THEORY: 2.02 The Gaze of Power
Panoptic (Πανοπτικός) = The ability to see everything
Panopticon: The idea of being watched at all times.
Voyeurism = "The One Who Looks"
Surveillance and Reality TV
Panopticon: The idea of being watched at all times.
- CCTV is a matter of dispute, as it can be considered as a system that helps against crime and terrorism, but also a a system of control and authority.
Voyeurism = "The One Who Looks"
- A male voyeur is commonly labeled "Peeping Tom", a male who observes somebody through a window, and not in a public place.
- The voyeur derives sexual gratification from observing others in secret. Ofter the object of voyeurism is undressed or engaged in some kind of sexual activity.
- The voyeur does not interact personally with the person being observed.
- Movie making and movie viewing have long been analyzed as voyeuristic practices. Traditionally, the movie viewer sits in the dark and observes the activities of people on a screen (figured as a window) who appear to be unaware of being watched.
- Objectification: The person gazed at is objectified: treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed of possessed by the voyeur.
- Fetishism is the focusing of erotic desire on some inanimate object with sexual connotations.
Surveillance and Reality TV
- It's because of the stupidity of the spectacle, why viewers watch these shows. It's because the viewer feels less idiotic and null than the spectacle.
- The TV Viewer is like the warden in a panoptic prison. The people in reality shows become images, spectacles, observed and controlled. The spectator has the pleasure of the controlling gaze.
From "reality" to hypereality
- We now inhabit a world of hyperreal simulacra: a world that adopts the aesthetics of simulation and is made of copies of other copies: signs without referents, senseless and empty.
- The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.
- Images are the most valuable product, defining the society in which we live in. Be aware of the fact that images are immediate more than ever, and are products.
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