I wanted to see how the readings of this week address the gaze of the victim and wondered- Does the victim ever get to look back? This question became important to me, as in my own research I am interested in the representation of femininity (through the figure of the Madonna specifically in the middle-age, and beginning of renaissance), especially in how male painters saw the ideal of a woman and represented it. I am therefore focusing on their bodies that are curved, twisted, forming diagonals. Their eyes are diagonal- down, in a form of submission, or on the contrary up to the sky begging for guidance. But almost never frontal- directly looking at us.
In her text Percepticide, Diana Taylor writes on page 128: “Sight is gendered or, perhaps more accurately, visual access is gendered. As in rituals, only the initiates have the right to see the hidden source of power. And in the all-male theatre of the Argentine horror show, women are not the see-ers but the objects to be seen.” On page 120 you see the Photo by Jorge Aguirre where an image of “a beautiful model” is to be seen- the model not looking directly at us, but down, into the emptiness. “The beautiful model is the object of the girl’s look, but of course she doesn’t return the look.” (p.121)
When wondering why the play of Griselda Gambaro, Information for Foreigners is so threatening, even though no actual violence is being shown, Taylor writes: “(…)because the victim looks back at us, returns and challenges our gaze-just as the victims who were abducted, yelling and screaming, during the Dirty War. ” (p.133) (…) We are in the same room. This naked body does not, as in cinema, exist in the realm of the imaginary, pure celluloid; it is materially present. The victim returns our look.” (p.135) As a spectator, it is definitely easier to distance oneself through the lack of being directly looked at.
Foucault mentions that during the spectacle of the scaffold, the head of the assasin will be covered with a black veil and quotes De Molène on page 13/14: “(…) the condemned man was no longer to be seen. Only the reading of the sentence on the scaffold announced the crime and that crime must be faceless. (The more monstrous a criminal was, the more he must be deprived of light: he must not see, or be seen.“
The eyes of women in most painting and photographs are shown, the difference is that they are never allowed a powerful frontal look and posture (linking desire to a visual lack?) This lets the spectator not only own them (as John Berger in Ways of Seeing mentions the Spectator-Owner), but I almost dare to see it as a torture- the fact that the victim is not allowed to look at us.