The Gaze and The Media
Helen Clarke
helenclarke@leed-art.ac.uk
The lecture introduces theories of The Gaze, through the writings of John Berger, Laura Mulvey, Rosalind Coward and Professor Griselda Pollock. It proposes that The Male Gaze identified by Mulvey through film, and Berger through painting, is in fact synonymous with The Gaze of The Media in contemporary western culture.
The lecture provides readings which follow the message of the key texts and encourages the questioning of our contemporary privileging of the visual in the western construction of desire.
It also looks at the impact this has in the everyday, and how the prevalence of the male Gaze normalizes these perceptions of women and their bodies and is internalized by women themselves. This is a complex area of investigation, and rather than a simple ‘reversal’ of the Gaze onto the male body, the lecture seeks to address and question image makers as to the possibility of an alternative portrayal of the body.
FURTHER READING:
John Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing, Chapter3 Victor Burgin (1982) Thinking Photography Rosalind Coward (1984) The Look Laura Mulvey (1973) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Griselda Pollock (1982) Old Mistresses
‘The preoccupation with visual images strikes women in a very particular way. For looking is not a neutral activity. Human beings don’t all look at things in the same way, innocently as it were. In this culture, the look is largely controlled by men. Privileged in general in this society, men also control the visual media. The film and television industries are dominated by men, as is the advertising industry. The photographic profession is no less a bastion of the values of male professionalism. While I don’t wish to suggest there’s an intrinsically male way of making images, there can be little doubt that entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women, and a circulation of women’s images for men.’
Rosalind Coward (1984) The Look
‘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’
(Berger 1972)
Virginal representation of a women. Her position is interesting as the woman is covering her face - The body being more predominant then the head. Concentration on her body rather then her as a person.
Again another reclining figure. 3/4 of the picture taken up by her body. This advert was deemed too sexual for magazine and advert. So they turned the image vertically so it could be published:
1980's. Survey carried out from which this poster was published. They wanted this posting on buses and billboards. The handle of the fan made it banned from public view.
Manet - This is interesting because of the mirroring in the background. Gives us further context. Although the mirror image is not correct as its to her left. Parisian social life being shown. Social perception of Parisian life being a false mirror?
Photographic cope of Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergeres.
City carrying on not noticing this women in the street. Normalization of female nudity in contemporary advertising.
Another example. Wonder bra campaign. Continuing normalisation again.
Voyeurism:
the compulsion to seek sexual gratification by secretively looking at sexual
objects or acts; the actions of a Peeping Tom.
There
are examples where the male body is objectified in a similar way.
The
issue of male objectification is often raised in gender classes that I have
taught. I have heard many men and women suggest that men are now equally
objectified in popular culture. Many a people have focused on the Lucky Vanos ads of years past as a sign of
advertisers recognizing the desire of women to objectify men in our society.
But what is really happening in advertising? Can men be objectified as women?
If so, in what frequency is objectification present in ads? The Ads: Consider
the number of ads presented in this male trope as compared to other examples of
female
objectification. It
is interesting that when I first began the Web site many years ago, the number
of ads in this exhibit were small. Today, there are nearly 60 such ads.
Dr Scott A Lucas (genderads.com)
Male
nude as challenging the gaze
Gym-
sports-power
Cult
of fitness – male ideals of body image.
Laura
Mulvey did not undertake empirical
studies of actual filmgoers, but declared her intention to make ‘political use’
of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship in narrative Hollywood cinema.
It's not difficult to see these myths lurking behind Pacelli's description of Knox: "She was a diabolical, satantic, demonic she-devil. She was muddy on the outside and dirty on the inside. She has two souls, the clean one you see before you and the other." The lawyer's claim that she was motivated by "lust" could have come straight from the Malleus, which insists that women are more "carnal" than men.
The Daily Mail has emerged as the major fall guy by mistakenly publishing the wrong online version of the Amanda Knox verdict.
Knox won her appeal, but the paper's website initially carried a story headlined "Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected.” The Mail was not the only British news outlet to make the error. The Sun and Sky News did it too and yes - hands up here - so did The Guardian in its live blog.
It would appear that a false translation of the judge's summing up caused the problem, leading to papers jumping the gun. So why has the Mail suffered the greatest flak? In time-honoured fashion, echoing the hot metal days of Fleet Street, it prepared a story lest the verdict go the other way.
But it over-egged the pudding by inventing "colour" that purported to reveal Knox's reaction along with the responses of people in the court room. It even included quotes from prosecutors that were, self-evidently, totally fake. In other words, by publishing its standby story, the Mail exposed itself as guilty of fabrication.
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