Lecture 5 - The Gaze and The Media

Here are my notes from the fifth lecture The Gaze and The Media on 24/11/2011.

'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

Woman carry around an idea of being looked at - not vanity, proliferation of images.

The word vanity is used as some sort of sinful regard to oneself.

image of woman on bed

lost in thought, lost in a moment of reverie and this allows us to look at her without the challenge of her looking back at us. Her body is arranged in a fairly low view point, the main focus is between her legs but thats ok because of the mirror.

babys flying image


Depict the female figure in a reclining position. She's raised her hand which partly covers her eyes. This gesture suggests either just woke from sleep or just going to sleep. This position allows us to look at her body.

image laying on back


Sophie Dahl for Opium - withdrawn because of its overt use of nudity. The naked body takes up 3/4 of the image and the rest is where we rest our gaze.

portrait version

This version of the advert was allowed and the only change really is the image has been rotated. With the vertical image there's more emphasis on the face rather than the body.

girl on bed

Woman looking in an inviting way, so is looking directly at us from the image. Welthy woman who has servants in the background. Knows we are there looking and allows us to do so.

image of woman in bed with black behind

This image was painted during modernism, so this one has a modern view. Slightly elevated on the cushions and uses hands to cover area, but position is more assertive and endorses the likeness of a wealthy woman, not a hooker. Servant offering flowers but she is turned away disregarding which suggests they are from one of her lovers.

gorialla girls poster


Do women have to be naked to get into the met. museum? Was cancelled because the fan was taken as more than just a fan and suggested other things.

girl in bar


gentleman is stood face to face with the barmaid, this is represented through the mirror. We are also in front of the barmaid also seeing what he sees. The mirror reflection is a distorted reflection as we wouldn't see it if this was real life as the reflections would be directly behind the woman. Womans gesture is approachable suggesting she is ready to wait on us.

mirror image


Reinterpreted the previous image. No hidden device. The camera is directly in the centre of the image. We are in the middle section, the woman on the left and artist on the right.

The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the street. - Coward, R. (1984)

hello boys


Wonder bra ad. The link between the text and image, either the woman is saying 'hello boys', although she isn't looking at us she is looking down at herself, at her cleavage, her own body. Imagine it huge above a street, she is looking down on the people below the billboard.

Coward also looks at voyeurism, Peeping Tom, character with the camera spies on women and lures them to his apartment then records himself killing them. Obsessive take on women. Perversion.

image of guy


Underwear advert of male in the reclining pose the same as the previous looked at ones in paintings. He has his eyes closed, so we are able to look at his body in the same way.

d&g ad


From 2007. We see here a display of male strength, sport, the male body. Obsession with the cult of health. Every single guy returns the gaze in the image.

Ideas about the gaze comes from Laura Mulby's theory of the gaze. She looks at the cinema from the 1950's. The framing focuses on the areas that allows us to look at and be pleasurable to see. The body is an object for consumption.

Freud referred to the pleasure in looking at other peoples bodies being pleasurable. Mulby suggests that the cinema allows for more closer look into the bodies that are being displayed on screen. Pleasure in looking has been split between active male looking and female role.

beheading image

There's also a tradition in art history that suggests that the woman is passive. This image reverses these roles by beheading the man.

Women are 'marginalised within the masculine discourses of art history'

'I shop, therefore I am'.

is it her that did the 2 fried eggs and a kebab sculpture? its minging either way

polaroid money


Self portrait of her 'stuffing money in herself'. The idea of the body replicates a pornographic pose. The idea of women making money from their art.

Reality Television
Appears to offer us the position as the all-seeing eye- the power of the gaze
Allows us a voyeuristic passive consumption

Turning voyeurism is turning this into an everyday activity. Contestants are performing for us to watch. Is it really real?

Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of 'just looking'.