Midterm assignment Chapter 3 synopsis

Chapter 3:
Modernity: Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge

The main goal of this chapter is to get people to realize the ways in which messages are given to you through several different mediums and images. You need to be able to observe and comprehend the messages that are given out by everything around us. Images are seen all around us at all times, they are ever-present. In the chapter spectatorship is defined as the quality of the viewer or spectator. The spectator is the individual who is viewing something, while spectatorship is the practice of viewing. Also, the chapter focuses on the fundamentals of the psychoanalytic theory and the concept of gaze. The terms spectator and spectatorship go hand and hand when talking about the psychoanalytical theory. Gaze is referred to when a viewer looks at something for a long period of time, and therefore may understand it better. Both gaze and spectatorship are important building blocks in the understanding of these concepts. The main concepts that need to be focused on are “the roles of the unconscious and desire in viewing practices, the role of looking in the formation of the human subject, and the ways that looking is always a relational activity and not simply a mental activity engaged by someone who forms internal mental representations that stand for a passive image object ‘out there’” (p. 102). These two theories, gaze and spectatorship, are theories of address, not theories to explain and understand how viewers respond to text and images. The gaze helps to establish power. “The act of looking is commonly regarded as awarding more power to the person who is looking than to the person who is the object of the look” (p. 111).
Modernity is also discussed throughout the chapter. Modernity is a “term that refers to the historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment (an eighteenth-century philosophical movement),; the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism; and the idea of controlling nature through technology, science, and rationalism” (p. 95). It is also “associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of market economy are the hallmarks of social progress” (p. 95). With modernity, more technology is developed, changing the world around us. We are in the age of a new revolution. With all the new technology we have, more and more media is able to be released and therefore we are exposed to more film and images. Images are seen over all types of mediums, including; movies, televisions, cell phones, computers, billboards, newspapers, and magazines.
Photography and art is seen as an important aspect of gaze. In the early years, paintings were made more for male viewers. This was because of the sexual stereotypes of males and females. In the recent years, more females have been buying art, but years ago males were the main target audience. A normal pose in a photo for a female would be in the nude in such a position so that the male viewer would appreciate it right away. The women in these pictures were the “male gaze” (p. 124). The women in these pictures also were never looking straight at the camera or painter, suggesting that they were passive. In conclusion, this chapter focuses on the role of the viewer in forming a meaning of images that are viewed through the concepts of spectatorship and gaze.