helen.clarke@leeds-art.ac.uk
"According to usage and conventions
which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act
and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972)
This quote often gets mis-understood, the last sentence doesn't refer to women as vain, but addresses the proliferation of womens bodies in our culture. It's often hard for women to not think of people looking at them, wherever they go they are bombarded with images of femininity and the desirable.
The body is on full display while the women holds a mirror, not directly to her face...but at a right angle. The reflection is a full face, providing an inaccurate representation of her face. The mirror is placed as a device to justify the fact that people will be looking, its kind of an excuse, used as a distracting device. A technique also used in other advertising....
The focal point is clearly between the knees, the most sexual part of the body. As a viewer we're again allowed to look because her 'gaze' is elsewhere.
Alexandre Cabanel 'Birth of Venus' 1863 - ( Venus - The goddess of Love ) A mythological/ perpetual representation bearing sentimental values and a virginal positioned woman. The interesting thing about this image, is the positioning of the reclining woman, her eyes and face are partly covered. Allowing the viewer once again to look unchallenged. If you look at the balance of her body in relation to her head, there is a sort of concentration of the body rather than as a character or person.
Again the reclining figure is evident, however this advertisement is a lot more sexually charged than the previous. Probably because its a more contemporary image as oppose to the earlier paintings. The original advert was deemed too sexually explicit for magazines and billboards. However with a simple alteration of the composition '90 degrees, counter clockwise' Yves Saint Laurent managed to change the emphasis of the image...as you can see above. (Sophie Dahl for Opium)
Titian's Venus of Urbino, 1538. Traditional nude oil painting. The woman clearly acknowledges our presence but its not a distinct recognition. She appears to be very 'passively' nude, covering herself with a singular hand in a very loose manner.
MANET - 'Olympia' 1863. When you compare the two images above, the differences are quite subtle, at first glance they look like re-creations. But once you start to depict the detail you notice that the hands in Olympia are more defensive and awkwardly positioned. You also identify the female as a prostitute, through the necktie and flower, a further emphasis is added by the gift of flowers which is most likely from one of her lovers. The overall picture has a sort of snapshot quality to it, it's as if she's lifted her head up sharply as oppose to Titians Venus. Giving the impression that we as, viewers, are spying on her.
Challenging the passive female who is there to be viewed as object. This painting formed the basis for a poster which was produced in the 1980's which was later criticised by one company because they believed the sexual connotations were too strong...relating too the phallic symbol the women grasps in her hand.
MANET - Bar at the Folies Bergeres, 1882. A mirroring the 'gaze', the barmaid looks as if she's nearly ready to serve us, her arms are open wide...waiting for our order. When you notice the reflection in the background, you recognise that it's an impossible reflection, which should be directly behind he. I think the function of this is for the viewer. We see the male as ourselves in the eyes of social perception. Whats different about this is that the woman is looking directly at us.
Coward, R. 1984. "The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets" An alternative theory of the 'gaze', as you can see in the background there's no acknowledgement of the half naked women, everyone is getting on with their own things, normalisation. There are several devices in advertising that are making 'the look' become a thing of the past, introducing fashion devices such as sunglasses, making it socially acceptable to look unchallenged.
Eva Herzigova, 1994. This advertisement was used on billboards, causing both traffic jams and car crashes. It's another example of nudity becoming more prevalent in culture, 'the normalisation of nudity in the street'. The text lightens the implications however the voyeuristic purposes are still obvious.
2007. The way we perceive different genders in our society is because of how they're portrayed in our society, the number of naked males is far outweighed by the amount of naked women's bodies reflected in society. As you can see in the example, all the males are looking directly at us and are portrayed in an active manner, they're not bothered that were looking...it's as if they want us to look.
Laura Mulvey - She declared her intention to make 'political use' of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (influenced by Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship in narrative Hollywood cinema.
Marilyn: William Travillas dress from 'The seven year itch, 1955. She uses Freud's psychoanalytic theories to look at the way the camera breaks the females bodies up in film. The bodies are broken down seperately into components...
The cinema provides the perfect voyeuristic environment, making it dark enough for everyone to 'gaze', because of this there is an objectification of the female body because of this.
Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view. Such films objectify women in relation to ‘the controlling male gaze’, presenting ‘woman as image’ (or ‘spectacle’) and man as ‘bearer of the look’. Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at. The cinematic codes of popular films ‘are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego’. It was Mulvey who coined the term 'the male gaze'.
We know from my previous notes that Mulvey see's women as accessories to stories, they don't seem to drive the narrative, however when we look at the action character 'Lara Croft' we can see that she's the heroin of the story, as-well as the leader. She's a visual spectacle, an overly sexualised object, the pleasure lies in the fantasy of her destruction.
Artemisia Gentileschi 'Judith beheading Holofernes' 1620. The women have been portrayed in a way to challenge the gaze. When you look at the background information, we know that this painting was done by a women, portraying the gender in an active and gruesome role, A graphic manner for females is definitely an alternative characterisation of a females role.
Pollock, G (1981)
• Women ‘marginalised within the masculine
discourses of art history’
• This marginalisation supports the
‘hegemony of men in cultural practice, in
art’
• Women not only marginalised but supposed
to be marginalised
Barbara Kruger 'Your gaze hits the side of my face' 1981. Combination of image & text/ Collage. As you can see the figure is turning away from the 'Male gaze' In terms of feminist work, the implication of violence is in relation to the 'hits', the impact of this 'mode of looking' is perhaps more than just a gaze.
Sarah Lucas 'Eating a Banana' 1980. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour, and include photography, collage and found objects. In this photograph you can see the sexual implications of her motions. She's picturing; the self consciousness, addressing the connotations of simple tasks representing sexual desires. She's delivering a very confrontational look, as if to say 'what have you got to say about this'. Her work features a consistent theme.
Tracey Emin 'Money photo' 2001. As you can probably work out, she's stuffing money inside of her, with the implications that its somehow vulgar to make money from your art, self representational?.
Joan Smith criticises the portrayal of Amanda in the courtroom and in the media - looking at the way she's described in court with implications that she could be a witch. "Witch hunts grew from a stew of emotions, notably fear of female sexual power. They have no place in a modern Italian court".
"The Daily Mail has emerged as the major fall guy by
mistakenly publishing the wrong online version of the
Amanda Knox verdict. Knox won her appeal, but the paper's website initially
carried a story headlined "Guilty: Amanda Knox looks
stunned as appeal against murder conviction is
rejected.” The Mail was not the only British news outlet to make
the error. The Sun and Sky News did it too and yes -
hands up here - so did The Guardian in its live blog. It would appear that a false translation of the judge's
summing up caused the problem, leading to papers
jumping the gun. So why has the Mail suffered the greatest flak? In
time-honoured fashion, echoing the hot metal days of
Fleet Street, it prepared a story lest the verdict go the
other way. But it over-egged the pudding by inventing "colour"
that purported to reveal Knox's reaction along with the
responses of people in the court room. It even included quotes from prosecutors that were,
self-evidently, totally fake. In other words, by publishing its standby story, the
Mail exposed itself as guilty of fabrication."
Photograph taken from Social networking website; Facebook. Social networking is being used to perpetuate the male gaze/ gaze of the media, the photograph addresses the body consciousness of teenagers and plays on the idea that they could potentially carry these perceptions into adult life.
Reality Television
Appears to offer us the position as the all-seeing eye - the power of the gaze
Allows us a voyeuristic passive consumption of a
type of reality Editing means that there is no reality.
• Contestants are aware of their representation (either
as TV professionals or as people who have
watched the show)
"Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of just looking" - Victor Burgin.
Further reading...
Victor Burgin (1982) Thinking Photography
John Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing, Chapter3
Rosalind Coward (1984) The Look
Laura Mulvey (1973) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Griselda Pollock (1982) Old Mistresses
'The Look' by Roaslind Coward - How women are portrayed in contemporary culture...
‘I adore women and my eyes are in love with them’. This quote summarises what the text is about. It is showing how women are perceived in our society and the negative attitudes that surround them.
I have looked at how men are generally in control of the media. The photographic, film, television and advertising profession is largely dominated by men. Men tend to gaze at women on the streets by staring, assessing, judging and ogling at women and in contemporary culture the camera is an extension of the male gaze.
Women are always in the spotlight, they are always in the public eye on billboards. These women are beautiful and give a sense of what we ‘should’ look like. They take an overpowering position due to the large scale and stare off the image with a look of availability.
Strict control over women’s sexuality seems to be a characteristic of male-dominated societies. Marriage often operates to secure women’s labour and reproductive capacity to the advantage of men. There is a sense of duty for a woman to become married, have children and look after the family. This is quite an old fashioned attitude but is still present today. Single women at the age of thirty are generally looked at with pity, for example Bridget Jones. The last hundred years have seen less and less direct control on women’s morality and fertility. However it is interesting to look at how women have changed over the centuries in many ways including their fashion, attitudes, morals and even the roles that they play in our contemporary society.
Women are a crucial aspect towards sexual relations. Their aesthetic appeal is viewed in many ways including voyeurism, sexual peep shows and pornography. Women are exploited as objects to be viewed and appreciated in a desirable way. There is a large pressure to be compared with celebrities and the ideal form, and feeling compelled to look a certain way in order to fit in. This can then lead to unhappiness with us leading to plastic surgery, violence to our bodies and feeling insecure and uncomfortable in our skin. ‘Does my bum look big in this’ is a typical example of questioning our appearance and never quite satisfied with the outcome. Every region of the body is now exposed to this scrutiny by the ideal. There are also many non-surgical ways to make ourselves ‘feel good’ like beauticians, health spa’s, waxing, eye brow tattooing and eyelash dying, even a simple trip to the hair dresser helps to boost our physical appearance and thus our inner selves.
There is a mythological character called Narcissus who was captivated and fell in love with his own self-image, his reflection in a pool. A narcissistic identification is supposed to be like when women looking at glamorous and highly sexualised images of other women because these images are meant to function like a mirror. However the images do not give back a glow of self-love as the image in the pool did for Narcissus. The faces that look back imply a criticism. The tragedy is that young girls are subjected to being concerned with their appearance. There are several stages that they pass through including puberty which begin the notion of feeling the need to fit in and look great. They then begin to become a woman and more scrutiny of becoming completely entranced by the media and Narcissism and being controlled by an image obsessed culture.
