The Mediated Self/The Gaze/Overview and Outcomes

Introduction to the Unit

3 Hours

Outcomes:
 * Explain the key theories of Patricia Routh described in the video lecture
 * Explain the key concepts introduced by Laura Mulvey in Visual pleasure and the cinematic gaze (e.g. the gaze, scopolphilia)
 * Construct an argument about whether the gaze applies to contemporary visual culture via social media

e-Learning Activities (45 minutes) 

''Students will contemplate these and write reflective pieces after they have read the resources below and watched the video.''

1.     In Laura Mulvey in Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, the camera is described as a tool of voyeurism and viewers can be viewed as being voyeuristic sitting in a darkened room, unseen, while watching a film. What is the appeal of this sense of voyeurism?

2.     Discuss the ways in which the male gaze has had an impact on film in recent years, are movies still structured and aimed towards male viewers? Why or why not?

3.     Do you think it would be possible to create a financially successful, and culturally popular film, without any use of thecinematic gaze? Can you think of financially successful examples?

4.     In your opinion, how do you think a still photo and a moving picture film differ in respect to the male gaze?

5. In more recent years there have been an expansion of other gazes from different gender and sexual orientation standpoints. Can you think of different Hollywood films that are produced for any other "gazes"?

'''Online multiple choice questionnaire' (do you want to elaborate all these at this point?  Here are three as a start)''. (30 minutes)

1.      Which of the following is the term Mulvey uses to describe the manner in which people tend to fetishize looking at bodies because this is how they are conditioned to ‘look’ in cinema?

a)      the gaze

b)     scopophilia

c)      visual pleasure

d)     hegemony

2. What does Mulvey mean when she discusses the ‘internalization of the male gaze’?

a)      men start to look at women like they are objects

b)     women start to look at each other the way the eye of the camera looks at female bodies on the screen

c)      men look at women like they have agency

d)     women look at men as objects

3. How does Patricia Routh relate The Gaze to selfies?

a)      she says the way women presents themselves in selfies aligns with Mulvey’s theories of the gaze

b)     she says that women in selfies challenge theories of the gaze

c)      she says that the gaze is ever more prevalent in all forms of digital visual culture

d)     she says that the gaze is non-existent in contemporary digital visual culture.

Resources

 

 

Watch Online Video: (45 minutes)''

''Patricia Routh discusses Laura Mulvey''

http://pixilatedeyeballscourse.weebly.com/the-gaze-patricia-routh.html

 

''Read the following resource (1 hour)''

1.     Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.