The Gaze.

‘The gaze’ (sometimes called ‘the look’) is a technical term used in film theory in the 1970s but now, it is more broadly used by media theorists to refer both to the ways in which viewers look at images of people in any visual medium and to the gaze of those depicted in visual texts.

Mutual gaze is now possible in forms of personal communication other than direct face-to-face interaction. In the case of mass media texts, an exchange of gazes through the textual frame is of course not possible - the viewer can look at those depicted in the text and cannot be seen by them - giving the viewing of all mass media texts and ‘realistic’ figurative art a voyeuristic aspect. The impossibility of mutual gaze between viewers and those depicted in media texts unfortunately means that much of the research by social psychologists which relates to the human gaze tends to be of limited relevance to media theorists. 

Forms of gaze

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, or painted). 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'.

Several key forms of gaze can be identified in photographic, filmic or televisual texts, or in metaphorical graphic art. These are as such:

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;

The direct [or extra-diegetic] address to the viewer: the gaze of a person depicted in the text looking ‘out of the frame’ as if at the viewer, with associated gestures and postures;

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.

Some theorists make a distinction between the gaze and the look: suggesting that the look is a perceptual mode available to all whilst the gaze is a mode of viewing reflecting a gendered code of desire (Evans & Gamman). 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' ('male') for film and 'passive' ('female') for television.

Direction of gaze

It is useful to note how directly a depicted person gazes out of the frame. A number of authors have explored this issue in relation to advertisements in particular.

In his study of women’s magazine advertisements, Trevor Millum distinguished between these forms of attention:

    attention directed towards other people;

    attention directed to an object;

    attention directed to oneself;

    attention directed to the reader/camera;

In conventional narrative films, actors only very rarely gaze directly at the camera lens. Paul Messaris notes a common assumption that a direct gaze at the camera lens by a depicted person may remind viewers of their position as spectators, but that where such shots are subjective point-of-view shots within a narrative this effect is invalid (Messaris). 

In studying social interaction, Michael Watson (1970) found cultural variability in the intensity of gaze. He distinguished between three forms of gaze:

    sharp: focusing on the other person's eyes;

    clear: focusing about the other person's head and face;

    peripheral: having the other person within the field of vision, but not focusing on his head or face. 

Male gaze

Before talking about the male gaze, it is first important to introduce its parent concept: the gaze. According to Wikipedia the gaze is a concept used for “analysing visual culture… that deals with how an audience views the people presented.” The types of gaze are primarily categorized by who is doing the looking.

The term 'the male gaze' has become something of a feminist cliché for referring to the voyeuristic way in which men look at women.

While the ideas behind the concept were present in earlier uses of the gaze, the introduction of the term “the male gaze” can be drawn back to Laura Mulvey and her theory. In it, Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors of gaze because the control of the camera (and thus the gaze) comes from factors such as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. 

The male gaze in advertising is actually a fairly well-studied topic. This is because, more than just being an object of a gaze, the woman in the advertisement becomes what is being bought and sold. In this way, the male gaze enables women to be a commodity that helps the products to get sold. Even advertising aimed at women is not excused.

As feminist popular culture critics emerge, so does the use of the term. 

If you look at the image, you can see that the image being sold to men is that of an attractive woman (they are encouraged to look at her in the same way the man on the picture is) while the image being sold to women is that if they buy the product that they, too, can be the recipients of male attention. Thus the image being sold, for both men and women, quite literally becomes that of the male gaze. The way in which the female is staring directly at the lens, makes the viewer think as if they are getting looked at.

 

By doing a lot of research on The Gaze theory, I am able to feel more confident in order to make the poster/magazine cover look qualified with my group because we will know what has to be done to achieve that particular outcome we want. Because the genre is going to be ‘crime & gangster’ we want our actor(s) to strike a cunning pose in order to relate it to the theme of the genre. We don’t want our actor(s) to look happy or vulnerable as we want him/them to come across as tough, ferocious and unmanageable.