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