Modernity: Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge

When we look at am image, we look through a field that consists of "objects, technologies, and built and natural environments, as well as other people who are either present and looking with us (and we may also look at these people, and they look at us) or those who we know or imagine to have looked before or to be looking simultaneously at the same image elsewhere, on a different screen" (93).  We use all of our senses to look, which effects what we perceive.  This field is studied using the concepts of spectatorship and gaze (to look).  Further, to gaze is a "relational activity of looking."

Different people in different places will have different ideas of what it means to be modern.  They will argue over an exact date on which the world became modern; however, many scholars agree that modernity is defined by the historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the eighteenth century philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment.  At this point in time mankind got the idea that they could control nature through technology, science, and rationalism.  Here began the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism (95).  As this continued, there was an incredible rise in industrial capitalism.  As people moved from the country to cities, there became new forms of architecture and new products.  

The term flaneur is used to describe someone who strolls through the new city, taking in all of the sights through glass windows and metal surfaces.  When that term is defined, I feel like it comes with feelings of excitement, awe, and beauty; however, in the industrial revolution there was a great amount of strife.  While the buildings were growing higher and higher into the skies, there were many poor, struggling people below covered in soot and grunge.  

While modern man likes to see himself as incredibly advanced and sophisticated, some, like Latour, argue that man never fully separated himself from nature.  Maybe it is not possible to do this.  Latour offers the idea that man, nature, machine, etc.- they are all intertwined complexly (I believe this is true, and man has no choice but to accept it).

Now let's move back to the idea of spectatorship.  Spectatorship, we've found, is the practice of looking, while a spectator is the one who looks.  Recently I read Nietzsche in one of my English classes here at Clemson, and I was interested by his ideas of perception.   He argued that every single person would perceive and image differently due to the differences in their cultures, backgrounds, etc.  Basically, he believes that what we have seen influences what we will see.  If every spectator perceives things differently, then, argues Nietzsche, there can be no universal truth.  The idea of there being no universal truth is key in the twentieth century existentialist movement. 

 

Questions/Talking Points:

1.     Isn’t there importance to images we “glance” at and how we perceive them (not only the images we “gaze” at)?

2.     If women were used in cinema to be objects of the “male gaze”, then will me ever be used to be a part of the “female gaze”?

3.     What examples of voyeurism (the pleasure one takes in looking while they cannot be seen) can you find in your every day life?