Gaze

For other uses, see Gaze (disambiguation).

The 'Gaze' is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques

Lacan to describe a condition where the mature autonomous subject observes
"the observation of himself" in a mirror. The psychological effect, Lacan
argues, is that the subject's autonomy is brought into question by the
projection of her 'identity' on to an exterior object. "tat tvam asi" (that
which you are) This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage,
where in childhood, conceives the formation of external identities, (Lacan
posits a mirror but any object will do) Lacan suggests that the effect 'Gaze'
of the mirror can similarly be produced by any conceivable object, i e. A
chair or a television screen. The idea that a chair or a television screen can
stare back at one is not read literally by Lacan or his adherents and this
misconception is popularly stated by his detractors to attempt discredit him.

Michel Foucault also had a distinct conception of the gaze medical gaze in
his social theories, although the common usage of the term is of the
Lacanian one.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Conjurer c. early 1500s, Musée Municipal in St.-Germain-
en-Laye. A detail from the painting by Hieronymus Bosch

In cinema theory, Laura Mulvey identifies the Male Gaze, in sympathy with
the Lacanian statement that "Woman is a symptom of man." what this
means is that femininity is a social construct, and that the feminine object
the object petit a, or the object of desire, is what constitutes the male lack,
and thus his positive identity.
Bracha Ettinger criticizes this notion of the male gaze by her proposition of
a Matrixial Gaze. [1]
Here there is no more question of positing a subject
versus an object, neither a question of two figures looking at each other and
effectively constituting a double gaze. The matrixial gaze is not operative
where a "Male Gaze" is placed opposite to a "Female Gaze" and where both
positive entities constitute each other from a lack (such an umbrella concept
of the gaze would precisely be what scholars such as Slavoj Žižek claim is
the Lacanian definition of "The Gaze.") Ettinger's proposal doesn't concern a
subject and its object, existing or lacking. Rather, it concerns "trans-
subjectivity" and shareability on a partial level, and it is based on her claim
concerning a feminine-matrixial difference that escapes the phallic opposition
of masculine/feminine and is produced in a process of co-emergence.
Ettinger works from the very late Lacan, yet, from the angle she brings, it is
the structure of the Lacanian subject itself that is deconstructed to a certain
extent, and another kind of feminine dimension appears, with its hybrid and
floating matrixial gaze. [2]

Contents:
1. History of the Concept
2. Definitions of the Gaze in Cinematic Theory
3. See also
4. References
5. Sources
6. External links

1. History of the Concept

Numerous existentialists and phenomenologists have addressed the concept

of "Gaze" beginning with Sartre. Foucault elaborated on the concept of the
Gaze to illustrate a particular dynamic in power relations and disciplinary
mechanisms in his Discipline and Punish

2. Definitions of the Gaze in Cinematic Theory

Théodore Géricault's Portrait of a Kleptomaniac

The gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer):

 • The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text, i.e. the
reader(s) of the text.
• The Intra-diegetic gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or
another character in the text.

• The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses

(looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in
cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall, the viewer.

• The camera's gaze: is the film director's gaze.

• The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its

cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or
object in the text.

Theorists Günther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen posit that the gaze is a
relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the
spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is
unaware of being viewed; the direct gaze is the subject's demand to be
viewed.

2. 1. The Male Gaze and Feminist theory

In the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey

introduced the concept of The Male Gaze as a feature of power asymmetry.
Theoretically, the male gaze has much influenced feminist film theory and
communications media studies.

In film, the male gaze [3]

occurs when the audience is put into the
perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a
woman's body, for instance. Laura Mulvey argues that the male gaze takes
precedence over the female gaze. This can be reinterpreted as that the
subjective male construction of feminine identity has too much prevalence
over the subjective female construction of male identities. [4]

[citation needed]
The theory suggests that male gaze denies women human agency,
relegating them to the status of objects, hence, the woman reader and the
woman viewer must experience the text's narrative secondarily, by
identifying with a man's perspective.

2. 2. Responses to the "Male Gaze"

In feminist theory, the Male Gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power

relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed, i.e. man imposes
his unwanted (objectifying) gaze upon woman. Second Wave feminists argue
that whether or not women welcome the gaze, they might merely be
conforming to the hegemonic norms established to benefit the interests of
men — thus underscoring the power of the male gaze to reduce a person
(man or woman) to an object (see also exhibitionism).

The existence of an analogous Female Gaze [5] [6] [7] [8]

arises when the Male
Gaze is considered. Mulvey, coiner of the phrase male gaze, argues that "the
male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is
reluctant to gaze…" Describing Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys,
Nalini Paul indicates that the Antoinette character gazes at Rochester,
placing a garland upon him, making him appear heroic: "Rochester does not
feel comfortable with having this role enforced upon him; thus, he rejects it
by removing the garland, and crushing the flowers".

From the male perspective, man possesses a gaze because he is a man,

whereas, a woman has a gaze only when she assumes the male gazer role,
when she objectifies others by gazing at them like a man. Eva-Maria
Jacobsson supports Paul's description of the "female gaze" as "a mere cross-
identification with masculinity", yet evidence of women's objectification of
men — the discrete existence of a Female Gaze — is in the "boy toy"
adverts published in teen magazines, despite Mulvey's contention that The
Gaze is property of one gender. Moreover, in power relationships, the gazer
can direct his or her gaze to members of his or her gender, for asexual
reasons, such as comparing the gazer's body image and clothing to those of
the gazed at man or woman.

2. 3. The Gaze and psychoanalysis

Jacques Lacan argued that the concept of the gaze is important in his
"mirror stage" of infantile psychological development; children gaze at a
mirror image of themselves (a twin sibling might function as the mirror-
image), and use that image to co-ordinate their physical movements. He
linked the concept of the gaze to the development of individual human
agency. To that end, he transformed the gaze to a dialectic, between the
Ideal-Ego and the Ego-Ideal. The ideal-ego is the imagined self-identification
image — whom the person imagines him- or herself to be or aspires to be;
whilst the ego-ideal is the imaginary gaze of another person gazing upon the
ideal-ego, e.g. a rock star (an Ideal-ego) secretly hoping his/her school-era
bully-tormentor (Ego-ideal) is now aware of his/her (the rock star)
subsequent success and fame, since school times.

Lacan further developed his concept of the gaze, saying that it does not
belong to the subject but, rather, to the object of the gaze. In Seminar One,
Lacan told the audience: "I can feel myself under the gaze of someone
whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for
something to signify to me that there may be others there. This window, if
it gets a bit dark, and if I have reasons for thinking that there is someone
behind it, is straight-away a gaze". (Lacan, 1988, p. 215) The practical
implications of this statement reach far, inasmuch as it can be interpreted to
the effect that perception supersedes actuality, that schism is actuality, that
actuality is false, and that the interlocutor is the only real.

3. See also

• Evil eye
• Eye contact

• Eye tracker

• Scopophilia

• The Look

4. References

1. Bracha Ettinger, The Matrixial Gaze. University of Leeds, 1995

2. Bracha Ettinger, "The With-in-Visible Screen." In: Catherine de
Zegher (ed.), Inside the Visible, MIT Press, Boston, 1996.

3. This is Not Sex: A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion

Advertising, and the Pose, web essay about the male gaze in
advertising

4. Male Gaze in TV and film

5. Modules on Lacan, On the Gaze

6. A Female Gaze?PDF (96.7 KiB)

7. The Female Gaze gla.ac.uk

 8. Salon Life, The Female Gaze

5. Sources

• Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine, Women Artists at the

Millennium. MIT Press, October Books, 2006.
• Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze." Introductory Guide
to Critical Theory - see External links.

• Ettinger, Bracha, "The Matrixial Gaze" (1995), reprinted as Ch. 1 in:

The Matrixial Borderspace. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

• Florence, Penny and Pollock, Griselda, Looking back to the Future. G

& B Arts, 2001.

• Jacobsson, Eva-Maria: A Female Gaze? (1999) - see External links

• Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen: Reading Images: The Grammar
of Visual Design. (1996)

• Lacan, Jacques: Seminar One: Freud's Papers On Technique (1988)

• Lacan, Jacques:Seminar Eleven: The Four Fundamental Concepts of

Psychoanalysis. NY & London, W.W. Norton and Co., 1978.

• Lutz, Catherine & Jane Collins: The Photograph as an Intersection of

Gazes: The Example of National Geographic. (1994)

• Mulvey, Laura: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975, 1992)

• Pollock, Griselda (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and the Image. Blackwell,

2006

• Notes on The Gaze (1998) - see External links.

 • Paul, Nalini: The Female Gaze - see External links

• Schroeder, Jonathan E: Consuming Representation: A Visual

Approach to Consumer Research SSRN.com

• Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 21, Number 1, 2004.

• de Zegher, Catherine, Inside the Visible. MIT Press, 1996.

6. External links

• Notes on The Gaze

• Robert Doisneau, Un regard Oblique, 1948 - another effective
photograph illustrating gaze

• The Male Gaze, with photographs of several advertisements.

• Aux Fenêtres de l'âme (Windows of the Soul), a Ron Padova film