In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey argues that "the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold, she first symbolises the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic" (833).  This idea--and the obvious connection to pyschoanalysis--brought me back to Freud and to Beauvoir.  According to this argument, it is not that woman exists as a lone subject, rather like Beauvoir's point, she is seen in relation to man.  "Her real absence of a penis" even sparks the "patriarchal unconscious."  I can't help but feel to argue this is to uphold Freud's argument that a woman craves a phallus: penis envy.  Is this what Mulvey is suggesting?  If this is her suggestion, doesn't it undermine woman as existing beyond the "other?"  And is Mulvey suggesting that it's woman's fault for "forming the patriarchal unconscious" because she lacks a penis?

I don't know.  I feel like a lot is being dumped on woman.  That's all.

In Berger's article he mentions (pg 280) "woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself....From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually." This idea of a woman having within her two selves: a surveyor and surveyed is a social and cultural construct. Can women learn to act differently without the need to continually imagine what others view them as? Or As Wylie mentions Wilson's view, is it "now so entrenched in the fabric of our society" that it couldn't change easily. There is a distinction between subject, surveyor, powerful and the other, surveyed, powerless. Is this a clear cut line and does it need to be drawn? Where are women in this distinction: if women are surveyors and surveyed, and considered the other because in some views we allow it?

Views of Women

John Berger discusses the manner in which the average woman "turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" ("Excerpts"; bottom left of last page). He writes that by watching themselves being "looked at" by men, women do themselves a disservice in decreasing their self-worth as well as their value in the eyes of men. I wonder, though, how much of this problem is due purely to the faults in the way women view themselves, and how much is a result of the way men look at and treat women. How much of this is actually in women's control to change? Are women really the ones who are primarily responsible for this problem? I wonder why the emphasis is on what women do wrong in this system instead of placing the "blame" on the men of whom Berger speaks.

the intersubjective gaze

I am interested in the intersubjectivity of two eyes locking- of two people looking at eachother, seeing and being conscious of the other looking back. bell hooks touches on this briefly, on the black woman looking away from the cinema in defiance. "It is difficult to talk when you feel no one is listening." (315)
WHat does it mean to look away when no one is looking back? How can you break a gaze that the other is not meeting? What intersubjectivity can be broken if their is no held gaze? Is the moment of resistance enough if only the black woman is aware of it?

The readings this week looked at different ways of seeing, and in particular how ways of seeing influence identity formation and reception. In Ramadan is Almost Here! the Visual Culture of AIM Buddies, Race, Gender, and Nation on the Internet, Lisa Nakamura writes, "AIM buddy avatars do not stand alone to signify a disembodied self; instead they represent choices made by the user who wishes to build an online identity that is warranted by a preexisting offline relationship." Nakamura brings up the notion of identity as something that we can control based on visual signals we give off. At the same time, however, she suggests that identity is also dependent on how others interpret those signals. Given these two ideas, which one defines identity? Is our identity the product of others' perceptions of the signals we give off? Or is identity something only we can define for ourselves and attempt to convey to others through these signals?

Women and Art

It makes sense that art has been/is(?) dominated by men; after all, if art is an academic activity, then women have, naturally, been shut out of that realm for the greater part of human history. Salons and formal academies in France were all organized by men, and almost always exclusive to men. It's therefore easy to see why, in "European nude[s], the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects usually women" (Berger). However, Nakamura's article on digital media made me question why sexism exists on the internet to such a high degree. In a domain like the internet, one can assume any identity imaginable, and there is virtually no limit to who can post what and where one can post it. Why, then, does it feel like an overwhelming number of software/web developers are male? What is keeping women from being more present in digital media, where criticism (for being female) can easily be dodged because of the anonymous nature of the internet? I don't mean to say or sound as if I believe that women should have to hide behind the identity of a man to publish things on the internet/be present in the digital media realm, but I just think that in such an open forum as the internet, one would assume that it would be a "place" of greater heterogeneity.

I also just want to add that in middle school, everyone used to make those "dollz," and everyone had one as their AIM buddy icon. I'm absolutely horrified that, as a little 13-year-old, I bought into this junk, especially because only now have I realized how wrong these things are. Realizations like these really make me believe that Women's and Gender Studies classes should be included in middle school (or at least high school) curriculums. Would this ever be possible?

It was an extremely interesting experience reading the article by bell hooks.  Although a bit dated, her words/claims/writing spoke - essentially - about me.  I'm trying to figure out whether I possess this oppositional gaze - whether I would classify/express it in such a manner that she describes (and claims other women to have described).  I'm trying look inside myself and examine how I regard movies.  I think that I look at all movies with a fairly critical eye -- it's not necessarily active...more of a subconscious type of action that triggers a radar anytime I see something questionable.  I feel as if when I do notice things, my realizations are separate - either about race OR gender OR class, etc.  So when bell hooks combines these things (at least the first two, in this case), it's a bit jarring.  Yet I think it's interesting to think about the lack of intersectionality of my thoughts (when watching movies), I wonder whether there's a bigger implication to this.  What would bell hooks say about the black female having separated "oppositional gazes," not one singular 'all-encompassing' oppositional gaze?  What value/merit (if any) is there in these separations as compared to the all-encompassing one?