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OUGD501 - Lecture: The Gaze and the Media

'men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at'. - Berger

Hans Memling - Vanity
He painted this painting to give him pleasure. He blames the woman for him looking at her because she is holding a mirror.


Alexandre Cabanel - Birth of Venus 1863
Woman has hand held over her eyes, looks like shes just waking or going to sleep. We're invited by the artist to gaze at the woman. 


Sophie Dahl - Opium
Photographer uses reclining pose, and it controversial when it was released as it was too sexual. 
So they turned the image around to the side when it was realeased.


Titian's Venus of Urbino, 1538
The look in woman's face is flirty and an invitation for us to look at her body.
The position of her hand is covering her vagina but can also be seen as a sexual pose.


Manet - Olympia - 1863
A more modern nude compared to the last one and there are slight differences. There's a difference in the woman's gaze, she directly addresses us. Her hand position is a more definite position over her privates stopping us from looking.


Guerilla Girls
They created this advert which went on buses.


Jeff Wall - Picture for Women 1979
She has a vacant, inactive look. In the center of the image there is a camera, and Wall is separated from the female in the far right of the image. 


Coward, R. (1984)
The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets
Woman is prevented from returning our gaze with sunglasses on, even though she is looking at the camera.

Eva Herzigova, 1994
No return of the gaze as she isn't looking at is but we can look at her body. It is iconic beacause it stopped traffic.


The problem with voyeurism on this scale is that it prevents women being seen as real people, and it objectifies women. 
'The profusion of images which characterises contemporary society could be seen as an obsessive distancing of women.. a form of voyeurism' - Coward, R.

It's not just objectification of women, it happens to men as well.
Can men be objectified as women can? If so, what frequency of objectivity is in these ads.
It is not on the same scale as women at all.

Marilyn: William Travillas dress from the Seven Year Itch 1955

Theatres and cinemas are dark rooms, where the images are supposed to seduce as and can't return our gaze, and we can look without being seen.

Active male role
Passive female role

Artemisia Gentileschi
Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1620

Pollock, G 1981
Women marginalised within the masculine discourses of art history
This marginalisation supports the hegemony

Tracey Emin Money Photo 2001
Her work couldn't be work or genuine because she was making so much money of it.

Caroline Lucas MP 
Campaigns for no more page 3. It can be left around anywhere for anyone to see. The Sun itself is available in parliamentary houses 'it does strike me as a certain irony that it is inappropriate to be wearing this t shirt in parliament.'

Criado-Perez argued that as the Equality Act 2010 commits public institutions to end discrimination. She received up to 50 threats a day via Twitter including threats of rape and death. Although she reported the abuse police lost evidence and she was forced to delete her account.
She wanted to make sure the female figure on the five pounds note is replaced with another female figure, rather than a male, as there is lots of positive images of women being removed.

Lucy-Ann Holmes founded a campaign to end page 3 and received death threats too.
'I'd say its a constant undercurrent, when women write about feminist issues or are exposed in a lot of media for speaking out about sexism they tend to get a barrage or abuse and threats' she said.

When Murray won Wimbledon newspapers said no one had won for 77 years, but in actual fact a woman won 30 years ago which is ignored completely. 

Susan Sontag 1979 on photography
To photograph something is to appropriate the thing photographed
You own it and can carry it around and have possession of it
The act of photographing is more than passive observing. Like sexual voyeurism, it is a way of at least tactily, often explicity 

Reality Televison
Appears to offer us the position as the all-seeing eye - the power of the gaze
Allows us a voyeuristic passive consumption of a type of reality
Editing means that there is no reality
Contestants are aware of their representation (either at TV professionals of as people who have watched the show)

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


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