Critical Studies Lecture Three.

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.

Critical Studies Lecture Two.

Critical positions on the media and popular culture.

• WHAT IS CULTURE?
  -One of the most complicated words in the English language.
  -General process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development of a particular society at a particular time.
  -A particular way of life.
  -Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance.
• Marx’s concept of base/superstructure:BASE
  Forces of production- materials, tools, workers, skills etc.
  Relations of production- employer, employee, class, master and slave. SUPERSTRUCTURE
  Social institutions- legal, political, cultural.
  Forms of consciousness- ideology.
• Determines content and form of
  Base Superstructure
  Reflects form and legitimises.
• If you can change the base, you change the way people see the world.
• Easy to determine a shift in the base but not in the superstructure.
• IDEOLOGY
  -A system of ideas and beliefs.
  -Masking, distortion or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations through creation of ‘false consciousness’.
• At the top you have the state that ‘rule’ us.
  Instruments of the state- ideological and physical coercion.
  The bourgeoisie
  at the bottom is the proletariat who work for everybody.
• Raymond Williams 1983 ‘Keywords”
  There are four definitions of the term ‘popular’
  1. Well liked by many.
  2. Inferior kinds of work.
  3. Work deliberately setting out to win, favour with the people.
  4. Culture actually made by the people themselves.
• Inferior or residual culture. - Popular press vs. quality press.
  - Popular cinema vs. art cinema.
  Both are aimed at different classes.
• Graffiticulture developed by the people for the people. Banksy piece taken from the street and exhibited in a gallery in Covent Garden is this then considered to be popular culture?
• EP Thompson 1963 ‘The making of the English working class’The working class and the bourgeois are separated both physically, i.e. where they live, obviously the bourgeois are not going to live in the slums with the working class. But also by where they go, go out for dinner etc, and lastly separated by how they are educated.
• Matthew Arnold 1867 ‘Culture and Anarchy’

Culture is:-‘The best that has been thought and said in the world’
-The study of perfection
-Attained through disinterested reading, writing and thinking.
-The pursuit of culture.

• Anarchy is really what Arnold sees as ‘popular culture’ talks about the working classes as being “Raw and half developed” this could be due to the fact that the working classes were not privileged enough to have an education.
• The upper class were considered to be cultured, whereas the working class were uncultured, should not set their own culture but should strive to b more like the bourgeoisie. That culture Arnold considered being the only culture, the right culture for everyone.
• Leavisism. F.R Leavis and Q.D Leavis. -“Mass civilisation and minority culture fiction and the reading public”
  -“Culture and Environment”
• Collapse of the ‘traditional’ culture. Authority comes at the same time as mass democracy (anarchy)
• Hollywood films, popular novels etc represent the re movement of function. Offers a distraction away from the traditional culture. The refusal to face up to reality.
• 1950’s- Frankfurt school- critical theory.
  1923-1933- Institute of social research.
  1933-1947- University of New York Columbia.
  1949- University of Frankfurt.
• When the Frankfurt school moved to NY they were initially shocked by the fact that this mass/popular culture was everywhere, they were not used to this.
• Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Both of these thinkers were critical of this mass culture they believed that by it being called a mass culture connotes that it is something that is mass produced, mechanically produced therefore it is all the same. Reinterpreted Marx era of the late capitalism. All of mass culture is identical rise of the TV etc. they defined the ‘culture industry’ two main products homogeneity and predictability, mass culture produces conformity as supposed to anarchy which is just as bad they would argue.
• For example gives us an example of modern films, as soon as the film begins you know how it will end, this stops you having to think about the film at all.
• Herbert MarcusePopular culture or affirmative culture locks you into the status quo and maintains structure that illusion of a one-dimensional thought makes us not want to change the world. Affirms the dominant system when we should be rising against it, we become too comfortable where we are and there is nothing pushing us to change it.
• For example the che Guevara t-shirts, by having so many of them around now a days de sensitises what he actually did, by wearing one of the t-shirts does not mean anything anymore, it does not mean that you are independent it just means that you are exactly the same as everyone else who owns one of those t-shirts.
• The x factor too connotes that the only way to succeed in life and become something in this culture/society is to enter on a game show.
• Authentic culture vs. Mass CultureQualities of authentic culture
  -Real -Active Consumption -European
  -Individual Creation. -Multi Dimensional -Imagination
  -Negation -Autonomous (Against Marx)
• A culture that is independent of the structure or system that it was born into.
• Adorno ‘On popular music’-Standardisation -Social Cement
  -Produces passivity through ‘rhythmic’ and emotional ‘adjustment’.
• The working class should leave culture to those who understand it i.e. the bourgeoisie. By them trying to be cultural threatens the culture itself.
• Walter Benjamin ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ 1936. Benjamin took a more positive approach towards the popular or mass culture. The idea of new technologies was a good thing, shows that society is progressing toward the future. Opening up new possibilities, possibility of working against social repression.
• AuraMona Lisa, challenges cultural authority. The mono Lisa can now be seen on t-shirts, plates, place mats, and posters almost anywhere. By having these everywhere makes the painting itself, the original, less important. Mechanical reproduction changes the reaction of art towards the masses toward art; art is becoming more important than it actually is.
• Conclusion- Somehow culture is civilising. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards.
  - Frankfurt school attacks popular culture also depoliticises the working class thus maintaining social authority.
  - Popular culture is ideology.
  
  

Critical Studies Lecture One.

Panopticism, surveillance and society.

THE PANOCTICON:

• Designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791- metaphore for hierarchy structures in contemporary society.
• Michael Foucault ‘Madness and civilisation and discipline.’
• The great confinement (late 1600’s) houses of correction to curb unemployment and idleness, it was considered a social requirement to work, give something back to society, have a purpose. People that were held in these houses were vagabonds, pregnant single women, insane people, tramps, drunks, lazy people anyone who was not considered an asset to society, had no use to us so was locked away.
• Within this confinement the people were made to work, teaching them how to be ‘normal’ and made use of them in general.
• This was a form of repressing the deviant, hiding them away so that no one saw them makes society as a whole look better.
• The problem with this process was that the insane people started to corrupt the sane who were also in confinement. Because of this the asylum was brought in.
• People inside the asylum were treated very different to how they had been in the confinement, here people were given rewards instead of being beaten.
• An asylum was still technically a prison but was disguised as not, the people were treated different and it physically did not look as threatening.
• Criminals were put into a pillory, so that they could be judged by society publicly, in order to demonstrate others exactly what happens if you are a criminal, it was a kind of warning to the society.
• Disciplinary society, discipline is a technology used not only to discipline but also control society and make people learn.
• When bentham designed the panopticon in 1791, each cell was set out individually in a large circle with a tower in the centre which could see every single cell.
• This design was the complete opposite of the design of the dungeon, instead of the prisoners being hid away out of site, everyone can always be seen, they are constantly being observed.
• This internalises in the individual the conscious state that he or she is always being watched, after a while the guards were not even needed as the fear of being watched was still there. Also known as the automatic function of power.
• This was thought to have been a form of psychological torture, the prisoners had no idea that they were being psychologically manipulated.
• Panoptical prisons are no longer made as it is now considered to be inhumane. 
  
  
  
  
  
• • Reforms prisoners and treats patients, the building was created or used in order to help make society better.
  • Foucault is describing a new form of social control, open plan offices today work in the same way. There is no where to hide away you are constantly being watched and visible to everyone.
  • Pubs too are also more open plan than they used to be, before pubs had small corners or snugs for people to hide away in whereas now, most of the tables can be seen by the bar. Encourages less deviant behaviour. Easier to control people, people begin to self regulate.
  • How we can be surveyed alters how we act in society, the idea that we are constantly being surveyed within society changes the way we act and appear to others.
  • For example within our own college, there are cameras everywhere to deter people from mis behavining, also the college can access our own desktop at any time in order to see what websites we have been viewing etc. Because we are aware of this we alter the sites we would look at normally as they might not be considered acceptable. 

    
    

    • There is also a strong relationship between power and the body. Power relations have an immediate hold upon the body.
    • We change the way we look, move (body language), and even talk.
    • This can change disciplinary societies as it can produce docile bodies. This refers to bodies that are easily controlled and that behave in the way that the society wants them to behave.
    • Danaher, schirato and Webb 2000.
    • Health warnings et in order to keep society going, if we are healthy we can work more and keep society moving forward. Which is a similar idea to what the Nazis believed, if the population is 100% healthy then it therefore is unstoppable in a way.
    • The TV is too a tool of social control, we are becoming passive, we are not outside being active or making things we are sitting inside in front of the television. It is a distraction away from real life.
    • Power is not a thing or capacity people have but a relation between individuals, which only exists when it is being exercised.
    • The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted.
    • The way your face book page looks is also a form of social control; we edit our profile, as we know that people are going to be looking at it, and judging it.
    • Bruce Nauman- thinks how you act inside a gallery. ‘Video corridor pieces’ 1960’s
    • Chris Burden Samson 1985 you could be the one who brings down the entire gallery, and why would you not want to? Because we are made to believe that a gallery is a very important part of society.

     
    
   
  

 

Format Festival.

Edward Swinden.

  Edward Swinden is a Manchester born photographer who has worked all over the north of England. Photography is a passion for Edward and alongside completing portraits of celebrities he is constantly travelling the world in search of new angels within photography in documenting the modern world for his publications and exhibitions. Swinden's work mainly deals with the issues of society, conformity and regeneration; he works both with documentary as well as fine art. Swinden is also an award- winning journalist working for such institutions as Manchester Evening News, Metro News and the BBC; Edward does not do much writing anymore and sticks to photo books instead. He has published a range of books and journals of his work as well as exhibiting his work in galleries around the world.    For the FORMAT international photography festival in Derby Swinden has been concentrating particularly on street photography, taking candid images of passers by addressing such subjects as service and dehumanization. Dehumanization is the issue in which I feel Swinden’s work links directly to the critical thinking for my essay in which I explored how women are represented within advertisements. Dehumanization, dismemberment and objectification being the main themes discussed within my essay. The images Swinden has exhibited within this particular exhibition are part of a wider project on going entitled ‘Inside the Hive’ in which Swinden invites us to consider whether life should just be about self fulfillment and individuality or there should be more concentration on serving the greater good. 

 

   The image above is one of the images included within the FORMAT festival exhibition and deals with the issues of dehumanization within society.

Dehumanisation is defined as making someone less human by taking away their individuality, any creative and interesting aspects of their personality and their compassion towards others. Swinden’s work is a lot to do with society and how the public should concentrate more on servicing society as a whole rather than just looking after themselves. I believe that Swinden is raising the issue that people today are more concerned with themselves; people are less worried about any kind of community anymore just as long as they are ok and doing well. I think that this causes the people of today to become more dehumanized, there is less compassion in the world for others and more and more people are becoming the same, all looking after number one with little or no concern for others.

This is a very striking image, there are a lot of strong shapes and blocks of colour within the frame, and this causes the image to be broken up into sections and makes it harder for the viewer to view the image as a whole. The lighting here is the main cause for this divide within the image; it has caused these strong shadows to be cast across the image and hide some of the detail from us. There is only a small section in the image that has much light which is just off centre towards the right hand side, I really like the shape this light has created and this really draws your eyes into the photograph, your eyes follow the light from the bottom of the image all the way to the top from left to right, almost how you would read a book. I think it is really effective how the person within this image is not the main point of focus, this relates directly to the theme of dehumanization. The woman has become a shape within the image and is not really seen as a human any more, there are no signs of what this woman is like, what her personality is like or even really how she looks. I believe that this image comments of the theme of dehumanization within society, it is demonstrating how people can become lost within the large modern society and how everyone can start to look and act the same as everyone else. There is absolutely no way we could pick this woman out from a crowd, she is just a passing shape within the fast paced society of today.



John Berger and Judith Williamson.

   John Berger in ‘Ways of Seeing’ analyses adverts and talks about how and why we as consumers become so attracted to them and end up buying products we may not normally purchase. Berger says:

‘It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer- even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.’ 

   What Berger is talking about here is how adverts make us believe that their product will better our lives, and if we do not buy it we will be worse off for it. The people used in adverts are always attractive and seem well off, this adds to the idea that if you buy this product you will definitely have a better life. One example within today’s society is the lynx advert, they use usually geeky looking guys who once put on their deodorant are surrounded by attractive women, this connotes to the audience that by using lynx you are guaranteed to get with an attractive woman. This will obviously appeal to the young male audience who will be more likely now to go out and buy the product, this technique is used within all kinds of adverts, they will choose very carefully what sort of people and scenarios are used in order to make you envious of the people within the adverts and thus attract you to go out and buy the product.

‘The publicity image steals her love for herself as she is, and offers it back to her at the price of the product’ 

   Williamson says that adverts communicate to us through a level of meaning, with both denotation and connotation. The advert starts with the ‘truth’; this is integral to our understanding due to constant reproduction of ideas known in our society. The ‘Referent system’ meaning entities forming an integrated whole, is the system in which we perceive and understand the method of an advert which Williamson sees as a circular process. The advert in context denotes the product in which it intends to sell, by connoting the idea of the product through our already existing knowledge due to our culture and how we are brought up within our society. What is then connoted to us is what is made to denote the product. This is the relationship that the advert undertakes in order to communicate its message.

Artist Statement

   Sofia’s photography practice falls into two genres, portraiture and documentary, exploring into people exactly as they are and documenting it through photography. Capturing people at their most vulnerable, capturing the truth.

   For the ‘getting Modern’ exhibition Sofia wanted to create portraits that said more than just documenting the likeness of someone. With the historical portrait style Coombs offers us a modern version of the classic portrait. Walter Benjamin described the difference between a painter and a photographer as the painter maintains a natural distance from reality, whereas the camera man penetrates deep into its web. A painted portrait will only give you a representation of what the painter saw, whereas a photograph offers a more realistic representation of the subject, no disguise at all. Coombs’ portraits were captured on a large format camera to ensure each detail of the subjects face was visible. The portraits create an almost uncomfortable connection between the subject and viewer, an invasion of personal space one in which most people are unfamiliar with viewing. The images almost mimic those of mug shots or passport photographs, the subjects are expressionless giving the viewer and chance to see what that person looks like 100% natural.

   Coombs’ work is similar to that of Thomas Ruff who also took portraits in a similar style, asking his own friends and family to pose for him too. Both Coombs’ and Ruff’s work are quite unsettling in a way, you as the viewer are staring at the subject and they too are staring back, you would never be this up close and personal with a stranger in the street and this is what makes the photographs so interesting and intriguing. The images bring out a lot of questions, who is this person? Where are they from? What do they do? It is in our nature to be curious and to want to know what is happening but with Coombs’ photographs you are given no answers and are left to make up the rest of your own.  

Lesson Six Notes.

Critical Studies Lesson Six: Globalisation.

What is historically unique about contemporary cultural environments is there composition from architectural structures, objects, images and people who did not originate within that locality and may have arrived within it from far flung places. A town centre will now comprise a collage of different places represented in images articulated through foreign objects and shown by the ethnic diversity of those people in it. Event or thing depends on everything else around it to take place.

Globalisation can be associated with multiplicity and diversity but also paradoxically with uniformity and homogeneity. Term first used to describe political and economic changes in the 80’s but later has gone on to accrue social and cultural associations as well term first derived from Marshall McLuhan.

1970’s globalisation replaced internationalism, first world countries loaned millions to third world countries. Structural adjustment loans introduced which forced these countries to deregulate their markets and allows international free trade. Allowed multi national companies to trade without considering individual states.

Documenta 11, production of art, cultural drive of globalisation today.

Fredrick Jameson if everywhere is connected how you can be given a space individual can’t conceptualise the given space you live in.

Andreas Gursky Large scale images distinctive for their incisive and critical look at the effect of capitalism and globalisation on contemporary life. Often depicts people as tiny protagonists caught in vast landscapes. Since 1990’s concentrated on sites of tourism etc, chooses to take images of places that are un represent able (too big) so uses many smaller images to create a representation of that space.

Simon Starling investigated the historical processes by which objects and situations are created, often focuses upon how we transform raw materials into usable objects.