Notes on 'The Gaze'
Daniel Chandler
Forms of gaze
In the case of recorded texts such as photographs and films (as opposed to those involving
interpersonal communication such as video-conferences), a key feature of the gaze is that
the object of the gaze is not aware of the current viewer (though they may
originally have been aware of being filmed, photographed, painted etc. and may sometimes
have been aware that strangers could subsequently gaze at their image). Viewing such recorded
images gives the viewer's gaze a voyeuristic dimension. As Jonathan Schroeder notes,
'to gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship
of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze'
(Schroeder 1998, 208).
Several key forms of gaze can be identified in photographic, filmic or televisual texts,
or in figurative graphic art. The most obvious typology is based on who is doing the
looking, of which the following are the most commonly cited:
- the spectator’s gaze: the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person (or
animal, or object) in the text;
- the intra-diegetic gaze: a gaze of one depicted person at another (or at an
animal or an object) within the world of the text (typically depicted in filmic and
televisual media by a subjective ‘point-of-view shot’);
- the direct [or extra-diegetic] address to the viewer: the gaze of a
person (or quasi-human being) depicted in the text looking ‘out of the frame’ as if at the
viewer, with associated gestures and postures (in some genres, direct address is studiously
avoided);
- the look of the camera - the way that the camera itself appears to look at the
people (or animals or objects) depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film-maker
or photographer.
In addition to the major forms of gaze listed above, we should also note several other
types of gaze which are less often mentioned:
- the gaze of a bystander - outside the world of the text, the gaze of another
individual in the viewer’s social world catching the latter in the act of viewing - this can
be highly charged, e.g. where the text is erotic (Willemen 1992);
- the averted gaze - a depicted person’s noticeable avoidance of the gaze of
another, or of the camera lens or artist (and thus of the viewer) - this may involve looking
up, looking down or looking away (Dyer 1982);
- the gaze of an audience within the text - certain kinds of popular
televisual texts (such as game shows) often include shots of an audience watching those
performing in the 'text within a text';
- the editorial gaze - 'the whole institutional process by which some portion of the
photographer's gaze is chosen for use and emphasis' (Lutz & Collins 1994, 368).
James Elkins offers ten different ways of looking at a figurative painting in a gallery
(Elkins 1996, 38-9):
- You, looking at the painting,
- figures in the painting who look out at you,
- figures in the painting who look at one another, and
- figures in the painting who look at objects or stare off into space or have their eyes
closed. In addition there is often
- the museum guard, who may be looking at the back of your head, and
- the other people in the gallery, who may be looking at you or at the painting. There are
imaginary observers, too:
- the artist, who was once looking at this painting,
- the models for the figures in the painting, who may once have seen themselves there, and
- all the other people who have seen the painting - the buyers, the museum officials, and
so forth. And finally, there are also
- people who have never seen the painting: they may know it only from reproductions... or
from descriptions.
In relation to viewer-text relations of looking, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen make a
basic distinction between an ‘offer’ and a ‘demand’:
- an indirect address which represents an offer in which the viewer is an
invisible onlooker and the depicted person is the object of the look - here those
depicted either do not know that they are being looked at (as in surveillance video), or act
as if they do not know (as in feature films, television drama and television interviews); and
- a gaze of direct address which represents a demand for the viewer (as the
object of the look) to enter into a parasocial relationship with the depicted person -
with the type of relationship indicated by a facial expression or some other means (this form
of address is the norm for television newsreaders and portraits and is common in advertisements
and posed magazine photographs).
(Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 122ff)
Some theorists make a distinction between the gaze
and the look: suggesting that the look is a perceptual mode open to all whilst
the gaze is a mode of viewing reflecting a gendered code of desire (Evans & Gamman 1995,
16). John Ellis and others relate the 'gaze' to cinema and the 'glance' to
television - associations which then seem to lead to these media being linked with stereotypical connotations of
'active' (and 'male') for film and 'passive' (and 'female') for television (Ellis 1982, 50;
Jenks 1995, 22).
Here perhaps it should be noted that even if one's primary interest is in media
texts, to confine oneself to the gaze only in relation 'textual practices' is to
ignore the importance of the reciprocal gaze in the social context of
cultural practices in general (rather than simply a textual/representational context,
where a reciprocal gaze is, of course, technically impossible).
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