the gaze

SLIH clip from r pieto on Vimeo.

from the website www.pietothemediaecologist.wordpress.com

This short clip from Billy Wilder’s film Some Like It Hot (1959) illustrates some of the contradictions that exist within the male gaze in Classic Hollywood Cinema. We see the introduction of Marilyn Monroe’s character, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, as Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) and Jerry/Geraldine/Daphne (Jack Lemmon) watch her entrance.

On one level this clip can be read as articulating the male gaze. The film’s mise-en-scène constructs Sugar’s image in a highly erotic way; she wears tight fitting clothes accented with feathers and fur, which among other things, signify sensuality. Monroe’s performance accents her walk and facial expressions, thus heightening her sexuality. The corresponding music is a kind of Dixieland/stripper motif that aurally corroborates her image. Sugar’s eroticism even affects inanimate objects, as evidenced by the train in the scene which appears to be aroused, in a sense, by Sugar’s intense sexuality. The train’s brakes shoot out a burst of steam as if to grab her as she passes by.

The sequence also follows Mulvey’s assertion that the gaze works through three channels: the male characters in the film; the camera; and the male viewers. First, the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon characters gaze at Sugar as she walks by. The editing in the scene reproduces the gaze in their eyeline match as they watch Sugar walk by. Secondly the camera frames Sugar in a precise and specific way. We see Sugar’s face in medium close-up, then a cut to Joe and Jerry, then a cut to a medium close-up of Sugar’s derrière. Here the camera and the male characters are in perfect harmony to reproduce Sugar as an object to be looked at by men. And thirdly, from all this we can assume that the film’s construction of the male gaze is situating male viewers within the audience to take up this viewing position.

Here with this discussion of camerawork we can plainly see one of the strengths of Mulvey’s thinking on the male gaze. We could write off this particular style of camera work used with Sugar as just standard Hollywood cinematic practice. Indeed, it is standard film practice in Classic Hollywood; however, this specific camerawork is almost exclusively reserved for female characters. If we do a little thought experiment and try to imagine John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable shot in this manner, we can see Mulvey’s insight. Male actors were seldom, if ever, shot with this set up. Imagine John Wayne entering a scene shot like Sugar’s entrance; first with a medium close up of his face and then cut to a medium close up of his derrière? According to Mulvey, this is because the male characters can seldom be eroticized in the same way as female characters. Male characters can be handsome and dashing, but the camera can seldom frame them to be erotic objects of the male gaze as the above scene does with Marilyn Monroe.

key points

• articulating the male gaze
• what she is wearing, tight fitted clothing\
• her walk and facial expressions, heightening her sexuality
• the train being an object and recognising her sexuality and shooting out steam
• Mulvey's 3 channels

1. the male characters in the film
2. the camera
3. the male viewers

• how the camera views sugar

This is only part of the information on the site

need to look more in to the clip

books

Task 3

ESSAY PROPOSAL

The Brief: to write a 2000 word essay on an appropriate subject that demonstrates that you have understood the nature of academic writing.

• a logical structure that has an intoduction, a developed argument that is su[[orted by reference to at least 6 different academic sources and a conclusion
• a bibliography of at least 12 books that uses the Harvard Referencing system
• the use of harvard conventions within the main text of the essay when using paraphrase or quoting from other authors

I have already been thinking a lot of what to do for my essay. I have decided that I would like to look at the Gaze as from all the lectures i found it the most interesting

things I might do the gaze on:

• the media
• music videos
• photography
• films
• the male gaze
• advertising

The Gaze: analysing visual culture that deals with how an audience views the people presented. the type of gaze are primarily categorized by who is doing the looking.

I am going to look more in to the male gaze in tv and films, here is a list of things I need to research.

Marilyn Monroe

Grace Kelly

Mean girls

Laura Mulvey's essay

Voyeuristic and fetishistic looking

Foucault-medical gaze

Bracha Ettinger

Jacques lacan

paul messaris

john berger-ways of seeing

hegemonic

Magazines-nuts-playboy. Striking a pose

advertising

Posible essay titles

• The male gaze
• The effect the male gaze has on today society
• How Marylin Monroe effected the male gaze
• How did Marylin Monroe's cinema characters effect the male gaze
• What effect does James Bond have on the Male Gaze

TASK TWO

After reading Theodor W. Adorno's article on Popular Music I am going to summaries his ideas.

He believe that to make something acceptable, such as a song, it needs to be repeated until it is recognised and become standardised "transformation of repetition into recognition and of recognition in to acceptance" , he believe understanding is recognising.

• recognition- unspecific to explain modern mass listening
• the major-minor tonality- the inter-relationship of keys which determines modulation, the different chords and their relative expressive value, certain melodic formulas, and certain structural patterns
• relationship between the recognised and the new which is destroyed in popular music.
• the link between elements is pre-given in popular music as much as. or even to a greater extent than, the elements are themselves
• vague remembrance-

TASK ONE

Panopticism in contemporary society

In this session we were asked to think of things in this day that could be compared to Panopticism. The way that smoking is controlled and regulated these days could be compared to panopticism. In this day there are signs and visual reminders of where you can and can not smoke. There are adverts on quitting smoking and telling you that it is bad. We do as we are told with these signs warning us, and we are scared incase we get caught and have to pay a fine. This is an example of 'automatic functioning power' (Foucault, 1977)

These signs are not the only warnings, there are cctv cameras and surveillance measures that are everywhere which makes the smoker feel like they are always being watched and having to hold on to the cigarette butt until if is safe to throw it on to the floor without being seen, I think this is an example of Panopticism.

Another example of panopticism and smoking is the pressure that peers who don't smoke judge. They see these anti-smoking campaigns on tv and magazines and are told it is bad, these peers then give a reminders and judgement to the smoker making them feel embarrassed to smoke in front of friends.

People are asked all the time in hospitals and the health service if they are a smoker? This is a question that you will have to answer several times in your life and even when you have quit you will be registered as an 'ex-smoker', this 'permanent registration' (Foucault,1977) and negative attention enforced by the government make the smoker feel guilty and feels pressured into quitting. From all this smokers have become a sub category of being human another example of this 'binary and branding' (Foucault,1977) is the ban on smoking in public places. The smokers have to smoke in an area made for them which makes a separation between 'smokers' and 'non-smokers'.

Bibliography

Book

Michel Foucault, (1977) Discipline and Punish, London, Penguin

Specially provided smoking booths, each furnished with a single chair, an ashtray and a water cooler, where you can smoke, alone, in full view of the passing fair.

Lecture 5

Jean Baudrillard and Hyperreality

coco cola adverts-haddon sundblom illustration from the 1930s

Even better than the real thing

Jean baudrillard (1929-2007)

French philosopher, critic, social and culturl theorist; photographer

Pioneering theoriy in the domains semiotic, political economy, postmodernisn, popular culture and media theory

one of the generation of frencg thinkers associated with 'post- structuralism

KARL MARX

pioneering philosspher and political economic theorist

developed the 'critique of political economy'

maintain that capitalist society in an industrial age functions on the basis of the labour theory of value and exchange of commodites

Ferdinand de saussure

linguit nd pioneer of semiotics

george bataille

philosopher, novelist and poet

renowed for his writings on transgression, death and general economy based on expenditure without return

Marshall McLuhan

media theorist who developed in the distinction between hot and cool media and who argued that the medium is the mesage

Lecture 4

Communication Theory

Lasswell's maxim:

"who says what to whom in what channel with what effect"

Traditions of communication theory

• multiple theories and perspective shape the field of communication studies
• lacking a unifying theory, the field can be divided in to seven traditions
• cybernetic or information theory
• semiotics
• the phenomenological tradition
• rhetorical
• socio- psychological
• socio-cultural
• critical theory

The information or cybernectic theory of communication

useful for: researching how as a designer your work makes effective communtication

Systems theory

the great advantage that you switch between mathematical biological, psychological and sociological frame of reference

Semiotics- three basic concept

-semantics addresses what a sign stands for

-syntactic is the relationshops among signs

-pragmatics studies the practical use and effects of sign

Lecture 3

THE GAZE

Call of Duty lets you choose between seeing in the !st person or seeing in the 3rd person.

But why choose?

1st person-more intense and more life like

make you think you are actually in the game

3rd person-its more cinematic so you feel like you are in the movie

so you are controlling someone else

in this lecture we were looking at how these decisions to choose 1st or 3rd and what motivates us to hurt have as much to do with power and the way we look at the world as they do with "game play"

Today

• we'll look at theories and ideas about power of 'looking' through a different theoretical framework: psychoanalysis
• consider the key psychoanalytic terms: scopophilia, sature, intra-nd extra- diegetic, narcissism.
• introduce the theory and feminist psychoanalysis
• key authors: sigmund freud, jacques lacan, laura mulvey, kaja silverman

Looking at the gaze through psychoanalytic eyes, focus more on interpersonal, psychical and power sexual relations

MISCONCEPTIONS

• It's a mish mash of psychology (behaviour) and psychiatry (mental illness).
• it a "way of thinking that can be applied to allaspects of society, including art and design
• it's all about sex
• whilst psychoanalysis does position the role of sexuality, especially in our infancy, as a foundation of our adult lives- it is also about how we treat and examine other objects.

LAURA MULVEY

'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' (1975)

• hollywoo film is sexist in that it represents "the Gaze" as powerful as a male
• Heroes typically are male and drive the plot
• women in fil exist as "sexual objects to be looked at"

Freudian Theories of psychoanalysis 1

• Scopophilia- the pleasure of looking at others' bodies as objects
• instinctual desire to look- curiosity of others bodies emerges in childhood

Freudian Theories of Psychoanalysis 2

• Narcissistic identification-
• (for mulvey, spectators identify with the male hero in narrative films

Theories of psychoanalysis 3

Jacques Lacan- the mirror stage

Projected notion of 'ideal ego' in image reflected

Child's own body less perfect that reflection

Film produces fascination in the image that can itself, induce a loss of ego. In our increasing identification with a projected 'ego, our own sense of ego becomes lost

Sature

• spectators look through eyes of the actors in the film
• we are able to follow their gaze without feeling guilty
• sature can b brokem e.g when an actor speaks out to us
• when broken, the audience are aware of their own gaze
• possibility then, to make the spectator feel guilty

Sature-point of view gaze

• this form of gaze invites us to be a part of the scene. We view through th eyes of a character
• when sutire is broken the viewer is aware of the power of their own gaze

Forms of gaze

1. the spectators gaze

This is perhps the most common form of gaze

it is you looking at me

but i can also see you looking at others

2. intra diegetic gaze- a gaze of one depicted person at another within the image

when i look around me now i dont just see you looking at me. i also see you looking at others

3. extra diegetic gaze- thi id th direct address to the viewer- the gaze of a person in an image looking out at us- avoided in cinema, but common to advertising and tv newsreader

Conclusion

• different forms of 'gaze' evoke different stuctures of power
• we can objectify (scopophila) and identify (narcissistic identification)
• cinema, advertising, computer games thrive upon 'contradiction' [but this isnt necessarily a bad thing]
• visual culture employs different forms of th gaze to evoke stuctures of patriarchy
• psychoanalysis seeks to evaluate and identify the architecture and symptoms of the gaze

Lecture 2

Critical positions on the media and popular culture

AIM

1. critically define popular culture
2. contrast idead of 'culture' and 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
3. introduce cultural studies and critical theory
4. define ideology
5. interrogate the social function of the mass media and the extent to which the media constitutes as a subject

what is culture?

• one of the two or three most complicates words in the english language.
• general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society at a particular time
• a particular way of life
• works of intellectuals and especially artistic significance

base

forse of production-materical,tools,workers,skills

relations of production-employer/employee, class, master/slave

stuperstructure

social institution-legal,political,cultural

‘In the social production of their life men enter into definite, necessary relations, that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.

general

At a certain stage in their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production ...

…From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.

With the change in economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.’

Marx, (1857) ‘Contribution to the critique of Political Economy’

lecture one

PANOPTICISM

surveillance and society

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

• madness and civilisation
• Disaplin and punish: the birth of the prison
• the Great confinement
• house of correction to curb unemployment and ideness

the birth of the assilem

•The emergence of forms of knowledge – biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc., legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists.

•Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the school, now affect human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and that they internalise our responsibility.

Panopticism

Disciplinary society

and

Disciplinary power

Jeremy Benthams designed the panopticon proposed in 1791

PANOPTICISM

‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ (Foucault, 1975)

•What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a ‘ruler’ or ‘sovereign’ to……….. A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED “PANOPTICISM”

•The ‘panopticon’ is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies.

Foucoult and Power

•His definition is not a top-down model as with Marxism

•power is not a thing or a capacity people have – it is a relation between different individuals and groups, and only exists when it is being exercised.

•the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted

•‘Where there is power there is resistance’

Key things to remember

•Michel Foucault

•Panopticism as a form of discipline

•Techniques of the body

•Docile Bodies