Gaze

This morning the topic we looked at was Feminism and the 'Gaze'


Tessa talked about the aspect of how women are usually presented now adays, through films/popular culture (TV) and the conclusion is that women are often shown being the ideal - to men. As the main visual engagement of the modern society today is from what we see in movies or musical MTVs, we see women on the screen often from the aspect of a 'male gaze'. Females character are always shown to have the qualities of being a male fantasy. This may or may not mean that the actual face of the woman is shown, therefore she becomes an object simply to be looked at while the viewer can not get to know the character as a person, nor can the character return the gaze. And this can have an different effect on the female viewers, as they wont be able to relate to the character, since the character is mainly designed for a male taste of an 'eye candy'.


This idea relates to a word that Tessa discussed with us - Patriarchy.


It means a community where men are in power of everything. I think that the media today is indeed dominated by the 'male gaze', as this talk reminds of just how shallow that the popular culture is nowadays. In my own experience, when my boyfriend and i go watch a movie, we'd always discuss the main character's love interest of the film, who we generally refers as being the 'hot chick/guy of the movie', and if this 'chik' or 'guy' is not 'hot' enough, we automatically think that the movie is not 'perfect'. We are brainwashed by the concept of the 'male gaze' to think that everyone on screen should be visually pleasing, regardless their actual skills in acting or the story of the film. This is mainly influenced by the dominance of male directors and modern popular culture.


Tessa then showed us slides of the artworks that deals with the concept of feminism and the idea of scopophilia.


I really like the art work by Babara Kruger - 'Your gaze hits the side of my face'. It really relates to the the idea of feminism and the male gaze. It is the female's point of view on the 'male gaze' The profile photo of a female bust, symbolizes that fact that she can not return the stare, as she is just seen as an object. This reinforces the idea of 'men being the subject, while female is the passive object'. While in the book 'The explicit body in performance', as the writter explains that on page 90, that the 'gaze' from the viewer can be seen as a form of desire for the female's body.


http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Nsorf98pWGkC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=your+gaze





Another art work that i really enjoyed was by Linda Nochlin, Buy my apples, buy my bananas. There was humor in this peice of art as well as the clear indication the different reaction we get from seeing a naked female to a naked male. This is flipping the concept of a 'male gaze' where a nude woman was shown, to a female point of view, where a man is being exposed. Females through out the century were more commonly exposed by media and art than males. So therefore we are more inclined to accept, or even to say more comfortable to see an image of a nude woman than a nude man.





After the slides we studdied a section of a film by Hitchcock - Vertigo.


Tessa explained that the film is about an ex-detective, traumatised by the death of his work partner, now was asked by a friend to spy on his wife, who was suspected to be in a strange mental state.

















In the film we see that the film is projected from a man's perpective. This was indicated through the camera presentation of the female character. The female character was never shown facing the camera as she's not aware that she's being watched, also she was often shown from the back like she's being followed from a distance.
We as the audience only see what the detective sees, and when he sees. So clearly, we are watching the film, as well as following the female character through his eyes.
Additionally the female figure is always focused to be in the center of the frames, constantly cutting back and forth with close up shots on the face of the detective, with his eyes being the main focal point. From this we get a clear indication that we are seeing the female character through the eyes of the detective. Here the detective is almost like a 'peeping tom' which reinforces the idea of the 'male gaze' we talked about today.

Feminism art movement was not something i know much about. I had teachers that suggested me to create art in the style of a feminist, especailly for my Art design class where i chose to sexualize the traditional fairytale female characters. As in the original stories they holds alot of sexual connotations. It was an exciting concept to work on, and my teacher really liked the idea and was glad i chose something that was really quite different from others. However because i had little idea about feminism art, and not enough time to fully understand it, i did not reach the full protential of the topic i chose.
Today's talk was really helpful for me, as it introduced me to feminism art and the idea of 'gaze'. Which will benefit me to produce better artworks than before.