Gaze

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Gaze

In analysing visual culture

Visual culture

Visual culture is a field of study that generally includes some combination of cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology, by focusing on aspects of culture that rely on ....
, the concept of The Gaze (also gaze and Le regard in French) describes how the viewer gazes upon (views) the people presented and represented. As a concept of social power relations, the 1960s ascendancy of postmodern philosophy and postmodern social theory, as exposited by the intellectuals Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosophy, historian, intellectual, Critical theory and sociologist. He held a chair at the Coll?ge de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley....
(the medical gaze

Medical gaze

The term medical gaze was coined by French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault in his book, The Birth of the Clinic , to denote the dehumanizing medical separation of the patient's body from the patient's person ; ....
) and Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques-Marie-?mile Lacan was a France psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory....
(the mirror stage

Mirror stage

Feminism

Feminism is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights to men. It involves various movements, Theory, and philosophies, all concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women and that campaign for women's rights and interests....
theory developed The Gaze in describing the social power relations between women and men — how men gaze at women; how women gaze at themselves; how women gaze at other women; and the effects of these ways of seeing.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Gaze'

Start a new discussion about 'Gaze'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Forms of The Gaze

The gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer):

The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text
Text

Text may refer to:* Plain text* TEXT, a Swedish band formed by 3/4 ex-Refused Members* Textbook, a standardized instructional book* Text file, a computer file consisting solely of printable characters from a recognized character set...
, i.e. the reader(s) of the text.
The Intra-diegetic
Diegesis

Diegesis is# the world in which the situations and events narrated occur; and# telling, recounting, as opposed to showing, enacting.In diegesis the narrator tells the story....
gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text.
The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall
Fourth wall

The fourth wall is an element of fiction. Originally, the term referred to the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a proscenium theater, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the Play ....
, the viewer.
The camera's gaze: is the film director
Film director

A film director, or filmmaker, is a person who directs the making of a film. A film director visualizes the Screenplay, controlling a film's artistic and dramatic aspects, while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of his or her vision....
's gaze.
The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or object in the text.

Theorists Günther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

Theo Van Leeuwen

Theo Van Leeuwen is the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney.Van Leeuwen studied linguistics at the University of Sydney, and taught communication theory at Macquarie University and the London College of Printing....
posit that the gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; the direct gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed.

Effects of The Gaze

Gazing at someone and seeing someone gaze upon another person, say much about the relation between the observer and the observed; and about the relations, between and among, the subjects of the gaze (the people, place, thing being gazed at); and about the circumstance of the gazing. Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins say that gazing's mutual nature reflects power

Power (sociology)

Power is a measure of a person's ability to control the environment around them, including the behavior of other people. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure....
structures (the nature of the relation between the gazer and the gazed-at subject) that tell us who has the right and/or need to look at whom. Although the gaze might be regarded merely as the action of “looking at” a subject, Jonathan Schroeder says: it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze — an idea basic to feminist textual analysis.

The Male Gaze and Feminist theory

In the essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of The Male Gaze as a feature of power asymmetry. Theoretically, the male gaze has much influenced feminist film theory

Feminist film theory

Feminist film theory is film theory film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have many approaches to film analysis, regarding the film elements analysed and their theoretical underpinnings....
and communications media studies

Media studies

Media studies is a collection of academic programs regarding the content, history, meaning and effects of various media . Media studies scholars vary in the theoretical and methodological focus they bring to mass media topics, including the media's political, social, economic and cultural roles and impact....
.

In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Feminists would argue that such instances are presented in the context closest relating to that of a male, hence it's referral to being the Male Gaze.

The theory suggests that male gaze denies women human agency

Human agency

Agency is a philosophical concept of the capacity of an agent to act in a world. The agency is considered as belonging to that agent, even if that agent represents a fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity....
, relegating them to the status of objects, hence, the woman reader and the woman viewer must experience the text's narrative secondarily, by identifying with a man's perspective.

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” expands on the theory, saying that sexism exist not only in the content of a text, but may also exist in how the text is presented; through its implications about its expected audience. Theorists note the degree to which people gaze at women in advertisements that "sexualizes" a woman's body even when the woman's body is unrelated to the advertised product.

Responses to the "Male Gaze"

In Feminist Theory, the Male Gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed, i.e. man imposes his unwanted (objectifying) gaze upon woman. Second Wave feminists argue that whether or not women welcome the gaze, they might merely be conforming to the hegemonic norms established to benefit the interests of men — thus underscoring the the power of the male gaze to reduce a person (man or woman) to an object. (see also exhibitionism

Exhibitionism

Exhibitionism, known variously as flashing, apodysophilia and Lady Godiva syndrome, is the psychological need and pattern of behavior involving the exposure of parts of the body to another person with a tendency toward an extravagant, usually at least partially sexually inspired behavior to attract the attention of another...
)

The existence of an analogous Female Gaze arises when the Male Gaze is considered. Mulvey, coiner of the phrase male gaze, argues that “the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze. . . . ” Describing Wide Sargasso Sea
Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 in literature postcolonial literature parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. After her last work, Good Morning, Midnight, Rhys lived in obscurity before Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1939....
(1966), by Jean Rhys, Nalini Paul indicates that the Antoinette character gazes at Rochester, placing a garland upon him, making him appear heroic: "Rochester does not feel comfortable with having this role enforced upon him; thus, he rejects it by removing the garland, and crushing the flowers".

From the male perspective, man possesses a gaze because he is a man, whereas, a woman has a gaze only when she assumes the male gazer role, when she objectifies others by gazing at them like a man. Eva-Maria Jacobsson supports Paul's description of the "female gaze" as "a mere cross-identification with masculinity", yet evidence of women's objectification of men — the discrete existence of a Female Gaze — is in the "toy boy" adverts published in teen magazines, despite Mulvey's contention that The Gaze is property of one gender. Moreover, in power relationships, the gazer can direct his or her gaze to members of his or her gender, for asexual reasons, such as comparing the gazer's body image

Body image

Body image is a term which may refer to a person's perception of their own physical appearance, or the internal sense of having a body which is interpreted by the brain....
and clothing

Clothing

A feature of all human societies, except perhaps the most primitive, is the wearing of clothing or clothes, especially in public. The primary purpose of clothing is functional, as a protection from the weather....
to those of the gazed at man or woman.

The Gaze and psychoanalysis

Jacques Lacan

Jacques-Marie-?mile Lacan was a France psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory....
established that the concept of the gaze is important in “the mirror stage

Mirror stage

The mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalytic theory . He described it in "The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first of his ?crits....
” of infantile psychologic development; children gaze at a mirror image of themselves (a twin sibling might function as the mirror-image), and use that image to co-ordinate their physical movements. He linked the concept of the gaze to the development of individual human agency

Human agency

Ideal

Ideal may refer to:* Ideal , values that one actively pursues as goals* Platonic ideal, a philosophical idea of trueness of form, associated with Plato...
-Ego

EGO

Ego is a Latin word meaning "I ", cognate with the Greek "??? " meaning "I " and may refer to:* Ego, super-ego, and id, a psycho-analytic concept of Sigmund Freud...
and the Ego-Ideal. The ideal-ego is the imagined self-identification image — whom the person imagines him- or herself to be or aspires to be; whilst the ego-ideal is the imaginary gaze of another person gazing upon the ideal-ego, e.g. a rock star (an Ideal-ego) secretly hoping his/her school-era bully-tormentor (Ego-ideal) is now aware of his/her (the rock star) subsequent success and fame, since school times.

Lacan further developed his concept of the gaze, saying that it does not belong to the subject but, rather, to the object of the gaze. In Seminar One, Lacan told the audience: “I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there. This window, if it gets a bit dark, and if I have reasons for thinking that there is someone behind it, is straight-away a gaze”. (Lacan, 1988, p.215)

External links

, web essay about the male gaze in advertising
- another effective photograph illustrating gaze
, with photographs of several advertisements.

Gaze

Forms of The Gaze

Effects of The Gaze

The Male Gaze and Feminist theory

Responses to the "Male Gaze"

The Gaze and psychoanalysis

See also

External links