not a literal remake, of course — or even an homage. But if a dark and twisted mirror universe were to acquire the rights to Miranda instead of Hollywood (yes, I know, same difference), then something like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s blacker-than-black comedy would be the result.

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Before I proceed any further down this line of argument, let me pause to put on my treading-carefully shoes. Just because two shows happen to have been created, written and performed by a woman, it doesn’t mean that facile comparisons should be drawn between them. I need to be to be extra careful in this particular context, because comedy is the most sexist of the performing arts.

The ability of women to act or sing or dance is never questioned, but a funny woman is, to some men, a crime against nature and a personal affront. Perhaps that’s because the key to success in comedy is authority. However much the performer makes a clown of him or her self, he or she must stay in command. The moment that laughing with becomes laughing at (or not laughing at all), the performer becomes a victim and the comedy becomes cruelty. The successful comedian is therefore an authority figure, and anyone who has a ‘problem’ with female authority is going to have a problem with female comedians.

Therefore it’s all the more important to consider the achievements of women like Hart and Waller-Bridge on their own merits and not lumped to together in a bogus category of ‘female comedy’.

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That said, the parallels between Miranda and Fleabag are too numerous and too interesting to be ignored. Both centre on single, thirty-something women from upper middle-class backgrounds struggling to find a place in life while their contemporaries appear to be forging ahead with successful careers and relationships. Miranda runs a joke shop (badly) while Fleabag runs a café (very badly). The only reason why these businesses exist at all is the support provided by a more capable best friend (Stevie for Miranda, Boo for Fleabag). Both women also have bumbling, semi-useless fathers and dysfunctional relationships with their mothers. Both possess a streak of irresponsibility that leads them into farcical predicaments. And, in both cases, the misrule goes meta with Miranda and Fleabag constantly breaking the fourth wall. (They even meta the meta — Fleabag is caught addressing the audience by another character, while once or twice I’m pretty sure that Miranda the character glances to the camera as Miranda Hart.)

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There are some equally obvious contrasts, of course. Miranda is a light-hearted, family show; Fleabag is anything but. While Miranda’s mother, played by the awesome Patricia Hodge, steals every scene she appears in; Fleabag’s mother is dead. Furthermore (and spoilers ahead) her best friend is also dead — she ran into traffic after Fleabag slept with the man Boo was in love with. Speaking of men, Miranda spends three series and two Christmas specials chasing after, and finally marrying, her love interest; Fleabag, however, starts off with and then recklessly alienates her nice, if somewhat dull, boyfriend. Everything in Fleabag is a five hundred shades darker, and filthier, than Miranda.

Unsurprisingly, Fleabag is considered the more daring show. Certainly, it’s the more fashionable – a huge critical hit, whereas Miranda is ‘merely’ popular. But while Waller-Bridge is a stunningly talented writer and actor who deserves the honours heaped at her feet, I’d argue that Miranda represents the more radical achievement.

Eponymous sitcoms are a staple of American TV. I Love Lucy, The Cosby Show, Roseann, Seinfeld and many others are named after the star of the show, who appears as a fictionalised version of him or herself. It’s much less common on British TV. There was Hancock’s Half Hour, of course, and, in the 1970s, the all-but-forgotten Sykes; but in general it’s not the done thing for UK sitcoms, no matter how big the star. Perhaps that’s because British situation comedy is more character than personality driven. It therefore took guts for Hart, a relative unknown in 2009, to put herself on the line in that way.

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There’s an intriguing question as to whether Fleabag is also an eponymous sitcom. The character played by Waller-Bridge isn’t actually called Fleabag, in fact she’s never referred to by name at all — which makes the character literally anonymous. However, my theory is that Fleabag is a corruption of Phoebe (Phoe-be → Flea-be → Flea-bag). I have no evidence to support this, other than the phonemic similarities and the absence of any other name for the character. So, if I’m right, then Fleabag is Phoebe, albeit in monstrously distorted form.

The two Mirandas, real and fictional, appear to be more closely related. But that makes the portrayal of the latter’s insecurities closer to the knuckle. There’s no shying away from Miranda’s six foot plus physical presence. She does not conform to the supposedly ideal female body shape, but rather than allowing others to make fun of it, she has fun with it. Hart’s physical comedy — a dying art — is faultless. At the time, however, she refuses to fit into any of the female comedy stereotypes — she is neither the dolly bird nor the vamp nor the frump nor the doormat nor the dragon.

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A defiantly feminist agenda is often attributed to Fleabag. This can be overdone. Waller-Bridge is hardly the first female writer to take her humour across every imaginable line. The under-rated Julia Davis has been doing that in her sitcoms for years (bubbly milk, anyone?) As for portrayals of uninhibited, confident sexuality, Mae West did it in the face of pre-war US government censorship (not that she minded — “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it”).

It should also be said that Fleabag is protected by a mantle of cool. No matter how visceral a mess she finds herself in, she never looks less than iconic — even with tear-streaked make-up running down her face she’s somehow perfectly poised.

It’s Miranda who fully takes on the traditionally male role of clown, discarding every shred of elegance and yet holding on to her dignity as both a character and a performer. That’s a much tougher trick to pull off — especially within the constraints of broad, all-ages comedy.

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Writing great comedy of any kind is supremely difficult, which is why there’s so little of it. But the dark secret of edgy humour is that it’s easier to do it well (though, as I say, not easy). If you’re willing and able to plumb the depths of human experience, then there’s an awful lot down there to work with. Laughter, after all, is a displacement activity — a way of defusing shock and surprise. With lighter humour, though, it’s much harder to avoid cliché, stereotype and dullness.

There’s also the inspiration and albatross of classic comedy — against which any new mainstream sitcom will be tried and usually found wanting. Miranda clearly sits in that tradition, overtly paying homage to the likes of Dad’s Army through the “you have been watching” bit at the end of end of each episode.

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By Jenny McCartney

Inviting comparison to the best sit-coms of TV’s golden age was another brave move on Hart’s part. And yet it’s a standard that Miranda measures up to, while being completely of its own time and place.

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A 21st century audience is a tough crowd, though. The uncensored comedy we have plentiful access to has both sharpened our appetites and jaded our palates. For some viewers, only the likes of Fleabag will do. We’ve become less tolerant of corn and slapstick, more open to despair and desecration A lot of people, sadly, are just not up for such fun.

But even the cynics ought to recognise what Miranda, at its best, could achieve. For instance, ‘Just Act Normal’ (a bottle episode in the second series) is 30 minutes of sheer brilliance sustained over a single scene by Hart and Hodge (plus Mark Heap as a mostly silent psychiatrist). It’s one of finest half hours of comedy written by anyone, anywhere in this century — and all before the watershed.

So, thank you, Miranda — and indeed Miranda Hart. You are a, what I call, genius.