ways of seeing/viewing

Surveyor/surveyed relationship being established between the art piece and the viewer.

The male gaze is the relationship that cultures have adopted between a subject and a surveyor. It was established in European art when the woman or subject of the painting were placed in a role only to be viewed and for the viewer to get a response from this interaction. This role was rarely reversed and the subject was usually placed in this limited role by affixing a gaze onto her. She would usually be looking at herself or looking back at the surveyor to acknowledge and reinforce the surveyor's role and her own as well. Berger writes "we join the Elders to spy on Susannah taking her bath. She looks back at us looking at her" (Berger, 50). In that example, all those involved in the painting have a role or job, but Susannah being the subject, "breaks" this rhetoric by looking back at the viewer to involve him. Her role now is now strictly as the subject of the viewer. Laura Mulvey discusses this phenomena in the world of movies as well in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". She uses Marilyn Monroe as an example of the male gaze in movies. "As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence" (Mulvey, 838). In both the art and cinema world, the male gaze gets its power and pleasure from looking and in a sense, being God of those worlds. 

The male gaze is a pervasive form of vision in our popular culture because it has been with us for so long. The western world prides itself in its influence and retains much of the old ways. Certain cultures and traditions have been carried over to the new world of the Americas and now as a major world influence, we stay instilling these values into our culture, and affecting those who are part of our world as well. Berger uses an example of how little things have changed on this respect. He asks us to compare the facial expression between two women; one from a famous painting and the other from a girlie magazine. "Is not the expression remarkably similar in each case? It is the expression of a woman responding with calculated charm to the man whom she imagines looking at her". It brings to mind that famous phrase "sex sells".  Who can argue with this phenomena? It's been working since the renaissance.

To me, the oppositional gaze is a reaction to the suppression of black society. Bell Hooks describes "being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grown-ups, looks that were seen as confrontational" (hooks, 115) and relating this to a challenge of authority. This challenge of authority would later extend to slavery, where slaves were punished for looking, as a way to strongly reinforce the absolute role the master had to his slaves. Even after slavery, the role of white supremacy was still present, and the new oppositional gaze most people developed was against the representation of blacks in society and culture. Bell hooks would talk about trying to address the oppositional gaze instead of ignoring the content and attempting to receive the superficial pleasure of what was being presented on the screens and in society. She says "I interrogated the work, cultivated a way to look past race and gender for aspects of content, form, language." Using this oppositional gaze allowed critical assessment of the content and "black women looked from a location that disrupted".

Understanding the male gaze made sense to me. I'm not a very analytical person and I only took in the superficial qualities of a painting. It makes sense to me why so many renaissance paintings have such odd looks and off direction stares. As a male, it is difficult to see the constructs that were built simply because they are designed to cater to us, and it's designed in such an effective way that no man will seem to object to it. Overall the whole thing makes sense, especially the bible explanation since most of those stories do seem one sided about who is to blame about several of man's shortcomings.

Understanding the oppositional gaze was a lot more difficult. Growing up, everything I've watched in any kind of media has not been objectionable to me and was always in some form of way, relatable to me. The idea that there was a demographic wholly ignored and this system of an opposing gaze being the consequence was a little hard to wrap my head around at first. This new insight on the subject is something that I want to be more aware of since our goal as a society should be to wholly encompass and embrace all and not shun and ignore those we can't represent or understand. Bell Hooks explains the how's and why's but for me it's still hard to envision or comprehend the extent of its effects.

Find out more about bell hooks on her wikipedia page!

Works Cited

Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books
Mulvey, Laura (1975 article)  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism
hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation, Chapter 7 The Oppositional Gaze