Modernity

The gaze- the look of affection, awe, wonder, or fascination.  How do artists use this in their works to draw the viewer into a dialog with the piece.

The gaze plays a central role in theories of looking and spectatorship in modernity

The Subject in Modernity

Modernity- historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment; the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism; and to the idea of controlling nature through technology science and rationalism.

Each culture has its own ideology when it comes to progress in economy, the United States views it much differently then someone in Russia or someone in China.

Marx speaking out against industrial capitalism and exploitation of and social alienation of workers.

There were major changes made in the early twentieth century, radical political and technological change began to generate significant cultural anxiety.

Spectatorship

1. The roles of the unconscious and desire in viewing practices.
2. the role of looking in the formation of the human subject as such
3. the ways that looking is always a relational activity and not simply a mental activity engaged in by someone who forms internal mental representation that stand for a passive image object "out there"

Meaning of the individual human subject is not universal but is both historically and culturally contingent.

When we describe the gaze as a field rather then an individual act of looking.

Discourse and Power

Foucault's concept of discourse is helpful to understanding how power systems work to define how things are understood and spoken about( and, by implication, represented in images) in a given society.

Discourse- usually used to talk about passages of writing or speech, the act of talking about something.

Foucault was interested in the rules and practices that produce meaningful statements and regulate what can be spoken in different historical periods

Discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something.

The relation of image and power: panopticism (everything visible in one view), power/knowledge, and biopower (A term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations).

The Gaze and the Other

The gaze helps establish relationships of power.  the act of looking is awarding more power to the person who is looking then to who is the object of the look.

All function to varying degrees to represent codes of dominance and subjection, difference and otherness.

the appropriation of the figure to fit into new contexts of today, in an ad, and also by the Guerilla Girls.

The Gaze in Psychoanalysis

There are fantasy structures that are set up when viewing a movie. The camera position to the actors and how the audience views them in the situation, this creates a relationship. 

the concept of the unconscious is crucial in the theories of cinematic spectatorship.

Gender and the Gaze

The understanding of the female nude as the project and possession by the male artist. 

• the woman is posed as objects of an active or "male" gaze.

"Rear Window" (1954)- is a movie that focuses on the gaze and how the possession of the gaze is valuable.

• when he gets caught looking he becomes vulnerable and trapped; the murder comes looking for him. Clearly, male looking is not without limitations and its consequences 

Changing Concepts of the Gaze

Changing the traditional gender codes

changing the way the masculinity is viewed in consumer culture