Short Clarification about the Filmic Gaze
We often encounter the word ‘gaze’ in film reviews or conversations about movies. The term might also be prefaced by a modifier, for instance, the phrase ‘male gaze’ and its derived counterpart the ‘female gaze.’ But when used, the term gaze is often misrepresented, or in the case of its phrasal derivatives entirely misleading. So, what is a gaze exactly, and where does it come from?
The concept of the gaze in film originates in psychoanalysis with Jacques Lacan's redefinition of the term by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The gaze is what makes you, as a human being, recognize that other people (what Lacan calls the Other) stand out as other people. As thinking beings (creatures that have the ability to think and know we are thinking, the cogito), we tend to objectify the world around us and rule dominion over the space in our solitary environment. Solitary not in the socially popular sense of loneliness, but a word to define our individual existence. But when this space we have created is intruded upon by another person, we must unexpectedly share it with the Other. This Other that intrudes interrupts our freedom since we must also presume that the Other objectifies the world. With the intrusion of the other person, you are objectified by the Other and, by recognizing another person as also possessing the cogito (ability to think), you begin to objectify yourself in the constraining vision of the Other. This evokes the feeling, as Sartre writes, that one might experience when spying through a keyhole and being shocked to see an eye staring back or hearing a rustling of leaves behind you. It is the feeling when you, the subject, become aware of the unexpected presence of the Other.
Lacan takes this concept of the gaze further by asserting that there is no need for an unexpected presence, another person, to trigger the gaze. In fact, according to him, the gaze, which is imagined by the subject in the field of vision of the Other, is caused by simply our act of looking—for reality, what we see around us, is a construct created in our mind. Light bounces off objects and enters our retina sending signals to our brains creating images that we then reproject onto the outside world. This is what we call seeing. But, as Lacan notes, because we see with light, we must again recognize our similarity to the Other. Just as we recognize that the Other is a thinking being like us, since we see with light, we then recognize that the Other should also see us with the same light we see with. Our field of vision is the Other’s field of vision. This sudden awareness of the possible presence of the Other leaves us to be knowingly judged by our surroundings.
The gaze is thus a thing that tears apart our illusion of solitary subjectivity. Lacan deftly pictures this concept in the visual experience of looking at the painting The Ambassadors (1533). At first glance, the viewer sees a painting of two scholars. The viewer is certain in their act of looking. But upon noticing a blot at the bottom of the canvas and moving to look at it from the side, the viewer sees a skull looking back at them. Suddenly, when the skull becomes perceptible, the viewer is displaced from the certainty of their field of vision, a distorting experience that Lacan says is the closest a person comes to encountering the gaze. The illusion of vision is broken, if only for a moment.
Hans Holbein the Younger, “The Ambassadors” (London: The National Gallery, 1533)
Of course, as filmgoers and watchers, we must recognize that the gaze is fundamental to the cinematic experience. While the exact theory behind the relationship between the gaze and cinema is beyond the scope of this small article, it is easy to recognize the importance of the gaze in film since cinema involves the presence of a spectator. The disturbance of gaze, which when rendered on the screen, makes the film spectator confront their visibility and, according to some theorists, our desires.