Male Gaze and Racism — Page 6:
26 In 1987 Raymond Bellour published an article in which he continued to argue along the observations made by Roland Barthes in 'Camera Lucida’. (Barthes)Through the digital revolution, it was now possible, to either freeze individual frames or to conduct formal experiments resulting in films consisting of stills in the form of "photo novels" or slide shows. The most obvious example is the short film "La Jute" by Chris Marker (1962), which served as inspiration for the film "Twelve Monkeys" by Terry Gilliam. Using Barthes’s findings regarding the difference between film and photo, Bellour wondered what would happen if the viewer of a film is confronted with a photograph. (Bellour)
27 Just as the early film theorists celebrated the film because it revealed more than was visible for the naked eye it seemed the pensive viewer could now discover more than was visible with a projection speed of 24 frames per second. In a reversal of Jean Luc Godard's famous definition of film as "truth 24 frames per second", there is another truth in the freezing of the moving image, dislocating it from the continuum of projection.
Racist (male) gaze
28 For an intersectional approach to racism, this has certain consequences. If racism according to George L. Mosse is a "visual ideology", more attention should be attributed to the standpoint of the observer in studies of racism. (Mosse 9) Gender is not the only criterion that determines the regime of the gaze. Race and Class are also decisive factors and must be conceptionalized as intersectional categories. (Lutz & Collins 365; Gaines; de Lauretis Technologies; Tagger; Traube) The ethnic background of spectators was the main factor in the different assessment of violence in film, as shown by the empirical study Women Viewing Violence. (Schlesinger et al.) As early as 1975, Michel Foucault already had in mind a more general theory of power in mind as one linked exclusively to gender, when he presented his ground-breaking study on the panoptic view. (Foucault Surveiller)
29 Meanwhile, the Foucauldian thesis about the pervasiveness of the panoptic view has been modified, yet the question of the normative vision remains virulent, especially if it is further enlarged/expanded to encompass distinctions intermingled with sexism. In the first instance, there exists research that deals with the ethnically/culturally/racially defined Other within the field of visibility and perception. These studies have shown that the invention of technical apparati is closely linked with a gazing subject that directs its gaze at an object without being perceived by the object. The observer’s gaze thus "defines" the Other (Note the similarities to early theories of the gaze!). "As God created humans in his image, the gazing subject defines the Other by his technical apparatus: not only "women", but also "Jews", "Blacks" or 'homosexuals" (Braun 82).
30 These visual codes seem to have an almost unlimited power of assigning meaning, but if we take into consideration the important critique of Mulvey’s early theories on the gaze, crucial distinctions regarding the alleged omnipotent power of the gaze are in order. It is therefore important to demonstrate the constructedness of the normative view, by lifting the veil of its unmarkedness and by naming it. Critical whiteness studies have revealed that the supposed objectivity of the normative is a historical specificity: It is mainly male, white, and heterosexual.