The Gaze
- First and third person, in relation to video games you can chose which view you want, so you are either viewing as if from the gamers eyes, or you can choose it so that you can see your character running around.
- Psychoanalysis, scopophillia, suture intra and extra diegetic narcaissism.
- The idea of the gaze is used a lot within the film industry and analysed frequently within the film theory.
- Looked at the power of the gaze through ‘discourse anaylisis’
- There are some common misconcepts:
-mish mash of psychology and psychiatry
-although its linked to the two its also a way of thinking
-not always about sex, eudopus complex, it is to an extent
but not completely.
- Laura Mulvey ‘Visual and Other Pleasures’ ‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema’ 1975.
- Hollywood films are sexist, represent ‘The Gaze’ as being very powerful but also as being male.
- The hero within a film is always male, and this hero is responsible for moving the plot forward.
- The female characters within these films are there just as sex objects for these male heroes.
- Scopophillia is the pleasure of looking at other bodies as objects, there is a instinctual desire to look at people as objects and this emerges in childhood. For example babies always grab at you, your hair, nose, hands etc as if they are objects for them to play with as supposed to actual human beings.
- Narcisstic identification this is when spectators identify with the male hero in the narrative film.
- Jacques Lacan- Mirror Stage. Projected notion of ‘ideal ego’ in image reflected. Childs own body less perfect than reflection, this is the idea that when children look at their reflection they will always see their reflection as being more perfect then themselves.
- The more you identify with a hero in a film highlights your loss of self or identity.
- Thus a contradiction in these two pleasureable structures of looking, take ‘The Smiths’ film as an example the viewer will want to have Angelina Jolie as an object but want to be Brad Pitt.
- The cinema thrives on this contradiction.
- ‘The male cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.’ Meaning that the male characters within a film will never be the object of lust it will always be down to the females in order to provide this role.
- Suture when spectators look through the eyes of the actors in the film i.e. we have an active role.
- we get to follow their gaze throughout the film without feeling guilty, this kind of gaze invites us to be part of the scene.
- There are three kinds of gaze:
1. Spectators gaze.
2. Intra diagetic gaze- the gaze of one depicted person at one another in an image. We do not obtain the gaze but we recognize who does own it.
3. Extra diagetic gaze- this is the direct address to the viewer, this enhances the guilt, we might be the person supporting the victim or be the one hurting the victim. This is used within newsreaders, they look straight into the camera directly towards the viewers. - Marcel Duchamp- Etant Dommes (Being Given) are we being given the power of the gaze?
- computer games often use different forms of gaze the suture option often forces empathy.
- Conclusion
-Different forms of gaze evoke different structures of power.
-We can objectify scopophillia and identify narcissitic identification.
-visual culture employs different forms of the gaze and evoke structures of patriarchy.
-Psychoanalysis seeks to evaluate and identify the architecture and symptoms of the gaze.
THE GAZE IN RELATION TO PHOTOGRAPHY
John Berger
Naked/Nude and Ways of Seeing.
A mans presence is dependent upon the promise of power whereas a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, her presence is manifested in her own gestures, voice etc. a mans presence is what he has outside of his body, his possessions, how much power he has. A woman’s presence is literally just her body it does not matter how much money or power she has her presence is how she appears to men.
Men generate an image out of a womans present beauty, women must generate presence out of mens judgement.
To be naked is to be oneself, to be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become nude, nudity is like a part of clothing as you are not truly naked. If you are painting a naked body it becomes nude as the painter is judging it, only painting what he wants to see i.e. not painting pubic hair.
The surveyor of woman in herself is male, she turns herself into an object of vision or sight.
Objectification- Pornagraphic imagery offers women as available for male sexual fantasy in a restricted range of roles. It is the practice of treating another person as a commodity or as an object for use.
The Gaze- the power to look upon others, it has been suggested that men possess the gaze and look upon women. This operates at a social level and generates a culture of image production in which women are continually viewed as objects for men to look at, forcing women to internalize this gaze to the point where they survey and monitor their actions in relation to a perceived onlooker.
Voyeurism- Sexual interest in observing other people engaged in sexual practices. Linked with the term scopophillia, sexual pleasure from looking at other bodies as objects.
Larry Clark ‘Tulsa’ and ‘Teenage Lust’
Clark wanted to capture teenagers in the moment, wanted it to feel as if we were there with them.
Jeff Burton
More subtle than clark but still nude images, very suggestive by the way of colour etc.
Nobuyoshi Araki
Women tied in rope bondage, very explicit imagery. Objectifying women the camera here embodies the male role.
Cindy Sherman
Her images imply that the very construction of identity is built on a representation.
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