The male gaze as we discuss in class and in the readings describes ways
how men look at women from somewhat of a pervasive perspective. In one of the
readings, Berger said “Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can
be determine how she will be treated.” (Berger 46) Women are being looked at or
gaze in an objective way, like an object.
Berger also said “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women
watch themselves being looked at. This
determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relations
of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed
female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object
of vision: a sight.” (Berger 47)
This male gaze, surveying
women as an object, this male spectator - owner things, examples can be found in
many of the Renaissance art works, particularly
portraits and nudes of females.
These art works are mostly drawn by male artists either for their own
pleasure or were commissioned by male to draw the women of their desire for
them to gaze, to survey, and to own. Berger said the “you painted a naked woman
because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you call
the painting vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had
depicted for your own pleasure.” (Berger 51)
In today’s mass media, male
gaze theme can be found in many forms of medium from scenes in motions picture,
M for mature rating video games, modern nude art works, magazines, printed
material, comics and animation, and in commercial advertising. Because the
targeted viewer and consumers are predominately males ages 18 to 34, and sex,
and sexuality sells. Like those Calvin
Klein billboard ads where the model are wearing only their Calvins.
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| Male gaze, spectator Calvin Klein Ad |
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| Male gazing the oppositional gaze Chanel Ad |
The oppositional gaze is somewhat of the
consequence or a response when one challenges or appears to defy a male gaze or
of a person in authority. In the reading
“The Oppositional Gaze, Hooks recalled when she was growing up the act of the
oppositional gaze towards a grown up “looks that were seen as confrontational,
as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority…Imagine the terror felt by
the child who has come to understand through repeated punishments that one’s
gaze can be dangerous.” (Hooks 115)
Hooks mentioned in her
essay the first time she read about the oppositional gaze was “in history class
that white slave-owners (men, women, and children) punished enslaved black
people for looking, I wondered how this traumatic relationship to the gaze had
informed black parenting and black spectatorship.” (Hooks 115) But then Hooks goes on saying “the child who
has learned to so well to look the other way when necessary. Yet, when
punished, the child is told by parents, “Look at me when I talk to you.” Only,
the child is afraid to look. Afraid to
look, but fascinated by the gaze. There is power in looking.” (Hooks 115)
Hooks feel that this
oppositional gaze can be powerful as well. Hooks mentioned when she “returned
to films as a young woman, after a long period of silence, [she] had developed
on oppositional gaze. Not only would [she] not be hurt by the absence of black
female presence, or the insertion of violating representation, I interrogated the
work, cultivated a way to look past race, and gender for aspects of content,
form, language.” (Hooks 122)
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| The oppositional gaze from daughter and mother at Harrod's of London. Photo by Joe Chan 1980 |
Growing up in a Chinese
household in Hong Kong, I can relate to Hook’s experience. The Chinese in Hong Kong were not
slaves but we were colonized and assimilated to the British culture treated as second
and third class citizens in your own land. In the Chinese culture, children,
servants, or lower subjects were not allow to look up at their parents, their
superiors and patriarchy plays a major in this gaze pissing contest. As far as
I can recollect, I was defiant when I was younger those oppositional gaze costs
me, and the beat escalated. But it also taught me greater self-control and
better self-discipline, I can relate to Hook’s feeling that the oppositional
gaze can be powerful from her perspective.
Ethnic Make Up
Berger, John. Ways
of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.
Hooks, Bell. In
Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston:
South End Press, 1992
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