Thursday 31 March 2011

Michel Foucault and Laura Mulvey


Foucault makes the argument that we live in a society of “surveillance” This is to say that our society is based on amalgamation of “forces and bodies” all of which act to create an individual.
The Panopticon focused on the remaking of people and through self monitoring believing that one is being constantly watched. This worry shapes who the individual becomes in society. A society in which, due to the possibility of constant surveillance, individuals would start disciplining themselves.
Mulvey argues that visual pleasure is dominated by the male gaze and that female viewers learn to see through male’s eyes. Women are seen as objects of sexual desire. Men are associated with voyeurism, control and authority.
In my study voyeurism benefits the watcher whilst the watched is unaware of the intrusion. The watcher has the control, the power. The question is, are we the voyeurs or are we just curious about what we see?  When Gary Winogrand snapped a kissing couple in New York in 1969, he was echoing Robert Doisneau's famous shot of a "spontaneous" lovers' kiss in Paris in 1950. But there's an onlooker in the image as well, a girl staring at the camera as if to challenge its presumption; the woman being kissed is staring, too; everyone knows what's going on (whereas Doisneau's couple are professional models pretending not to know. Modern surveillance techniques looks like science fiction. But there's nothing new about the desire to watch someone without them knowing – and nothing unnatural about them being furious if they find out.


1 comment:

  1. "But there's nothing new about the desire to watch someone without them knowing – and nothing unnatural about them being furious if they find out."

    And even Laura Mulvey isn't quite immune from the perils of (symbolic) voyeurism, ever since the Laura Mulvey Monument was finally installed (after many delays) on the front quad of Exeter College, Oxford, directly across Turf Street from the Bodleian Library.

    http://inmemoriamlauramulvey.blogspot.com/

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