The Look-perceptual mode open to all. It can also mean specific instance of looking that particular moment. It is a whole process of looking. Gazing at someone can be a violent act, or a powerful act, it constitutes a whole web of relationships.
Barbara Kruger- she is an American collage artist, famous for her layered photographs. "your gaze hits the side of my face" addresses the male gaze and how it can affect women. Another example would be the Guerilla Girls is a passive active campaign feminist movement against sexism and racism.
And a more recent demonstration in Turin January 2016 protesting the violence against women. The protesters wore a mask dehumanizing themselves and securing themselves from the male gaze.
The term gaze is difficult to understand without going into psycho analysis.
Jaques Lacan is a french psychoanalyst. He takes on Freud and his method of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud argued that repressed desire is something humans need to face in order to move on and I touched on it on the previous post.
He introduced the idea of the deep unconscious and how desires are hidden there. Lacan however argues that subjectivity is more complex, it forms in the mirror phase, when a child gazes upon himself in the mirror it is when the ego is first indulged. A child sees himself as the center of the world, but separate from mother and when it sees his own reflection in the mirror sees himself as more complete.
In 1970s film theory, Lacans theory led to an interest in the unconscious of a film text and interest in evidence of the workings of desire.
Cinema creates this imaginary completeness as a child has, a unified self that is constructive and is a part of itself but not the part of spectator, but makes the spectator part of it. Spectator identifies with larger than self or idealized character.
Laura Mulvey was an English filmmaker and theorist interested in power and gender relations. She talked about pleasure being conceived from films in two ways- scopophillia, which is a natural desire to look, curiousity. And we also derive pleasure through identification with the ideal ego, represented with the on screen hero. Mulvey states that Hollywood cinema reflects the way that in particular society, pleasure in looking is split into two- the male and and the passive female. For us to enjoy a scene in a proper way an actress is placed to meet desiring gaze of the spectator. Also in most classic Hollywood movies the intellectual female protagonist has to wear glasses and then takes them off to become a passive subject for the male gaze.
The key forms of the gaze are:
The intra-dietetic gaze. E.g. Main male character looks at female character as a part of film story
The direct, addresses the viewer. In other words break of the fourth wall
The look of the camera, the way that the cinema itself appears to look at the character depicted, less metaphorically, the gaze of the filmmaker
And the look of the audience.
Barbara Kruger- she is an American collage artist, famous for her layered photographs. "your gaze hits the side of my face" addresses the male gaze and how it can affect women. Another example would be the Guerilla Girls is a passive active campaign feminist movement against sexism and racism.
And a more recent demonstration in Turin January 2016 protesting the violence against women. The protesters wore a mask dehumanizing themselves and securing themselves from the male gaze.
The term gaze is difficult to understand without going into psycho analysis.
Jaques Lacan is a french psychoanalyst. He takes on Freud and his method of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud argued that repressed desire is something humans need to face in order to move on and I touched on it on the previous post.
He introduced the idea of the deep unconscious and how desires are hidden there. Lacan however argues that subjectivity is more complex, it forms in the mirror phase, when a child gazes upon himself in the mirror it is when the ego is first indulged. A child sees himself as the center of the world, but separate from mother and when it sees his own reflection in the mirror sees himself as more complete.
In 1970s film theory, Lacans theory led to an interest in the unconscious of a film text and interest in evidence of the workings of desire.
Cinema creates this imaginary completeness as a child has, a unified self that is constructive and is a part of itself but not the part of spectator, but makes the spectator part of it. Spectator identifies with larger than self or idealized character.
Laura Mulvey was an English filmmaker and theorist interested in power and gender relations. She talked about pleasure being conceived from films in two ways- scopophillia, which is a natural desire to look, curiousity. And we also derive pleasure through identification with the ideal ego, represented with the on screen hero. Mulvey states that Hollywood cinema reflects the way that in particular society, pleasure in looking is split into two- the male and and the passive female. For us to enjoy a scene in a proper way an actress is placed to meet desiring gaze of the spectator. Also in most classic Hollywood movies the intellectual female protagonist has to wear glasses and then takes them off to become a passive subject for the male gaze.
The key forms of the gaze are:
The intra-dietetic gaze. E.g. Main male character looks at female character as a part of film story
The direct, addresses the viewer. In other words break of the fourth wall
The look of the camera, the way that the cinema itself appears to look at the character depicted, less metaphorically, the gaze of the filmmaker
And the look of the audience.
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