User:Aayou13/Gaze

Psychoanalysis[edit]
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Lacanian's view on the gaze changes throughout the course of his work. Initially, the concept of the gaze was used by Lacanian through his psychoanalytic work on the mirror stage. The mirror stage occurs when a child encountering a mirror learns that they have an external appearance. Theoretically, this is where the child begins their entrance into culture and the world. The child enters language and culture through establishing an ideal image of themselves in the mirror. This image is someone the child can aspire to be like and work towards. The role of the ideal ego or self can also be filled by other people in their lives such as parents, siblings, teachers etc.

In his later essays however, Lacan refers to the gaze as the anxious feeling that one is being watched. More specifically, it is when the object that one is viewing is somehow looking back at the subject on its own terms. The psychological effect upon the person subjected to the gaze is a loss of autonomy upon becoming aware that they are a visible object. Lacan extrapolated that the gaze and the effects of the gaze might be produced by an inanimate object, and thus a person's awareness of any object can induce the self-awareness of also being an object in the material world of reality. The philosophic and psychologic importance of the gaze is in the meeting of the face and the gaze, because only there do people exist for one another.

Male gaze[edit]
Main article: Male gaze

The concept of the male gaze was first used by the English art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing, a series of films for the BBC aired in January 1972, and later a book, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. A pioneer of gaze theory, Berger described the difference between how men and women view/are viewed in art and in society is that men are placed into the role as the watcher and women are to be looked at. . A similar rendition of Berger's proposal of the male gaze was soon coined by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is a British film critic and feminist who used it to critique traditional media representations of female characters in cinema.

In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey discusses the association between activity and passivity to gender. Essentially, Mulvey argues that masculinity is related to the active, whereas femininity is related to the passive. Furthermore, she highlights heterosexual desire and identity and how they are related to the roles assigned to masculinity and femininity. This puts the viewer of a film into the role of the active masculine and coaxes the viewer to desire the passive feminine. This left no room for female activity and desire in the stereotypically masculine role. The film critic of Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies.Berger, Mulvey as well as Foucault also all linked the looming act of the gaze inextricably to power.

Female gaze[edit]
Main article: Female gaze

The term Female Gaze was created as a response to the proposed concept of the male gaze coined by Laura Mulvey. In particular, it is a rebellion against the viewership censored to an only masculine lens and feminine desire regardless of the viewer's gender identity or sexual orientation. In essence, the forced desire of femininity enacts in the erasure of female desire and sexuality. In Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble, she proposed the idea of the female gaze as a way in which men choose to perform their masculinity by using women as the ones who force men into self-regulation. . Film director Deborah Kampmeier rejected the idea of the female gaze in preference for the female experience. She stated, "(F)or me personally, it’s not (about) a female gaze. It’s the female experience. I don't gaze, I actually move through the world, feeling the world emotionally and sensorily and in my body."

Objectifying gaze
Main article: Objectification, Sexual objectification

The feminist Objectification theory was first proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in 1997. Objectification theory is a framework that attempts to bring to light the lived experiences of women in particular that are under the lens of sexual objectification. The theory is primarily focused through a heterosexual perspective. According to Fredrickson and Roberts, sexual objectification occurs as the experience of being treated as "as a body (or collection of body parts) valued predominantly for its use to (or consumption by) others." Stripping one of their own bodily agency and sexuality, as well as humanity.

Fredrickson and Roberts stated that sexual objectification or the objectifying gaze occurs in three arenas: Interpersonal or social encounters, visual media that depicts social encounters, and lastly visual media that depict bodies. Interpersonal and social encounters entails the everyday lives and interactions with other people. The objectifying gaze in this context comes from simply looking at a person as an object or only for sexual pleasure. The two areas in visual media depend on media portrayals of gender. Due to the heavy media centered world in western culture, individuals feed on the output of media and allow it to influence one's life, opinions, and perceptions. The two differ in how the media portrayals the different contexts in which objectification occurs. The first occurs in media outlets such as advertisements which depict social situations in itself, and the second occurs in media platforms such as social media in which bodies/body parts can be put on display. The third context also aligns the viewer with the objectifying gaze.

Objectification theory and the objectifying gaze also enables a state or trait of self objectification. Self objectification occurs when one adapts to living in a world where the objectifying gaze is constantly put on them and normalized. The individual that the objectifying gaze is applied to then begins to view themselves in the third party view of that objectifying gaze. The purpose of self objectification is a response to the anticipation to be objectified. The individual may then restrict social movement or behaviour in such a way to display themselves as desirable. This is simply a strategy used in effort to gain back some social control in response to the loss of control that comes with the sexualized or objectifying gaze. For example, a woman may portray a feminized version of herself in response to the objectifying gaze.

Although the original objectification theory mainly focuses on the implications and theories surrounding women in the spotlight of the objectifying gaze, with the use of mass media men are becoming increasingly objectified as well.