Applying Different Theories of the Gaze: bell hooks and Sturken & Cartwright

This week, we are reading bell hooks' "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" and Sturken & Cartwright's "Changing Concepts of the Gaze."  Each theorist provides a new insight and outlook on the gaze.  In bell hooks' article, she details the role of black women as spectators, both historically and in today's society.  Sturken and Cartwright's text examines a reversal of the gaze that occurs when men are portrayed as sexual objects.

Prompt 1:

Sturken & Cartwright's "Changing Concepts of the Gaze" states:

Contemporary visual culture involves a highly complex array not only of images and spectators but also of gazes.  Whereas many contemporary advertisements continue to sell products through traditional gender codes by portraying women in demure, seductive poses for a possessive male gaze, other ads play off these traditions by reversing them and showing both the pleasure of looking at men as objects and the power of women in action. (Sturken and Cartwright 133)

The text illustrates how modern media often reverses traditional roles of the gaze. Many films and advertisements turn men into sexualized objects and subsequently give women power as the gazers.

Figure 1: Movie Still from Magic Mike

Retrieved from: New York Times' Website 

Consider the film Magic Mike. One could argue that Magic Mike defies the concept of the traditional male gaze.  In the movie, Magic Mike's entire body is on display while he's dancing provocatively for the females surrounding him.  His character is ultimately subject to the gaze, as myriad women fawn over his physique. 

For this prompt, we propose that you find another example of a movie, commercial, or advertisement that contradicts the traditional concept of the male gaze. Please post your findings and discuss how they reverse the stereotypical male gaze.  You could also further examine Magic Mike as an example.

Figure 2: Magic Mike Film Trailer

Retrieved from: YouTube 

Prompt 2:

Figure 2: Man with Raw Steaks
Retrieved from: NY Daily News

This image is of a muscular man with multiple raw steaks on a plate looking directly at his viewers. In "Changing Concepts of the Gaze," it says that "contemporary theories that engage with issues of race, ethnicity, and sexuality as factors in the construction of the gaze allow for much more nuanced understandings of the processes of identification with the image and the complex ways in which images interpellate spectators" (Sturken and Cartwright 136).  This man's gaze can represent several things to many different people as suggested above.  Think from the perspective of either a vegetarian, an elderly woman, or a homosexual male.  What might his gaze mean?  Is it effective in advertising the meat?  How might this image be different if the gaze was on the meat instead of the viewer?

Citations:
bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” The Feminism and Visual 
Culture Reader, ed. Amelia Jones. London: Routledge, 2003. 94-105. Print.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Changing Concepts of the Gaze.” Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2009. 130-136. Print.

Blog Post:
Brittany Andersen and Kayola Davis-Tabb