Lutz and Collins and Mulvey

Lutz and Collins analyze photographs through thinking about different gazes, and they use National Geographic as an example of the various ways photographs can be seen. The magazine has many photos of other cultures, and the subjectivity of the view starts with the photographer and what he or she chooses to capture. From there, the images selected by editors and the captions written by writers further change the readers' views on the photo. By selecting, cropping, and giving a caption to photos, the magazine is shaping the opinions of readers on a subtle level. Lutz and Collins say that gazes include seven different types: the photographer, the magazine editor, the readers, the Westerner, the non-Westerner, the gaze, and the viewing anthropologist. Each one of these gazes is different, which provides the photo with contradictions and multiple meanings. A photograph can be seen as a cultural object of a larger social world, which is usually through the Westerner's eyes.

Mulvey also focused on the importance of the gaze within a larger social context. She analyzed the view of women in films of our Western patriarchal society. Mulvey discussed Freud's idea of scopophilia, and how audience members take pleasure in escaping from their daily lives to watch and identify with fictional characters. The article then discusses how women are seen by active male viewers, and the audience sees through the male's perspective. Men deal with the castrating threat of women through sadism and fetishism. While I believe Mulvey's opinions are slightly extreme, I do believe that women always feel that they are being looked at. Some women are obsessive about dressing right, having good hair, and being in shape, just so men are pleased with their physicality. On the other hand, I do believe that women judge men on their looks just as harshly as men view women.