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ARTWORK: Navita Wijerante
male gaze as panopticon ROSE DIXON-CAMPBELL
I’ve long considered the phenomenon of the male gaze to occupy a uniquely regulatory role, internalised within women’s lives. This self-regulated social control operates much in the same way that Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon does, to the effect that women become acutely aware of their subjectivity and come to pursue their own objectification. Before we interrogate this panoptic effect of the male gaze, let’s lay down the epistemic foundation together. Panopticon The panopticon is a design for prisons, originating in the 18th century. A panoptic prison comprises a central guard tower surrounded by a circular perimeter of prison cells. A guard in the tower is able to look into any cell within the complex, while the prisoners’ view is obscured such that they can never themselves look into the tower to determine whether they are being watched. The prisoners are thus conscious of the fact that they may be being watched at any given time and their fear that someone might discipline them translates to a tendency to regulate their own behaviour to avoid such disciplining. The theory was adapted and expanded by French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault, who utilised it to describe broader relationships of power. He observed that a panoptic prison and like structures elicit “a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” In other words, the panopticon is a regime of fear in which one’s own visibility and subjectivity is used against them to enforce a defined social order.
Male gaze The male gaze concept was first a piece of feminist film theory conceived by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. As Mulvey put it: “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/ male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Women displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle.” Mulvey’s original construction was underpinned by Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and in this tradition was planted in the realm of the unconscious. Having transcended film theory, the male gaze is now construed more broadly as a theoretical tool to discuss the objectification of women in culture and public life. Though the term ‘male gaze’ implies that the dehumanisation of women is perpetrated by the act of men looking at women, as with many other facets of misogyny it is more accurate to point the finger at societal structures which promote the sexualisation and objectification of women for heterosexual male enjoyment. These institutions indulge the fantasies of heterosexual males as they are the dominant group within society and often occupy privileged positions within social hierarchies and the institutions which enforce them.
