The Gaze & the Media notes

Investigation of the gaze through the nude in european oil painting

This does not mean that women are vain. Women watch themselves being looked at because of the many representations of women that surround us.

Women survey their own femininity

According to usage and conventions, which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at – Berger 1972

Women ‘marginalised within the masculine discourses of art history’

This marginalisation supports the ‘hegemony of men in cultural practice, in art’

Women not only marginalised but also supposed to be marginalised

Lara Croft, pleasure in her destruction (not really??)

Olympia transforms a goddess into the simple nakedness of humanity. She does not belong to the world of mythology - but stood “as the first nude to represent modern reality” because she is a prostitute rather than a goddess figure

shocked society - is adorned with the trappings of success - jewels etc, not the degraded prostitute of myth.

Cat is symbol of individual femininity and independence. Olympia ignores the flowers presented probably as a gift to her from admirer.

I feel that gaze and the way the media can shape our perspective is an important thing to understand even in films, games and animation. Women are especially subject to it as both the subject of male gaze and their apparent responsibilities to younger girls is in consistant debate.