One of Berger's main points is that the nude is meant specifically to be watched, and as a result, presents herself in a way that shows her awareness of herself as an object of male desire. As an example of this, are these images of the clothed-yet-practically-nude-anyway Starfire, from the comic book Red Hood and the Outlaws #1. In virtually every panel in which she appears, she is quite literally posing for an unseen audience. This is taken to its logical extreme in the final panel where, despite speaking to a character who is in front of her, she looks directly at the reader.
Laura Mulvey describes mainstream films as presenting women in a way that appeals to “pleasure in looking at another person as an object.” (835) When this happens, usually the women in a film are seen from the perspective of a male character, rather than as independent characters. Mulvey writes that this allows women to function “as [an] erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as [an] erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium.” (838) In this sense, the male gaze is a literal one: the male audience is vicariously looking at women through the eyes of another man. For a contemporary example of this type of construct, consider these three comic book panels:
The nude dancer in these three panels is shown reflected in the sunglasses of a male spectator. Rather than simply seeing a nude dancer, the audience is granted some distance through the male subject, since the reader is technically watching someone else watch a nude dancer. This also affirms for the reader the purpose of the woman: it is okay to look at her because she is on display, and is meant to be looked at.
The oppositional gaze, by contrast, is the lens through which those not included in the traditional gender narrative view media. Bell hooks describes mainstream media from all but entirely excluding black women, sending the message that “the woman to be looked at and desired is ‘white.’” (118) In response to this, black women must view Hollywood films in one of three ways: by ignoring the racism and sexism of these films in order to enjoy them, by not viewing them at all, or by developing a more critical perspective that challenged the media they consumed (hooks 120). The last of these, the oppositional gaze, involves the refusal to identify with the ideal of white womanhood presented in film and media. And because it is the rejection of the racial construction of gender and sexuality in media, it involves, by extension, the rejection of the white supremacist patriarchal system of thought and power that shapes it.
As far as my own understanding of media is concerned, I would say that my view of perspective, the gaze, and the construction of womanhood in media has been not so much altered as it has been greatly expanded. For example, before reading Berger, I had never thought to consider that many of the modern elements of the way women are seen in media are applicable to classical art as well. I am also left wondering whether the type of subjugation, judgment, and ownership that Berger describes is a necessary aspect of nude/erotic imagery, or if this is a condition particular to our society as it currently is. The most interesting part of any of the readings was when Mulvey confirmed something I figured out a long time ago: That in most movies, female characters are included for the sake of looking pretty, and conflict with the plot more than they add to it (838). This might be unusual, but it’s the superfluous romantic subplots in movies that feel more troubling to me than many of the more blatant examples of sexism that one can probably think of. At the same time, though, I generally go to the movies with the understanding that, not being able to identify entirely with either the heterosexual male characters through whom the movie is being seen, or the female characters they take an interest in, I am going to be somewhat left out of the experience. So perhaps this is why I am more inclined to notice and be bothered by that sort of thing.
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