“Ways of Seeing” “Every Image embodies a way of seeing” ~ John Berger Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of ‘just looking.’ ~Victor Burgin The Spectator’s Gaze (Notes taken from Daniel Chandler’s website on “The Gaze”)

Core Concepts As Jonathan Schroeder notes, “to gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze” (Schroeder 1998, 208). In other words, looking is inherently ideological; it has its own discursive and codes.

Key forms of Gaze in filmic texts The most obvious typology is based on who is doing the looking, of which the following are the most commonly cited: –the spectator’s gaze: the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person (or animal, or object) in the text; –the intra-diegetic gaze: a gaze of one depicted person at another (or at an animal or an object) within the world of the text (typically depicted in filmic and televisual media by a subjective ‘point-of-view shot’); –the direct [or extra-diegetic] address to the viewer: the gaze of a person (or quasi-human being) depicted in the text looking ‘out of the frame’ as if at the viewer, with associated gestures and postures (in some genres, direct address is studiously avoided); –the look of the camera - the way that the camera itself appears to look at the people (or animals or objects) depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film-maker or photographer; –the gaze of a bystander - outside the world of the text, the gaze of another individual in the viewer’s social world catching the latter in the act of viewing - this can be highly charged, e.g. where the text is erotic (Willemen 1992).

The Eye of the Camera Looking at someone using a camera (or looking at images thus produced) is clearly different from looking at the same person directly. Indeed, the camera frequently enables us to look at people whom we would never otherwise see at all. In a very literal sense, the camera turns the depicted person into an object, distancing viewer and viewed. In controlling the image, the photographer (albeit temporarily) has power over those in front of the lens, a power which may also be lent to viewers of the image. In this sense, the camera can represent a ‘controlling gaze’. In relation to film and television narrative, camera treatment is called ‘subjective’ when the viewer is treated as a participant, as when: –when the camera imitates the viewpoint or movement of a character (a ‘point-of-view’ shot); here we are shown not only what a character sees, but how he or she sees it.

The Eye of the Camera cont.- In her classic book, On Photography Susan Sontag referred to several aspects of ‘photographic seeing’ which are relevant in the current context (Sontag 1979, 89): ‘To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed’ (ibid., 4); ‘Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention... The act of photographing is more than passive observing. Like sexual voyeurism, it is a way of at least tacitly, often explicitly, encouraging what is going on to keep on happening’ (ibid., 11-12); ‘The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate - all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment’ (ibid., 13).

Appropriating the Other through the Gaze: “Dear John Wayne” “Dear John Wayne” as metacommentary on the viewer-text relationship 1)Chippewa Indians as spectators, initially. 2)They become the object of the white imperial gaze, embodied in the iconic figure of John Wayne, who represents White, western imperialism/hegemony.  “Always the lookout spots the Indian first, / spread north to south, barring progress.”  “The sky fills, acres of blue squint and eye”  “Everything we see belongs to us.”  “The eye sees a lot, John, but the heart is so blind.” 3)John Wayne’s gaze as a trope for a dominant culture’s “way of seeing” Native Americans. The line “acres of blue squint” points to the pervasiveness of this dominant mythology ~ the effects of which Erdrich underscores in the embodiment/disembodiment binary (the white gaze effaces Indian’s humanity): “We are back in our skins.” The Indian “spectators” both consume and are consumed by the adversarial history presented to them in film : the mosquitoes are a metaphor for the internalization process of negative media images that “break through the smoke screen for blood.”

Connections to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X The opening scene, “American Nightmare,” forces us as viewers into an uncomfortable spectator-viewer role. It draws attention to the act of spectatorship. –i.e, The Rodney King beating Through an unknown third person, we passively “see” the beating and share in the bystander’s gaze. In other words, the camera forces us into a voyeuristic act—we are “invisible.” Are we then innocent? What is Lee suggesting about the dynamic of looking? The one being looked at? Interpretations?