viz. - male gaze

Scopophilia in A Game of Thrones

clsloan — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 14:05:06 +0000

Image Credit: Fanpop.com

An incessant struggle for dominance. A never-ending vigil against opposition. A fierce match of razor-sharp wits. A game, one might say, of thrones. Wait, no. I meant a game of feminism.

Bloggers, journalists and internet activists galore have flocked to bloody forum battlefields contesting sexism, feminism and gender politics in HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire . The show, preparing to air its fourth season in April, has attracted supporters who argue that the series sympathetically illustrates the struggles of politically vulnerable women, along with others who suggest that HBO has even made feminist-friendly improvements to Martin's sometimes questionable vision. In the other camp, opposition asserts point-blank that the show treats women as sex objects and glorifies sexual abuse. One clever response to HBO's obsession with softcore pornography has cataloged 10 Unnecessary Sex Scenesand explores their irrelevance to character development and plot progression.

The sides seem to skirmish on two main fronts: 1) can the female protagonists be classified as “feminist” depictions of women? and 2) can the show's dependence on excessive sex be reconciled to a “feminist” agenda? I put the term “feminism” in quotation marks and therefore under careful scrutiny here since the definition can be quite slippery. For example, if one critic defines a “feminist” character portrayal as reliant on agency/ accessibility to power/ an erasure of gender politics, she might have a tough time coming to terms with the split between the masculine and feminine spheres in A Song of Ice and Fire . Another critic, however, posits that “feminist” depictions involve illustrating how marginalized groups respond to hegemony and manipulate systems of power. The conversations about whether or not Arya, Sansa, Cat e lyn, Daenerys, Brienne and Cersei help or hinder the feminist thrust of the series are many and multifaceted. When it comes to what viewers of the show actually see of women's bodies, the argument that HBO has somehow broken the feminist mold becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain.

Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” describes the general pervasiveness of a gendered scopophilia in films. Mulvey explains ho w camera angles ca n encourage the male-coded viewer to v oyeuristically enjoy passive, often female, figures on the screen . The “male gaze” has been the fruitful topic of debate in several disciplines. Scholars have asked whether or not the gender coding might be too simplistic and challenged Mulvey's theory to provide examples of what non-heteronormative “viewing” might look like. For HBO's A Song of Ice and Fire, however, the 1975 version of “male gaze” fetishism seems to fit the bill quite nicely.

Image Credit: Omega-level.net

Even when the show attempts to use sex to make interesting comments about characters, themes, and even its own medium, these moments are muted by their own content. For example, e pisode two of season two, “The Night Lands,” includes an interesting scene encapsulating one of the show's major themes: we are all objects of someone's intrusive gaz e. A ll of the secrets, all of the spying, constructs a dense web of lies, knowledge and power, and there's no guarantee that the watchers are not being watched. The scene begins in Littlefinger's brothel. A prostitute has sex with a client in an (apparently) private room. A pan back from the camera, however, reveals another client, a voyeur, watching the two have sex while another prostitute performs fellatio on him. Yet another pan back from the camera reveals Littlefinger himself, watching the voyeur. The pattern asks the viewer to mentally “pan back” yet again and question his/her own participation in this culture of voyeurism. The less visible messages of smart, self-referential scenes like this, though, are threatened by their own content. Can visual stimulation be too pleasurable, too satisfactory, to result in an effective criticism of networks of voyeurism?

It's certainly difficult to ignore the abundance of female nudity in the show, and the gratuitous sex scenes tend to distract from the (more important) driving forces of the plot. While sex certainly features prominently in Martin's original novels, it's harder to think of it as a selling point the way it often see ms to work for show. In addition to the sensual, consensual lit-erotica, Martin's novels include references to rape and sexual assault (which are treated as horrifying realities in the harsh cultures Martin has created) but these “scenes” are generally removed from the reader by the consciousness of a third-person narrator, so that the implication of viewer pleasure generally isn't there. The issue, then, isn't about lots of sex in the show; it's about using sex to stimulate your audience instead of for any larger thematic purpose. The frequent appearance of sexualized bodies, along with the impressive amount of screen time given to sex acts, makes the show seem much more comfortable using visuals of a highly oppressive, abusive gender system to arouse its viewers than the novels. This is definitely not to say that Martin's books do not exploit explorations of (typically female) sexuality to titillate readers , but the visual prominence of nude women in the HBO adaptation stands out in ways text-based sex scenes can't. Of course, I'm quite uncomfortable with that statement even as I make it, and there is now a conversation to be had about mediums of pornography, specifically comparing literary versus visual erotica, but I'm lacking the space to tackle that fascinating subject.

Frozen: The Anatomy of a Gaze

Scott Garbacz — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:00:00 +0000

Image credit: The Guardian

The first song composed for (but ultimately cut from) the recent Disney blockbuster Frozen explicitly engages with Disney's presentation of female characters. In the song, entitled "We Know Better," young princesses Elsa and Anna lay out a laundry list of objections to the traditional idea of a "Disney Princess." The film's two heroes refuse to be the sort of princess who "always knows her place," insist that a real princess “laughs and snorts milk out her nose," and maintain their right to mention “underwear.” Though whimsical, the film sets out its heroines' priorities: the only things they take seriously are their sisterly friendship and the political demands of ruling the realm. In climactic two-part harmony, the girls promise to "take care of our people and they will love / Me and you." If films like Tangled and Brave taught Disney that their princesses can (quite profitably) take center stage without dressing up as boys, Frozen insists that its female leads will be more concerned with national policy than with the clothes they wear.

The film's feminist aims were reflected in early reviews. NPR discussed the film's hit single, and the message of empowerment that many tweens heard in its lyrics. Social media exploded with a list of "7 Moments that Made Frozen the Most Progressive Disney Movie Ever." On the other hand, Frozen came under fire for perpetuating some of the worst tropes of the very "Disney Princess" genre it mocks. From critiques of Elsa's embodiment of Disney's Madonna-whore dichotomy to concern over the ridiculous gender dimorphism of its CGI character-models, the movie collected criticism as well as praise from feminists. Frozen was often compared unfavorably to Lilo & Stitch, a movie with its own fascinating treatment of social narratives.

In this post, however, I'm not particularly interested in praising or condemning Frozen so much as in understanding how it works. In particular, I want to draw attention to a visual contradiction that I see energizing much of Frozen. On the one hand, the the film claims to be a reversal of what we expect from a Disney film. On the other hand, in its meticulous computer animation actually displays a deep reliance on the sorts of traditional, emotional-powerful images created by Disney and other culture-makers over the years.

Take, for instance, the following freeze-frame, an image featured in various promotional materials, including (as seen below) Disney.com's website for the film:

Image credit: Disney.com

This image is particularly powerful because, in its essence, we have already seen it a million times in previous fantasy films and cartoons (though never, perhaps, executed with such icy beauty or complexity.) A young protagonist gazes upon an exotic, striking location, while the viewer's gaze is drawn along the explorer's eyeline through careful image composition. At the top of the image is a distant, female beauty, more of an icon than a person; Elsa's face is an indistinguishable blur, looking over her elegantly-clad shoulder as her dress swirls about her.

Such an image announces its continuity with previous riffs on the same motif, such as the scene where Prince Phillip hacks his way towards his future wife's magical castle in Sleeping Beauty, or the scene where Alladin's titular hero looks out at the city of Agrabah while dreaming of the life lead by its princess, Jasmine. Indeed, the parallels from the former seem particularly striking. Frozen is the first "ultra-widescreen" Disney fairytale since Sleeping Beauty, and Eyvind Earle's detailed, decorative background work on Sleeping Beauty stands as a predecessor for the elaborately ornate (yet often-threatening) nature of Frozen's arctic scenes.

The two protagonists' red, flowing capes are also suspiciously similar. Image credit: Evensi.com

If Frozen shares much in common with Sleeping Beauty, it also follows T.S. Eliot's dictum that "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." The most obvious shift is one in the characters' gender and motivation. Where Prince Phillip seeks merely to rescue his love and obtain the obligatory "happy ever after" of marriage, Anna's goals are doubled--even doubled against each other. She seeks to be reunited with her sister and thereby restore their family bond, but she also wants to save the realm from her sister's magic, a political task that places the two of them in a (potentially) adversarial relationship. Within this freeze-frame, then, it is fitting that Anna herself is duplicated. While Elsa's body faces away from the reader and seems ready to confront Anna, her reflected gaze points vaguely to the right of the image, her mouth slightly open in uncertainty. This doubling might also be seen to echo Anna's larger character-arc, in which she longs to be the heroic masculine figure capable of saving the realm from Elsa's sorcery, but also wants to be the beautiful ingenue, "Fetchingly draped against the wall / The picture of sophisticated grace." Anna is no prince charming--but she sure can dress for the role.

One thing is certain. In aligning the viewer with Anna, Frozen both re-creates and revises one of Disney's most oft-repeated images. Whether this hybridity represents a feminist deconstruction of a powerful gender stereotype or a hypocritical "feminist" gesture in a story mired by inherited images and old forms is a philosophical question beyond the scope of this blog. That such a question might emerge from a single freeze-frame in a popular Disney film, however, is a testament to the power and complexity of images, even those images that flash momentarily on the screen in one of the year's many blockbuster entertainments.

A Posterior for Posterity

Kimberly Singletary — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Temeca Freeman via J'Adore Magazine

On 10 March, 2011, Germany’s Pro7 TV aired a story about U.S. “po” model Temeca Freeman in New York City for Fashion Week. As a butt model, Freeman voluntarily welcomes people to stare unabashedly at her backside. But Pro7’s story went beyond a curious stare and into a visual “fressen” – a German term which means to devour, or consume like an animal. NSFW content after the break.

Temeca Freeman via GLCityMusic

Although the video, which has been edited as more than 4 different stories with at least two different reporters, is dubbed into German, one doesn’t need German to visually devour Freeman; the camera eye acts as lingua franca. Freeman’s portrayal is reminiscent of the treatment of Sarah Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, a Khoikhoi woman made into a one-woman traveling show, in part, for her large bottom, in 19th Century Europe.

When Freeman goes to her first massage, for example, one reporter tells us, “Here we come, the first time, in the enjoyment of [Freeman’s] curves. Everything’s real, claims the Po Model.” Note that our visual enjoyment of seeing Freeman on the massage table is more important than her enjoyment of a massage; the statement also throws into doubt Freeman’s claims about her naturalness. We, the presumably majority white, male German audience, are given authority over Freeman’s body to verify or reject her claim. In another video, the white, male masseuse is asked verify her claims.

Freeman’s story also featured clips from an earlier story about U.S. butt model Nicole “Coco” Austin; the stories were spliced together as if in conjunction, highlighting stark differences in how white, blonde Austin, was portrayed compared to Freeman. Freeman wistfully outlines her dream of being world renowned, and the camera jumps to Austin who stresses that hoping without work ethic isn’t enough. (Austin's advice: we can't all be scientists: some of us have to work at McDonald's) Austin is identified as a butt model and internet millionaire, while Freeman, “wants to make a career with her butt,” – despite having notoriety enough to be backstage at Fashion Week.

These women and their backsides represent American excess, but they’re not presented as equally excessive. Austin’s beauty is verified through her financial success, though Freeman’s bum, the reporter notes, is 4 centimeters larger than Austin’s. Apparently, it’s not the size of the butt but the beauty of the butt’s owner which determines success.

Double exoticization is at the heart of this German story, whereby mythical America, represented as New York’s hopefulness or the cynical, hardened sexiness of Hollywood is paired with an invitation to stare at racial difference, to see exactly what it is about black women that makes them so (un)sexy, (ab)normal, (freakishly) desirable. The Pro7 stories use the butt to re-center white women as the standard of beauty, to bestow rights of ownership to white males to speak for black women, and to Other the black body.

Nicole "Coco" Austin via Coco's World

To see "Trend Mega-Hintern," one of the versions of the stories featuring both Freeman and Austin, please click here. (NOTE: This video is apparently only visible in Germany.)