More Questions You Shouldn't Ask

[akirlu]

Have you noticed how the whole notion of "Male Gaze" participates in heteronormativity? Wonder why the PoMo critters never question that.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

You are *brilliant*.

[avram]

Wait, are you saying that merely recognizing the idea of the male gaze, even to criticize it, is heteronormative?

I've no doubt there are any number of "PoMo critters" who've argued that the male gaze itself is, like many tools of patriarchy, heteronormative, but that's hardly the same thing. Here, the fruits of Google:

"Blinding Gazes and Queer Performativities: Tila Tequila's Shot of Sexuality" by Carly Gieseler; from the abstract: "The heteronormative narrative structures women's sexuality as performative. Traditionally this performance has functioned to please and maintain the male gaze. This perpetuates the cycle that privileges heteronormativity and objectifies female sexuality."

"'Such penetrating power': Seeing queerly in Teleny and Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet" by Helen Davies: "Though Teleny's performance is obviously not in 'drag', he adopts a power of the gaze that subverts the typically feminine role he is placed in through offering up his body as a spectacle in performance; his performance could therefore be interpreted as cross-gendered. Similarly, Camille adopts a role as spectator whereby his body is unexpectedly 'penetrated' by the performing subject, yet he still retains his masculine privilege through fulfilling the role of the spectator. In this scenario, the gaze is queered through a dissonance between the anatomies of the spectator/performer with the roles that they adopt in relation to the performance; moreover, the gender of these roles is not fixed but fluctuates and multiplies." She goes on to talk about "queer gaze".

Or if you don't feel like reading all that, check out this short blog post about a wrestling billboard.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that by calling it "the male gaze" one has already assumed and endorsed heteronormativity.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Well, of course, assuming and endorising heteronomativity is sort of foundational for patriarchy. Not to mention the power dynamic.

MKK

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Um, possibly. I think that rather depends on the patriarchy, actually. But, you see, "the male gaze" as a concept, as a critical tool, is hardly a creation of "the patriarchy". Or at the very least, I suspect that any number of self-styled feminist theorists would be rather sorry to find themselves so described.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Oh, um, duh. Is Mercury retrograde or something. I seem to have been really stupid today.

MKK

[avram]

How do you figure?

[avram]

Oh, wait, are you saying that they oughta call it "the heterosexual male gaze", or something like that?

I suppose. Although, check out that Helen Davies piece I linked to.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Oh, they question it all right. Do not ask me about certain aspects of art graduate school. Also, "male gaze" may be considered part of male hegemony or supremacy rather than heteronormativity.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

They obviously don't question it enough to call it something else.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Or, am I not saying this clearly enough: not all males "gaze" in the way that the hypothetical Male Gaze posits. And not all who "gaze" in that way are male. To assume so requires a heteronormative set of premises.

[avram]

Well, like I'm saying for like the third damn time already, there are people who are engaged with that very issue of which you speak, and I turned one up with just a few seconds of googling with obvious keywords. So it's hardly true that "the PoMo critters never question that".

[avram]

Or even just read the Wikipedia article on the woman who coined the term:

Some feminists criticized "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," claiming that, while Mulvey believed that classical Hollywood cinema reflected and shaped the "patriarchal order," the perspective of her writing actually remained within that very heterosexual order. The article was thus said to have contradicted its "radical" claims, by actually being a covert perpetuation of heterosexual patriarchal order. This was because, in her article, Mulvey presupposes the spectator to be a heterosexual man. She was thus felt to be denying the existence of lesbian women, gay men, heterosexual women, and those outside of these identities.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Things are complicated.

Who knew?

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

ok, I read all the comments, but I'm still stuck at a "gaze" "participating" . . . I'm trying to figure out which of Thog's classes would be right for it