3. The gaze = looking at
Looking is never a neutral act (Sturken)
4. VISUAL + MEDIA
ARTS:
4 MAIN TYPES OF
GAZE
the spectator's gaze
the intra-diegetic gaze
extra-diegetic gaze
the screen or monitor as mirror
the camera's gaze, or photographer’s/director's gaze
9. BLAKE GOPNIK
PERSEPCTIVAL PAINTING
• The yellow lines on my Pic are, of course, an “overpainting” of my own,
demonstrating that the bottom edge of the Cupid intersects with the curtain
precisely at the painting’s vanishing point.
• …Dutch viewers knew that perspectival paintings had a special power when
viewed from the “center of projection” — a single viewing spot, often close-up
and off to one side, from which effects of depth and space are vastly more
impressive and effective. So many Dutch paintings are an invitation to the viewer
to come within arm’s reach of the image, to the spot where the fictive curtain
might be drawn and which, as it happens, is also very often the “correct”
perspectival viewing point.
• The original version of Vermeer’s painting gave its (male?) Dutch viewers all
the clues and cues they needed to understand how to look at his picture, from
where. Once they got to the right spot they knew — they could see and feel —
that they were up close to Vermeer's table and looming above its fruit bowl; that
they were standing on the same floor as the yellow-clad lady and were almost in
her face, in every sense of the word.
• Like her, they were at Cupid’s feet, and at his mercy.
10. 2. the intra-diegetic gaze, where
one person is depicted looking
at another person or object in
the image, such as one character
looking at another.
Gives the viewer a sense of
intimacy between characters; of
eavesdropping on a
conversation; and/or works to
draw viewer into the narrative
(i.e., something is happening,
being discussed, why are looks
being exchanged, etc.)
13. 3. extra-diegetic gaze, where the
person depicted in the image looks
at the spectator (also known as
“direct address” in film/tv +
“breaking the fourth wall” in theater
).
In this gaze, the individual depicted
returns the viewer’s gaze – this can
be alternatively intimate,
threatening, powerful, creepy. What
does it mean to meet the gaze of
the viewer?
19. 4. MONITOR OF SCREEN GAZE
The maker is gazing upon their own image
and addressing our interacting with their
own image in the screen (YouTube, Tik Tok,
Selfies, video art)
“Narcissistic enclosure”
Leave Brittany Alone!
Chris Crooker
20. 5. the camera's gaze, which is
often equated to the
photographer or director's gaze
Always present in a film or
photograph, but sometimes it is
made obvious/references
24. 3rdi (2010)
Wafaa Bilal
“The 3rdi arises from a need to
objectively capture my past as
it slips behind me from a non-
confrontational point of view.
A camera temporarily
implanted on the back of my
head, it spontaneously and
objectively captures the
images – one per minute –
that make up my daily life, and
transmits them to a website
for public consumption.”
http://www.3rdi.me/
28. Zoom Pavilion (2016)
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Uses face recognition
algorithms to detect the
presence of participants and
record their spatial
relationship within the
exhibition space.
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=ENWBRsvn7qA
29. Look At Me: Women's Aid interactive billboard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEybVOerb9
Q
30. THE GAZE/THE MALE GAZE
“VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA”
LAURA MULVEY (1975)
31. Looking is never a neutral act (social
relationship)
• Who is looking (creator and viewer)?
• Who is being looked at?
• What is the social relationship between
viewer and image?
32. MULVEY
REFLECTING
ON ESSAY
“One absolutely crucial change is that feminist film
theory is today an academic subject to be studied
and taught. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema" was a political intervention, primarily
influenced by the Women's Liberation Movement
and, in my specific case, a Women's Liberation
study group, in which we read Freud and realised
the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory for a
feminist project.”
33. KEY CONCEPTS
1. Scopophilia
2. Identification with male protagonist
3. Active Male Viewer/Passive Female Object
• Voyeurism
• Fetishistic Scopophilia
4. Threat
34. 1. SCOPOPHILIA
“pleasure of looking” (visual pleasure) is known as scopophilia
scopophilia specifically refers to sexual pleasure derived from
looking at erotic objects: erotic photographs, pornography,
naked bodies, etc.
So… the visual pleasure Mulvey is talking about is erotic and
sexual in nature
35. 2. IDENTIFICATION
Mulvey argues that Hollywood film is constructed assuming a heterosexual male observer (not necessarily the
director).
The pleasure in looking (scopophilia) is a desire to fulfill the pleasures of a heterosexual male viewer.
The (male) spectator identifies with the image on screen.
36. REAR WINDOW (1954) BY
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
“…the woman as object of
the combined gaze of
spectator and all the male
protagonists in the film. She
is isolated, glamorous, on
display, sexualised…. By
means of identification with
him, through participating
in his power, the spectator
can indirectly possess her
too.”
39. 3. ACTIVE MALE
VIEWER/PASSIVE
FEMALE OBJECT
In mainstream Hollywood cinema, the male position is the active
viewing position, while the female position is that of the passive
object of male visual pleasure. (i.e., not made with female
position in mind).
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has
been split between active/male and passive/female. The
determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female
form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist
role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with
their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so
that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”
Image of woman (passive) is the “raw” materials for the looking
of man.
“Woman's desire is subjugated to her image (...) as bearer, not
maker, of meaning.”
40. • “Woman, then, stands in
patriarchal culture as a signifier
for the male other, bound by a
symbolic order in which man
can live out his fantasies and
obsessions through linguistic
command by imposing them on
the silent image of a woman still
tied to her place as the bearer
of meaning, not maker of
meaning.”
42. THE PARADOX OF PHALLOCENTRISM IDENTIFIED
IN ALL THIS PLEASURABLE LOOKING
• Phallocentrism = privileging of the masculine (the phallus) in understanding
meaning or social relations.
• Looking can be pleasurable in its form but threatening in its content – woman is an
active threat
• Woman de facto signifies sexual difference, a lack of a penis, the threat of
castration (Freud)
• “unpleasure, she threatens to destroy unity of the diegesis: ‘Thus the woman as
icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the
look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified.’”
43. JOHNNY
GUITAR (1954)
“The paradox of phallocentrism
in all its manifestations is that it
depends on the image of the
castrated woman to give order
and meaning to its world. An
idea of woman stands as lynch
pin to the system: it is her lack
that produces the phallus as a
symbolic presence, it is her
desire too make good the lack
that the phallus signifies.”
(“penis envy”)
44. A. FETISHISTIC SCOPOPHILIA
disavowing castration altogether
by fetishizing the figure of the
woman (or substituting fetish
object), taming it, making it
reassuring, satisfying in itself
45. B. VOYEURISM
Going to source of anxiety (“investigating the woman,
demystifying her mystery”) combined w/ devaluation,
punishment, or saving “the guilty object”
Mulvey notes that this is typical in film noir -asserting
control, judging, punishing women
“Femme Fatale” (“deadly woman”)
49. John Berger's famous formulation in his Ways
of Seeing (1972)
“according to usage and conventions which
are at last being questioned but have by no
means been overcome—men act and women
appear. Men look at women. Women watch
themselves being looked at (as spectator).”
50. THE KEY
QUESTIONS
ARISING FROM
“VISUAL
PLEASURE AND
NARRATIVE
CINEMA”
Can filmmakers/artists/photographers
create images of women that counter the
gaze + its objectification and eroticization
of the female body?
Can a non-sexist form of narrative cinema
be created?
“It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty,
destroys it.”
― Laura Mulvey
51. The Riddles of the Sphinx (1977)
Laura Mulvey/Peter Wollen
https://ubu.com/film/mulvey_riddles.html
A complex treatise exploring feminism, motherhood and sexual
difference in seven numbered chapters
Non-sexist cinema
Degraded and blurry images
Continuously moving camera
Voice Over and Text
No close-ups
Full female body never in frame
58. CINDY SHERMAN: FILM STILLS
• Sherman's photographs can be seen as self-portraits that are not actually about herself, since she is
always disguised and playing a role
• Viewers are not meant to understand these pictures as images of Sherman or of actual film stills,
but as ironic readings, deliberate imitations, and self-conscious interpretations of style, gesture, and
stereotypes
• She transformed he own body in order to proclaim that her femininity is performative – not one
thing
• Sherman's work is a response to an era of feminist criticism that challenged representations of
women
67. THE REINCARNATION OF SAINTE-
ORLAN, 1990-1995
• From 1990 to 1995, French artist Orlan underwent nine plastic surgery operations, intending to
rewrite western art on her own body.
• Orlan’s goal in these surgeries is to acquire the ideal of female beauty as depicted by male artists.
• When the surgeries are complete, she will have the chin of Botticelli's Venus, the nose of Jean-Léon
Gérôme's Psyche, the lips of François Boucher's Europa, the eyes of Diana (as depicted in a 16th-
century French School of Fontainebleu painting), and the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona
Lisa.
73. Allen Jones
Chair Table Hat Stand
(1969 and first exhibited in
1970)
Life-sized
sculptures/woman as sexual
object/ part of the
furniture/S&M
74. Jemima Stehli
Table 2 (1997–1998 )Medium:
gelatin silver print
53.9 x 94.3 in.
"I wanted not only to show
woman as a sexual object, but
to show myself, the artist,
becoming an object.”
“Thinking about what it means
to participate in your own
objectification.”
77. Vanessa Beecroft
Show (Performance
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, NY), 1998–1998
Beecroft has been
accused of staging "sex
shows" in the name of
feminism, of "objectifying
women,” of "pandering
to the male gaze” and of
being “hooters for
intellectuals''
78. VB48 Genoa, Italy, 2001
Beecroft calls her models an
''army'' that empowers women
She also claims indifference to
the presence of men in the
audience and sees her work as
countering the male gaze by
intensifying the roles of
spectator and performer
“The true beauty of women
has never been reflected in art
or fashion”
80. “THE REBELLIOUS DESIRE’ TO GAZE”
The gaze “has been and is the site of
resistance for colonized black people
globally … one learns to look a certain
way in order to resist”
81. hooks
two main
critiques
1. Critiques who gets to look
• Hollywood cinema robs black women of
narrative agency through not only violent
misrepresentations, but also utter lack of
representation
• hooks argues that not only are black woman
underrepresented in film, but they are also not
allowed to 'look' either (as spectator or within
the image)
• Looking implores a sense of power that is
removed from the black female body, to play
the role of object in direct relation to white
female existence
82. Olympia (again)
Direct gaze/extra-diegetic gaze vs.
intra-diegetic gaze
representations of black women in
film = their “bodies and being were
there to serve- to enhance and
maintain white womanhood as object
of the phallocentric gaze.”
The maid’s gaze is in service to the
prostitute
“cooperating with the West's
construction of not-white women as
not-to-be-seen”
85. hooks
two main
critiques
2. Who gets objectified/fetishized?
• Lorraine O'Grady "...only the white body
remains as the object of a voyeuristic, fetishizing
male gaze - the ideal woman portrayed in film
and television, is a white, sexy, obedient lover to
her counterpart”
• The oppositional gaze, therefore, encompasses
an understanding and awareness of the politics
of race and racism via cinematic whiteness
inclusive of the male gaze.
86. OPPOSITIONAL
GAZE
• hooks call for an oppositional gaze that restores the
power inherent in looking to black female spectators
• A gaze that is “confrontational, a gesture of resistance,
[and] a challenge to authority”
• Identifying with neither the phallocentric gaze nor the
construction of white-womanhood as lack, critical black
female spectators construct a theory of looking relations
where cinematic visual delight is the “pleasure of
interrogation”
• 'the pleasure of resistance, of saying "no": not to
"unsophisticated" enjoyment... but to the structures of
power which asks us to consume them uncritically’
• Calls for more filmmakers of color – especially women
filmmakers of color – to make films creating a space for
“new transgressive possibilities for the formulation of
identity
87. PASSION OF
REMEMBRANCE (1986)
ISAAC JULIEN, MAUREEN
BLACKWOOD
"Dressing to go to a party,
Louise and Maggie claim
the 'gaze'. Looking at one
another, staring in mirrors,
they appear completely
focused on their encounter
with black femaleness.”
Here’s an example of what both Mulvey and Berger are discussing – Marilyn Monroe as the object of male visual pleasure – being looked at – the female viewer watching that
