Discuss this quote with reference to one work of art and one work from the contemporary media.
Our society is a Panopticon for women, there is a sense they are always been watched and looked at, as Berger states 'men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.'
Visual culture has always been dominated by men, this can be seen in The Birth of Venus from 1486 and in Sophie Dahls Opium advert in 2000. In the time that The Birth of Venus was painted All the art was by men, and all the people buying art would of been men, they controlled the art culture. This has changed women are and have been increasingly involved in the visual culture we see today but it seems not to have changed some aspects of visual media we see today.
In both these images, one from 1486 and one from 2000, the women depicted are viewed in very simliar ways. Both Venus and Sophie Dahl don't return the viewers gaze, allowing the viewer to look at the women un-challenged, and their is a heavy focus on their bodies and not their faces.
In The Birth Of Venus, Venus is a fiction of patriarchal society and the same could be said for the Opium advert, Sophie Dahl can be depicted as the ultimate women that men can watch and fantasise with no interruption.
A Marxist analysis of the subject is that these paintings and images are produced because men rule society, the whole visual culture has become a giant panopticon of men gazing and the female figure.
The gaze can also be linked to Baudrillard's idea of hyperreality,is these images are constantly in the media sexuality and the female figure becomes hyperreal, men believe that this is reality and all women are like these fantasises depicted to them in these images, it has also become apparent that women are starting to believe in these images, and that the hyperreal is become the real.
No comments:
Post a Comment