SEMINAR 2 - the gaze

The Gaze

- the subject and the object

- view people in a way that we do not view ourselves

- this is ok because other people are doing the exact same thing in return 

- reciprocity, giving and taking

- something has happened so that the gaze relationship is one way...fundamentally about power

Hans Memling 'Vanity'

- different gaze relationship to day to day life

- allowed to look without ever being looked at

- in control of this situation, can gaze on but are never gazed upon

- the object is gazing upon herself, which almost validates/makes it ok for us to look

- images painted by men and consumed by men, men had all the money/all jobs of status

- sort of period where the nude starts to become accepted as a form of art

- dual function = pornographic function/erotic/sexual/fantasy but also about control/power/domination at the deeper levels than just sex

- men's domination over women, female's submission and obedience over this

- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

- woman is so vain a man would also judge her for this, she's asking for it - condescending attitude, replays power game

- passive femininity which you're laughing at even though you've constructed it

>> power, domination and patriarchal ideal of femininity where the female is passive/submissive and the male is active/dominant <<

- representations of gender are automatically biased

- culture has determined it this way because women are not and never were the dominant class in the West

Comparisons

- mythological representation of woman

- goddess from the sea

- sentimental and virginal

- position she reclines in = covers her own eyes and face with hands > device used in painting, advertising and photography

- body versus the head - two thirds of picture plain taken up by body

- focus on the body, not as her as a character/person

- allows the viewer to look unchallenged

- spying on woman

- very passive nude

- knowledge of presence but not sufficient recognition

- very casual

1) Olympia's hand is a pressing, defensive action, Venus' is casual

2) identifies Olympia as a prostitute due to flower in hair and neck tie, also exquisite cloth

3) similar body positioning

4) head positions

- domination and an idea of the power of the masculine over the feminine

Other aspects of culture

Vue - America's photo digest

- 1950's, use of movie stars and so on

- appealing to men

- doe eyed, passive, girly face that isn't threatening

- sexual titillation, she's asking for it

- ideas echoed in the stories of the magazine "my hobby is MEN"

- frigidity - if someone on the street doesn't want to have sex with you then it's obvious her problem - get her hypnotised because she's obviously mad

e.g. Katie Price, object of male desire but also laughed at, a nasty joke that has been taken too far - grotesque 

tried to change herself so much to be the object of everyone's desires but has reached extreme levels

e.g. News in Briefs, written by men to laugh at the women, sexual power

- control over women

- gaze relationship, plays with the roles talked about above

- roles have been reversed, a woman could take control of the man 

- cocky, assertive stance

- expectations from man that a woman should cook, will only lead to disappointment

- aimed at both male and female audience, men will want to mould their girlfriends into the perfect woman, but isn't there to alienate women by using an assertive character