"The male gaze" is a concept of feminist aesthetics which identifies in art, and especially cinema, the toxic, male configuration of the female as a voyeuristic object of pleasure, objectified, and herself devoid of dignity and agency within the dramatic narrative. It expresses the "patriarchic" devaluation of the feminine. What follows will not challenge that idea, which is in its way an accurate diagnosis of a real pathology.
Today, the day after Pentecost, being the feast day of Mary, Mother of the Church, we will consider an alternative, positive, healthy and even holy reality.
The "Madonna with Child" is arguably the most profound, powerful and pervasive image in Catholic art and imagination. There are others of course. The crucifix, with the tortured male body of Christ, has a certain primacy, especially in contrast to an iconoclastic Protestantism which prefers the bodyless cross, in a flight from the flesh, the incarnation, and the ultimate bloody sacrifice. There is also the Pieta: again the mother holds her son, now an adult corpse, the other bookend of the story. Happier than these is the Holy Family: father, mother, son...wholesome, happy, whole.
As a male, however, I prefer the mother with child. Joseph being absent, I take his place looking upon wife and child. This icon is incomparable in that it works, for the male, on several different emotional and spiritual levels.
1. Identification with Infant.
Subliminally, there is a regression to infancy, a recall of the warm, tender, protective embrace of the mother. Mary is always beautiful, but also modest, chaste, holy. She is generous, nurturing, and extravagant. Jesus in the arms of Mary is an incomparable image of safety, contentment, peace, trust and gratitude.
This is probably more powerful for the male because masculine identity requires, from the moment of birth when the mother recognizes the "otherness" of her child, a gradual but radical detachment from the maternal. Fruitful, mature paternity requires, eventually, autonomy, independence from the maternal. By contrast, fruitful, mature maternity builds upon a continued bond with the mother.
The suggestion here is that psychoanalytically the male carries, inevitably, a wound from the detachment from the womb, the breast, the arms of the mother. He longs, unconsciously, for a return to that enclosure of warmth and safety. His "passover" to the "world of men," to identification with the father, to the world of camaraderie, competition and combat, involves an itinerary of pain, injury and sacrifice.
By this interpretation, the male, notwithstanding his enhanced testosterone-based aggressiveness, carries interiorly a propensity to regression, to retreat, to cowardice. In this view, the "male gaze"...voyeuristic, pornographic, objectifying...is itself a toxic regression, a "death wish," a retreat from the AGON of the masculine journey. It shares with other addictions...alcohol, drugs, etc...an "anti-virility" of passivity.
By contrast, the prayerful, reverent, tender contemplation of Madonna with Child allows the man to subconsciously bring his deepest insecurities, vulnerabilities and anxieties to the Holy Mother, who herself reflects the Mercy of the Father, as she is holy, pure, tender, loving and beautiful. In Marian devotion, the Catholic man configures his own personal reminiscence of feminine, especially maternal, love, with the person of Mary and also with his enclosure within the Maternal Church. This return to "childhood" in a state of rest, serenity, trust and reception allow for a mysterious healing and interior strengthening.
2. Admiration of the Woman.
In this icon, the woman is the protagonist, the child the recipient. The Great Antagonist, the Evil One, is entirely absent, repelled to hell by the holiness of Mary. The absence of Joseph, the father, allows the male observer to assume the position of husband and father. This is first and foremost a glance of reverence, of awe before the immense dignity, gratuity, and elegance of the mother. The self-gift, the sacrifice, the generosity of a mother is incomparable to anything else in human life. The closest a man can come is spilling his own blood, as a martyr or hero. In Catholic lore, the Virgin-Martyr is perhaps comparable in valor and goodness to the natural mother. In Mary, the Catholic sees Virgin and Mother. She is queen of angels and saints, and of martyrs. She assumes a position as queen that is unequaled by any mere man or angel.
We see that the masculine gaze of admiration of the feminine is the polar opposite of the "male gaze" which devalues and objectifies. The seeing, with admiration, of such holiness, penetrates the male heart, intellect and spirit and sanctifies him with a gentle, but audacious virility.
3. Tenderness for Mother and Child.
In her embrace of the infant, woman herself shares with the little one a vulnerability, a precious fragility. She is so given over that she herself becomes defenseless. In that sense maternity is the most profound form of human vulnerability. The man who is secure within his own identity, strength and masculinity, surges with tenderness, protectiveness, affection for both mother and child and the dyad itself. Masculine strength and assertiveness finds here its formal and final cause, its ultimate purpose: protection and provision for this precious, sacred twosome. Timidity, anxiety and insecurity are banished as a ferocity both lionlike and lamblike surges within the mans breast.
4. Humility of God.
The most profound, impenetrable Mystery is that this tiny, fragile, incompetent infant is God's very self, the Son, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. Absolute Being, the source of all that is true, good and beautiful is present in one so small, needy, powerless. This is The Mystery of our faith. This we cannot understand, explain, analyze or utilize. We can only drop to our knees, like the three kings, and adore.
But there is more. The Almighty God continues to come to us, each of us and all of us...in the very least, the very smallest, the incompetent and powerless. This is the infant, the embryo, the demented, the insane, the very poorest.
God has lowered himself to become an infant, entirely dependent upon his mother. And so, in a million ways every day, he presents himself over and over again: in the needy, the dependent, the disabled. And each of us has the incomparable dignity of serving him. His very weakness elicits our own strength and nobility.
To Conclude...
With an invitation to all men, myself first of all, to calmly sit before the Madonna with Child:
To be as a child in the arms of the mother, myself small, fragile, weak and vulnerable.
To admire the incomparable Splendor of Mary our Mother, and of every woman as virgin and mother.
To surge with the flame of virile tenderness, protectiveness, and gentle strength.
To adore Christ incarnate as an infant, and present in every person as vulnerable, suffering and poor.
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