The Voyeurs Gaze PRESENTED BY VERONIKA ROOS LISA

The Voyeur’s Gaze PRESENTED BY: VERONIKA ROOS LISA SHROYER VINCENZA TAORMINA 15. 01. 2015

Thesis: Through changes in media and culture, the notion of the voyeur shifted from an individual to a social phenomenon.

Freudian Psychoanalysis Phallic phase: The trauma of castration (symptoms of separation anxieties) Voyeurism is a neurosis: the formation of behavioral or psychosomatic symptoms as a result of the return of the “repressed” (Freud)

“What Fenichel saw in voyeurism was, in other words, an act of aversion. His diagnosis of the man in the bordello as a voyeur was based not solely on what the man looked at — the couple having sex in the room next door — but also on the unconscious conflicts that he, in looking, overlooked. “ (Metzl)

“Primal scenes, for instance, traced back to the age when the voyeur may have witnessed his parents in coital embrace, while 'castration anxiety' represented the voyeur's startled recognition of his own helplessness and exposure. These moments of terror were re-experienced when the man looked through the keyhole: thus he cried and wished the woman would comfort him. Yet according to Fenichel, the ultimate purpose of the exercise was precisely that the voyeur prove to himself that the looked-upon scene was not a repetition of castration, or an apperception of its 'dangerous nature'. Instead, the bordello provided a scene that erroneously appeared to be under the voyeur's mastery and control - hence the masturbation - while allowing him to avert his eyes from the real source of his inquietude. ” (Metzl)

Definition Voyeurism A NARROW CATEGORY OF PATHOLOGICAL VOYEURISM: A RELATIVELY EXPANSIVE CATEGORY OF ACCEPTED VOYEURISM: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (Reality) TV shows DSM IV (1994) Websites Magazines Etc.

How can we relate to this transition from a medical diagnosis of an individual to the accepted voyeurism in society?

John Berger – Ways of Seeing (1973)

Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Bronzino, 1503 -1572 Bacchus, Ceres and Cupid by von Aachen 1552 -1615

“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. ” (Berger 54)

Edmund White – “The Flaneur” “A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the streets he walks – and is in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. ” (White)

„La Femme entre les deux âges“ - École de Fontainebleau (1575) Vanity Fair, March 2006

Norman Denzin – The Cinematic Society (1995)

The Voyeuristic Gaze in Cinema: “Everyday gaze”: open, closed, suspected, pretended etc. uncertainty “Cinema’s voyeurs. . . Work to overcome the inherent uncertainty of the everyday gaze. ” (Denzin 49)

EXAMPLE: Rear Window (1954)

Types of Voyeurs in Cinema: 1. Taking sexual pleasure (Mulvey)

Types of Voyeurs in Cinema: 2. Investigative ◦ Private detectives, Inspector, vigilantes ◦ “his voyeuristic activities will be in the service of a higher truth, unmasking, that is the hidden truths about this evil world” (52) Voyeur does not only take pleasure in gazing at women and sexually objectifying them. He has a general interest in the hidden and the secret.

BUT: The “line between detective or investigator and sexual voyeur [is often blurred]. Indeed. . . the two activities cannot be separated, for sex, violence and illegal conduct all go together” (57) “Cinema’s investigative voyeur thus reproduces the racial and gender structures of seeing that interact and operate in everyday life” (59)

“I have just glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole. I am alone. . . all of the sudden I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking at me! What does this mean? ” – Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 259 -60 “As I engage the eyes of the other I disarm their gaze, and render it impotent. But I cannot perceive the ‘world and at the same time apprehend a look fastened upon me’” (44)

Have you ever watched one of these Reality TV shows?

What is the appeal of these shows? How has technology in general influenced the voyeuristic gaze?

Jenni. Cam

Earthcam. com http: //www. abbeyroad. com/Crossing http: //www. earthcam. com/

What is the difference between Jenni. Cam and Earthcam. com? How do voyeuristic entertainment concepts address issues of morality and legality? Jenni. Cam VS. Earthcam. com

What is the Relationship Between Subject and Object/Surveyor and Surveyed in these Images? How do they differ? How Does the mirror/Phone affect the power structures and the agency of the “woman”?

Image Sources: http: //www. nationalgallery. org. uk/paintings/bronzino-an-allegory-withvenus-and-cupid https: //iamachild. files. wordpress. com/2012/11/bacchus-ceres-andcupid. jpg http: //commons. wikimedia. org/wiki/File: %C 3%89 cole_de_Fontainebleau__La_Femme_entre_les_deux_%C 3%A 2 ges. jpg http: //content. time. com/time/specials/packages/article/0, 28804, 2107768_ 2107767_2107763, 00. html http: //kurier. at/kult/skulpturen-als-selfie-schuetzen/80. 099. 049/slideshow https: //courses. washington. edu/info 200/win 12/jenni. Images. htm http: //oss 2014. adm. ntu. edu. sg/diana/jennicam-and-project-virtualawkwardness/ http: //the. hitchcock. zone/wiki/1000_Frames_of_Rear_Window_(1954)