How does one describe the Graze? a) a practise of looking b) to look at something that interests you steadily and for a long time to study as a whole and in sections. Laura Mulvey illustrates this in the conventions of the cinema though its context you are not able to study each part for long as you could with static i.e. photo's, paintings books etc. (only by watching a film many times could you partly achieve this). Mulvey takes a feminist stance (many criticise her views). In film making it is assumed by some that the audience will be male so will enjoy watching beautiful women or looking for the perfect male which they would like to portray. This not only applies to the movies - art- magazines etc assume that the gaze will be a male. Mind you in some context the same could be applied to the female observer who may feel threatened by a beautiful woman but enjoy seeing a handsome man.
The Film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock
This film is a psychological thriller about a retired police detective suffering from acrophobia who is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of a acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behaviour.
Vertigo was based on a French novel D'Entre les Morts by Pierre Bolleru and Thomas Narcejac. The film is an example of turning pulp fiction into art. Scottie (played by James Stewart) fulls in love with the woman he is watching. When Judy is reconstructed as Madeline and becomes a fetish, she is eventually punished for her treatment of Scottie. The male gaze is shown as natural in the film, Self-identification with the ideal ego is confirmed by the way the camera is used though the eyes of the male gaze thus implicating Scottie's obsession. The audience members are also implicated in Scottie's obsession through the point of view.
Task 2 R and B music most R and B videos Some of them almost celebrate the male gaze. It is interesting to note that in some Hip Hop video's the female body is portrayed in close up thus causing fertilisation.
Task 3 Manet Olympia an annotation
The image is geared towards the male viewer which should suggest the physical possession of the female nude. She looks out from the painting as if her lover had just entered the room after sending in a bunch of flowers with her maid (who is almost invisible apart from her clothes and the white paper around the coloured flowers, Notice the maid's eyes ( you can just see them!) they appear to be cast down, she is denied the power of the gaze and is subservient to her mistress
Manet took a famous Old Master painting in this case Titian's Venus of Urbino and created his own modern variation on it. When first shown to the public people (mostly woman) found it offencive for two reasons she was clearly a courtesan and was not languorous and inviting, but cool and confident in her nakedness to stare down at her visitor i.e. the spectator whose entrance caused the cat (by her feet ) to arch its back. Erotic details are the ribbon around her neck the flower in her hair her hand placed on her naked body, slipper dangling from her foot and the flower in her hair.
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