Gaze

Look and the Gaze

The gaze has proven to be a very elusive concept since its inception. Because the French term le regard can be translated in English as “gaze” or “look,” the English translation of Lacan's work, published in 1978, contained some ambiguity. Le regard also has the connotation of concern and caring; this makes its use that much more subtle and difficult. Lacan made a distinction between conscious looking and the ephemeral gaze that affects us unconsciously in the way we come to believe that the social Other (taken to mean the symbolic order as a whole) positions us in it. A split exists between our conscious perceptions and the impossibility of ever seeing ourselves seeing. There is a gap between seeing and being seen, which introduces paranoia into the act of perception itself, because we can never be certain how we are perceived from the outside as such. This is why, for Lacan, the act of looking is always marked by the deceptiveness of misrecognition (méconnaissance ). There is, however, an unconscious investment made as to how we should be seen by this outside symbolic order, referred to as the Other. The Other positions us in a certain way so that we are loved and accepted. There is a demand by this Other for conformity as unconsciously internalized through the desire of the Other. We may rebel against or resist this expected demand or desire, but such acts have direct social consequences for our own conscious identity, our own imaginative ideal ego. Hence, we may feel too fat or not beautiful enough by the assumed gaze of a culture that places high celebrity value on looking slim and youthful. The gaze and the look are therefore intimately connected to one another. Although no one “owns” the gaze, this does not prevent the look from coveting the gaze. For example, certain celebrity stars become iconic of what one should look like in the full light of the gaze, as a star that is somehow perfect, as in the saying she has “the look” or she is in the “spotlight.” This is the overwhelming gaze of the Other. (It should be noted that vision is totally dependent on light and not space. Even a blind man can “see” by the way of tactile feel, positioning objects in space through the mind's eye.)

Of course, this experience is the height of fantasy and ideology. But, this does not take away from the feeling that a subject has under this ephemeral societal gaze: I am somehow not worthy enough because I cannot reach this Ideal subjectivity (ego-Ideal) that a celebrity possesses; or on the opposite end, I am totally worthy. Just look at the way people celebrate who I am. The “emperor may not have any clothes,” but if the hegemony of spectators believe that he is wearing the latest fashion, then he is wearing the latest fashion, as in Robert Altman's 1994 satiric film about the fashion industry, Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear), in which models walk nude on the catwalk, displaying their “wares.” The crowd of spectators continues to clap as the film's credits roll. No one dares to say they are nude. This gesture is disavowed, for it would “ideally” collapse the empire of the fashion industry, decentering both authority and the economy that supports it. The little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's story “The Emperor's New Clothes,” who says what he “sees” would have to be believed and not dismissed as just another ignorant child. It is possible, therefore, to claim that the gaze is another variant of the superego, which includes both the stated and unstated laws, rules, and norms that are operating in the social order; that the gaze stresses the unconscious obscene (not seen, or off-stage) supplement to those laws, the unstated way laws are manipulated and twisted by those in power who are already consciously and unconsciously in the social light.

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