To what extent are theories of the Gaze relevant to 21st
century media?
For much of the past 50
years, advertisers have become dependent on the general public’s response to
sexually exaggerated advertising, and have used this to sell products that may
have no relevance to sexuality. Victor Burgin said, “Looking is not indifferent.
There can never be any question of ‘just looking’” (1982), and this may be a
valid point if the public were ‘just looking’ as an act of spontaneity, instead
of being manipulated and lured into ‘just looking’. The quote above depicts
part of Berger’s argument that from the Renaissance era of art onwards, woman
were portrayed as being “aware of being seen by a spectator” (p. 49, Ways of
Seeing, 1972). At this time, fine art maintained a concept of being seemingly
realistic and had a very tactile depiction of people and objects in oil
paintings (and later in photography). This allowed the content of the paintings
to be portrayed as ‘within touching distance’, and promoted a desire that the
general public have to possess an object, a lifestyle, and could be applied to
a woman represented in this same format. The reason for this translation
supposedly only being applicable to women lies in the general publics idea of
what this represents to a man. As Mulvey stated, “Woman, then stands in
patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic
order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic
command, by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place
as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” (Mulvey, L., Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema, 1975, p. 21). The implication that women are simply
representative of something symbolic to a man leads us to believe further in a
supposed superiority the male race have, but this is not always the case in
more modern advertising.
Berger insists that women
in art and advertising are dealt with differently than with men because “the
‘ideal’ spectator is assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed
to flatter him” (p. 64, Ways of Seeing, 1972), an idea that could be argued
otherwise since the publication of Ways of Seeing in the 1970s, as in more
recent advertising, approximately 50% of campaigns are targeted at women.
However, this poses a question of whether or not the male and female gaze hold
the same validity and effectiveness as each other, as it is seemingly debated
that women relish in being gazed upon more than men do. It is popular belief
that “in advertising males gaze, and females are gazed at” (Fowles, J., Advertising
and Popular Culture, 1996, p.204), idealising that both men and women are
effected by the Gaze used in conjunction with the female form, as women who
gaze upon the adverts that are designed for men to respond to, are invited to
identify with the person being viewed and with the opposite sex viewer.
While the term The Gaze
is mainly used in reference to mass media, the term was born in film theory, as
a device to put the viewer ‘into’ the film, as “Film is an instrument of the
male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual
fantasy from a male point of view” (Schroeder, 1998). Traditional films present
men as controlling and active, treating women as objects of desire, both in the
film and in the audience, not allowing women to be sexual or desiring objects
themselves. This genre of film shows women to be objectified in relation to
“the controlling male gaze” (Mulvey, L., Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,
1975, p. 33). Men are expected to do the looking, while women are expected to
be looked upon, as it is an unspoken cinematic ruling that popular films “are
obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego” (p. 33, Mulvey,
L.).
In her article, Mulvey
distinguishes between the voyeuristic and fetishist modes of the Gaze. Voyeuristic
involves a controlling gaze, argued to be associated with sadism. Mulvey states
that “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt – asserting control and subjecting
the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness” (p. 29), while fetishism
involves “the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure
into a fetish, making it reassuring rather than dangerous”. Mulvey goes on to
argue that this allows the physical beauty of the object or figure to become
more apparent, making the act of looking embody the erotic instinct of the
viewers.
In light of this, it is
easy to identify those ads that “appear to imply a male point of view, even
though the intended viewer is often a woman” (P. Messaris, p. 44, Visual
Persuasion: The Role Of Images In Advertising, 1997). A clear example of this
concept is the infamous 1994 Wonderbra advertisement featuring Eva Herzigova
(Fig. 1). This was originally blown up to billboard size, fitting with the idea
of Herzigova looking down, as if to the public below her. However, the stance
she is assuming allows all viewers to gaze upon her, uninterrupted, since with
her head facing downwards she can’t challenge or return their gaze. This image
supports the concept that female models in advertisements that are addressed
towards other women “treat the lens as a substitute for the eye of an imaginary
male onlooker” (Messaris, P., p 41, Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images In
Advertising, 1997). The women viewing the advert have been confronted with the
male perspective of a woman in a Wonderbra, and “it could be argued that when
women look at these ads, they are actually seeing themselves as a man might see
them”. This concept obviously works in Wonderbra’s favour, as women are led to
believe they will have the same effect over men when wearing their products,
and will become the object of their sexual desire. This validates the answer to
the question “do women necessarily take up a feminine and men a masculine
spectator position?” (Stacey, J., 1992).
An example of this method
can be seen again in Dolce & Gabbana’s 2007 magazine advertisement (Fig. 2),
featuring four men exerting some sort of power over one women. The initial
reaction to this image could be an assumption that all the men want the woman
who is wearing D&G clothing and perfume, which is an element that the
female audience will respond to. What they won’t see is that the woman in this
image is simply an object within the subjects (male) world. This image and idea
for the campaign is promoting the idea that a woman’s subconscious purpose is
to be controlled by and desirable to men, a concept that females respond to in
light of pure competition with other females, as “to be desired is perhaps the
closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal”(Berger, J., Ways of
Seeing, Part 2). It shows that being desired is more important to women that
the connotations of violence and harassment in this image.
However, while this is
the main theory that works in conjunction with the Gaze, there are many advertisements
that will objectify both this theory and the ideals that Berger has about women
and their supposed desperate need for approval. These adverts play on the
other, and opposite, main instinct of women - to be independent of men. This
Diesel advert (Fig. 3) signifies what could be referred to as the female gaze.
It is a clear representation of male objectification, aimed to sell the brand
to women. The man in the image is vulnerable and exposed to the uninhibited
gaze of the female viewer, but on top of this the female is empowered and
dominant. In this image, the gaze is challenged, perhaps because it is aimed at
women, at the advertisers could be luring the female audience in with the gaze,
to allow them to find some common ground or something mutual between these two
women. The man himself has no eye contact with the camera and doesn’t even have
his eyes open, allowing the viewers to fully observe his humiliation. This
example could pose an argument against the theory that “pleasure in looking has
been split between active/male and passive/female” (Mulvey, L., 1992).
There are substantially
fewer advertisements with this theme of male objectification than there are of
female, but this could be due to uncomfortable reactions to it. The theme of the
female gaze in advertising is much less subtle than that of the male gaze, a
valid example being this print advertisement for Arden B (Fig. 4). In this
image the female figure is the personification of power, while the male appears
weak and helpless, seemingly controlled by the female’s stare. His averted gaze
implies that he has accepted his role as the subject, which combined with his
nakedness hints at quite a pathetic figure. This set up and imagery would not
be considered acceptable had the sexes switched positions. There would have
been more of a feminist outcry had the woman been in this pathetic stance, but
it is not considered quite as outrageous for a man to be stripped of his power.
This concept goes back to some of Mulvey’s points, but could easily reverse
them, since she stated “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt – asserting control
and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness” (p. 29,
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema) in reference to the female audience
feeling pleasure through guilt, it could be argued in this image that the
guilty male is the one being punished, whether theoretically or as a metaphor
for the entire male population.
This ad could be
considered subtly supportive of much of what Berger says. While in theory,
everything in this image has been posed to represent the opposite, the reaction
to it and discomfort that it has on it’s viewers is still fully representative
of Berger’s point that “the cultural presence of the woman is still very much
different to that of the man” (Ways of Seeing 1972, Part 2). Berger goes on to
say that “a mans presence in the world is all about potency and is related to
what he can do, power and ability” while “a woman’s presence is always related
to itself and she does not represent potential but only herself and what can or
cannot be done to her, not by her.
In spite of whether or
not these points are applicable to the images discussed, these are a collection
of very aged opinions, given that Ways of Seeing was written and spoken about
over 40 years ago. While these theories may still be legitimately applied to
plenty of modern day images (like many other theories), advertising fifty years
ago would never step as carefully around the subject. A perfect illustration of
the change in advertising in the past century is the Tipalet cigarettes from
the 1950s (Fig 5), in which the image of a man smoking in front of a woman is
accompanied by the sentence ‘blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere’.
This statement implies that women crave being objectified and will have respect
for a man who treats her with inferiority. These more dated advertisements may
be in conjunction with Berger’s claim that “to be born a woman has to be born,
within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men” (Ways of
Seeing, Part 4), but more recent advertising directed at women has tried to go
against this.
Nonetheless, while
advertising aimed at a female audience may have come on leaps and bounds since
the 1950s, much of the male orientated advertising has barely changed. It can
still be seen in television ads like the Lynx Billions advert from 2006,
featuring armies of bikini clad women trekking to reach a man that is spraying
himself with the deodorant, convincing the male market that use of their
product will result in a compulsive attraction women will have towards them. It
shows women to be easily manipulated by men, supporting that this would not be
the case had the sexes been reversed or the same, as “the look must be
motivated, it’s erotic component repressed” (Neale, S., 1992) insinuating that
this is how the world is because women allow themselves to be the repressive
and inferior figure.
However, looking further
at Mulvey’s assumption that the heroine in cinema and advertising “is counted
for what she provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, of rather
the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for
her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has no importance”,
she implies that the woman has two levels of functionality; as an erotic object
for the characters set up on the screen or in the advertisement; or as an
erotic object for the viewer or spectator in the audience, created by a tension
that is shifted to them via the screen or print. While this may have been the
case in 1975 when Mulvey made this statement, advertising has made much
progression in terms of those ads aimed at women, for women. It has become more
obvious to advertisers that women decipher and assimilate more information from
a commercial than men do, and that hey usually need to see an advert more times
to be convinced by the product than a man does. With this in mind, advertising
aimed at women have incorporated more soothing and gentle themes, knowing that
a woman will be watching it several times and ensuring that they don’t include
music or images that could be interpreted as an irritant.
An interesting example
is the image shown as Fig. 6, an advert for Perrier sparkling water. A woman
who alights upon the image will be confronted with the posterior of another
woman, something they may be irritated, offended or discomforted by,
potentially immediately turning them off the brand, whereas it is likely that a
man will be convinced by the brand the very first time they see this image. It
is assumed that these feelings may be rooted in “women’s experience of
sexuality rarely straying far from ideologies and feelings about self-image”
(Coward, R., ‘The Look’, page. 33) and the idea that there is “a preoccupation
with the visual image – of self and others - and a concomitant anxiety about
how these images measure up to a socially prescribed ideal”. At the opposite
end of the scale, Fig. 7 shows an advertisement for Vaseline moisturiser, which
also exhibits a nude female form but a totally unsexualised representation of
it. The simplicity of the composition leaves no need for a lot of accompanying
text explaining the product, and this allows for the product to settle into the
viewers mind without them being plagued by any irritating associations.
As much as feminists of
the world argue equality, advertising started as a mans world and “men also
control the visual media. The film and television industries are dominated by
men, as is the advertising industry” (Coward, R., ‘The Look’, page. 33). While
much of visual media has changed over the past few decades, this is a concept
that hasn’t been erased because of the responses it spurs. However, the idea
that “the Look confers power; women’s inability to return such a critical and
aggressive look is a sign of subordination, of being recipients of another’s
assessment” is one that over time has changed. While in advertisements aimed at
men, we are still faced with the inferior female form, female orientated
advertising as started to incorporate similar theories over men, which in some
cases are so over the top and exaggerated, that were the roles reversed,
advertisers would be faced with a feminist outcry. While often it is argued
that women have to work harder to be seen as equal to men, this has stemmed
from the concept of women “becoming the
sex, the sex differentiated from the norm which is masculine. Women are the
sex which is constantly questioned, explained, defined”. In many cases,
advertisers have picked up on this and used it as a vice, as even if they are
“aware of being seen by a spectator” (Berger, J, 1972); there is an argument that
this is powerful position for the women. 21st Century advertisers
have realised that “creating anxiety to the effect that, unless we measure up,
we will not be loved” (Coward, R.), leaves much of the world with a desperate
need for reassurance, therefore giving them the scope to impose some forced
Narcissism over both the male and female race, and in theory encouraging both
to change to fit the over sexualised ideal that the other sex has of them. Theories
of The Gaze will always be relevant and applicable to modern day advertising,
but much of the effectiveness of it lies in who is being assigned the powerful
position, the spectators or the participant.
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References:
Bugin, V., (1982), Think Photography (Communications and
Culture), Palgrave Macmillan
Berger, J., (1972), Ways of Seeing, Penguin Classics
Mulvey, L., (1975), Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,
Grin Verlag
Fowles, J., (1996) Advertising and Popular Culture (A Feminist
Perspective on Communication), Sage Publications
Chandler, D., (2000) Notes on ‘The Gaze’, http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze02.html, last modified 07/06/2000
Messaris, P., (1997) Visual Persuasion: The Role Of Images In
Advertising, Sage Publications
Berger, J., (1972), Ways of Seeing Part 3,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yGca39v9CE
Neale, S., (1992), Masculinity as Spectacle, https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9id-Rdi1rJqMVVOTElWc01BajA/edit
Coward, R., (2000) ‘The
Look’ in Thomas, J. Reading Images,
Palgrave Macmillan, pages 33-39
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