The Gaze and Identity

Workshop III, OUCA501
The Gaze
The gaze is a term which according to Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytical theory 'is the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed.' It is also used to refer to the way in which the audience looks at images of people in many different mediums such as ads. It can also refer to the gaze of the subject of the image.

Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist who used Freudian's psychoanalytic theories to create a study called 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', she notes in this essay that Freud refereed to scopophilia- the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies as objects. She believes that hollywood films are made from the 'male gaze' point of view, representations of women, sex and lifestyles are from the male point of view, man is the 'bearer of the look', many films are followed from the males narrative who is usually the 'hero' of the story.

Scopophilia is used frequently within advertising, it puts the spectator in a voyeuristic position, and when the subject of the image has their eyes closed or covered its as if they don't know you are watching them which makes the image more appealing, especially when the gaze is provocative, as in this American Apparel ad. When the eyes are open but looking away can possibly show that the subject is feeling modest.

However American Apparel also uses a gaze called 'the extra-diagetic gaze' which is a direct gaze, where the subject of the image is staring out they frame, as if at the viewer. This gaze challenges and invites the viewer to look at the subject.

A gaze that is frequently used in contemporary advertising as a selling technique is the 'spectators gaze', which is where the subject of the image is looking at the product within the image how the client wants the customers to look at their product, drawing the viewers attention to the image.

Another gaze is the intra-diegetic gaze, this is where one subject gazes upon the main subject in an image, this helps draw attention to the subject. Usually found in fashion ads to draw attention to products and also makes the viewer feel that if they were to buy the clothes in the ad and wear them they would be the centre of attention. Here Dolce and Gabbana use this gaze in their print ad as they do in many of their campaigns. The first image shows the female subject being in a position of control however the second image shows the female subject in a passive position. As Mulvey states within society the 'pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female'. So maybe the second image is advertising male clothes so wanting to appeal to a male target audience or maybe it is advertising to women and is wanting to portray a feeling of submissive seduction.

These different gazes within visual culture can show us a projected ego that can distort our own sense of ego as it is showing us something we feel is better than ourselves and therefore aspire to be. These gazes can also bring different forms of powers onto the viewer through apparently minor changes within the images art direction.

http://www.americanapparel.net/advertising/


Identitiy
Mulvey's issue of the gaze can relate to identity theories, as the viewer may identify with the photographer/artist or the subject. This can result is our identities being moulded due to modern societies offer a range of social roles, allowing us to choose who we wish or think we are. Michel Foucault is a post modern philosopher who holds this anti-essentialist view, he believes our identities are created due to the discourses available to us such as age, gender, class or nationality. This can be seen when the viewer identifies with the subject in an image, as usually women identify with women such as models and men identify with men such as heroes of films. Foucaults views are similar to Baumans views, who believes that our identities are liquid, in a continual transformation. 

When it comes to brand identities, Baumans theory is very relevant as they must keep up to ever changing medias and technologies. According to Foucault discourses cause identities to develop so when this is applied to brand identities the discourses are the target audience, brand smust mould themselves to suit and appeal to the target audience.

Douglas Kellner believes there are three historical phases of identity (1992), 1) Pre modern identity where personal identity is stable, 2) Modern identity where modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles so we can start ‘choosing’ your identity rather than simply being born into it so people begin to ‘worry’ about their identity, 3)
Post-modern identity where we have a ‘fragmented ‘self’ where our identity is constructed.

Brands are becoming more and more


Kellner, D. (Author) Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Post-modern (1992) Routledge, England.

Bauman, Z. (Author) Identity (2004)

Anon (N.D) Micheal Foucalt [Online] http://www.michel-foucault.com/ 

Pinker, S. (Author) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature(2003) Penguin Books, England.

Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation

Workshop II, OUCA501
Key points from readings.

Fowler on 3rd layer and virtual experience new media can add to campaigns (benefits)

Implications of B conclusions, art direction and copy writing, reaching target audiences?

The Simulacrum and Simulation


Jean Baudrillard states that the border between art and reality has disappeared and has fallen into universal simulacrum. By this he means that our society relies so much on signs and models that the 'real world' no longer matters as to us the 'real world' is just an imitation of the model, so signs and their meanings break down. This is an extreme postmodernism view upon our culture. Baudrillard believes that we have now reached a state of hyper reality where images breed incestuously with each other, therefore losing all reality and meaning. This happens in 4 stages; 1) The image is a reflection of a basic reality, 2) It then masks and perverts a basic reality, 3) It marks the absence of a basic reality, 4) It bears no relation to any reality- it is its own pure simulacrum.Media (film, internet, ads) are therefore not trying to relay information to us but reflect ourselves to us so we see our whorl through the images the media shows us. We no longer want commodities due to our needs but due to our desires that are defined by the media itself so we are not in touch with our on realities or the real world.


- The Define Irreference of Images

An imitation is a deception, intended to disguise the fact that it isn’t real. A simulation has aspects of the real. So, for example, someone who feigns illness is has no symptoms, whereas someone with psychosomatic illness actually experiences symptoms of the “real” illness.An icon isn’t just a symbolic representation of the real; it’s a simulation. The sacred image is a “visible theology,”instead of pointing beyond itself to the fullness of the real, itself became the focus of attention as the repository of holiness. The simulacra can become real and become a model for the real, blurring the lines between what is true and what is not. Baudrillard uses Disneyland as an example of a simulation, as disneyland becomes an escape from the real world, but it as a hyperreal illusion based upon the real world. 


- Hypermarket and Hypercommodity

Baudrillard sees all messages in media to be meaningless and have no depth, “Objects are no longer commodities: they are no longer even signs whose meaning and message one could decipher…all the messages in the media function in a similar fashion:…referendum, perpetual test, circular response, verification of the code.”He sees the Hypermarket as a huge factory or "...the model of all future forms of controlled socialization: retotalization in a homogeneous space-time of all the dispersed functions of the body and social life (work, leisure, food, hygiene, transportation, media, culture)…” Commodities have lost all meaning and function and are now apart of the hypermarket.

- Absolute Advertising, Ground Zero Advertising

All modes of expression are being absorbed into that of advertising, as advertising is superficial so "all original cultural forms, all determined languages are absorbed in advertising because it has no depth, it is instantaneous and instantly forgotten.” It seems that Baudrillard believes advertising is not effective however he states "It is not that people no longer believe in it or that they have accepted it as a routine. It is that if its fascination once lay in its power to simplify all languages, today this power is stolen from it by another type of language that is even more simplified and thus more fictional: the language of computer science." Therefore the excitement advertising brought has been displaced onto computers.However he still believes advertisement has the capacity to influence despite its lack of meaning as it has imposed itself into our society and he refers to us as a "bewildered audience".

He also states that due to advertising has converged with propaganda (due to such events like the crash of 1929) which has established a relationship between the economical and the political and also the social. He argues that "...there is a demand of advertising in and of itself, and that thus the question "believing" in it or not is no longer even posed…" and that advertising "…historical necessity has found itself absorbed by the pure and simple  demand for the social…the social has lost precisely  this power of illusion, it has fallen into the register of supply and demand…"

Baudrillard, J. (1981) Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

PLATO: The simile of the cave.

Platos Cave is used as a simile to compare the lack of education and the "ignorance of our human condition". It is written as a conversation between Plato's brother and Plato's mentor. In the simile there are prisoners held in a cave only able to see shadows from men with props and only able to hear the odd conversation. But if the shadows the prisoners can see are the only things they can see, is that the whole and only truth?

If one was to be freed and reveal the truth of what they can see, would they believe him? It would take time to adjust and accept the new truth, to change his beliefs. Once he had accepted this new truth and were to return to the cave and tell others that life as they know it is a lie, that the things they know were not true they had been manipulated. Would they believe him?

Plato compares the freed prisoner to a philosopher with a deeper understanding of a subject, with a truer understanding of reality. Plato questions whether the prisoner would be a leader amongst the other prisoners when he returns, but due to his new knowledge that the other prisoners believe to be a lie he would be seen as corrupted by this other world he had been to.

Nor the freed prisoner or the other prisoners could convince one an other that the world either of them know if truer than the other world as it is subjective to the person holding the knowledge. The only way this could be resolved is if there was an understanding form both points of view, acquiring new knowledge and never knowing the new knowledge, however this is not possible therefor there will be a continuous conflict.

Platos simile of the cave can be seen in a way within our society. Information is given to us form education to politics to the media but is this the whole and true truth or is this a screened and manipulated truth, that when questioned is shot down due to the lack of understanding from both views.