Project 1-2: Fetishing the object of your eye (ii)

The second part of this project is a series of questions addressing the way in which we formalise looking and the customs, manners and taboos surrounding looking.

How does what you have read help your understanding of why and how we look at things in a ritualised way – for instance going to an art gallery?

Definition of  ritualise: ‘make (something) into a ritual by following a pattern of actions or behaviour’ (Oxford Dictionaries, s.d.)

My first thought about rituals and ritualised behaviour is that they are both formed by a set of cultural rules, either imposed (and often written) as say in visiting a library – no noise,  mobile phones must be turned off, no eating etc – or voluntary but learned by example, for instance attending a football match with the waving of banners, the wearing of club shirts, scarves etc and the singing of songs to either support your own team or in disrespect or provocation of the opposition.

Taking the example given in the question, when we visit an art gallery it is most likely that we have chosen to do so and with the purpose of looking at what is on display, in Fenichel’s terms to ‘devour’. By following ritualised behaviour – how one is expected to conduct themselves in an art gallery – the viewer is also a participant in an experience, even if we may have different reasons for doing so. By looking (as opposed to seeing) the viewer is actively seeking to engage with the object in front of them rather than being a passive observer.

Moving to the Freud and Fenichel readings, I am now aware of a number of factors that  might underpin such ritualised looking.  Some people may fetish the objects on display.  This may not be conscious sexual behaviour, more a case of looking at things that they believe are missing from their lives.  The missing element could in theory be anything from possessions to experiences, even the skill needed to create what the person considers to be a worthy piece of art, particularly as the mere act of exhibiting work in a a gallery often elevates its status.

Another reason may be down to identification, the need to liken oneself with what one is looking at, the perception of seeing something as an extension of oneself, to share the work on display with themselves and to feel part of it.  Certainly in photography, Bate (2009) writes of inviting the viewer to project their own selves on to the image and this is something that I have set out to achieve in some of my own photographic work, to give the viewer the opportunity to express their own emotions, doubts and fears and to create their own stories.  Bate also discusses projection where the viewer can cast off uncomfortable feelings within themselves and move them to another person or object; ‘a viewer can implant their own feelings in a portrait photograph even though it seems as those feelings come from the actual portrait (Bate, 2009, p.86)

Of course In a minority of cases people have the wish to destroy what they have seen, as outlined by Fenichel (Fenichel,1999:330) who writes that ‘very often sadistic impulses enter into the instinctual aim of looking; one wishes to destroy something by means of looking at it, or else the act of looking itself has already acquired the significance of a modified form of destruction’, thus looping back to Freud’s views on castration (Freud, 1999)

Do the articles suggest to you reasons for staring as someone being at best bad manners and at worst threatening?

The articles suggest a number of reasons to support this view.  For Fenichel (1999) staring at someone is sadistic.  He writes of devouring with the eyes and the unconscious significance of such an intense gaze, indicating a wish by the viewer to subsume, even destroy what he is looking at. He also sees the stare as sexual, being linked to libidinised looking where ‘the aim of the person who looks is not perception but sexual gratification’ (Fenichel,1999:331).  Both these behaviours are definitely bad manners and can also be read by the receiver of the look as threatening.

Fenichel (Fenichel, 1999) also discusses how the eye and the act of looking have associations with magic, of spells being cast and the victim being paralysed by a look. Hypnotists also use the power of looking to compel the subject of their gaze to do their bidding, to control them.

It is also interesting to look at how different cultures treat the act of staring.  When I worked with Norwegians I soon learned that during a toast it was customary to raise your glasses, say ‘Skol’ and then look directly into the eyes of each person in the group in turn.  As a Brit I found this extremely discomforting but learned that it was considered bad manners not to take part in this act of staring.

Can you make any suggestions as to the reasons for some people’s need to avidly watch television?

Television presents us with easy accessibility to what is going on in the world.  It also presents us with a world of soap operas, celebrities, wannabe celebrities and a perceived status that many people desire to emulate, feeling that it gives them something that they think is missing in their own lives.  By avidly watching television some people fetish TV programmes, wanting to share in this celebrity world and the experiences that they witness, unconsciously identifying themselves with what they are looking at and making it their own.  People ‘become’ part of the soaps that they watch and the soap characters become part of real life to them – I am always amazed when a TV character dies and people send in their condolences to the television company – fiction has become reality in their view.  I also think that loneliness plays a part in this TV fetishism.

What visual fetishes have you noted in everyday life – your own or others?

I think a lot of people, particularly the younger generation, fetish social media, often seeming to willingly replace a real social life with a virtual one.  When I look at my own situation I am certainly guilty of sometimes excessive forum-hopping and I think  for me this this addresses a fear of missing out on something, maybe also of needing to feel included, to be ‘part of the gang’.

Why are people often so keen to display wedding photos or family portraits?

This is not something that I can relate to as I am not keen on this type of formal display in my own home.   However, I can think of a few reasons that some people would choose to do this:

• The demonstration of status and/or achievement – ‘I am married’, ‘This is my family’.  A form of exhibitionism and possibly also of narcissism.  Maybe to fulfil a psychological need for attention and approval.   Posed family portraits can often be fictions with the sitters portraying to the outside world how they wish to be seen rather than showing reality.
• Nostalgia – memories of people no longer with us, of past times for example pictures of children that are now grown up.
• A reminder of a happy occasion, maybe in contrast to a daily life which is more mundane.

Bibliography

Bate, D. (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts.  Oxford: Berg

Fenichel, O. (1999) The scoptophilic instinct and identification.  In: Evans, J and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual Culture: The Reader.  London: Sage. pp.327-339

Freud, S. (1999) Fetishism.  In: Evans, J and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual Culture: The Reader.  London: Sage. pp.324-326

Oxford Dictionaries (s.d.) ‘ritualise’  [online]. At: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com    (accessed on 28 September 2015)

Project 1-2: Fetishing the object of your eye (i)

For this project we first look at the psychology and philosophy of looking, reading texts by Fenichel and Freud, then continue by looking at phenomenology.  We are then asked to respond to a series of questions.In this first post I will make notes on the two texts that we are asked to read.

The course notes ask us to start by reading the first part of Fenichel’s essay The scoptophilic instinct and identification (Fenichel, 1999)

Definition of scopophilia (which seems to be synonymous with scoptophilic) from Oxford Dictionaries:
‘Sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity; voyeurism.’

Definition of identification from Dictionary.com:
‘Psychology.
a. a process by which one ascribes to oneself the qualities or characteristics of another person.
b. (in psychoanalytic theory) the transference or reaction to one person with the feelings or responses relevant to another, as the identification of a teacher with a parent.
c. perception of another as an extension of oneself.’

Looking and devouring – Fenichel (1999) begins by talking about the gaze and how the act of ‘gazing intently’/looking can be seen unconsciously as ‘devouring’, giving examples such as the wolf in the fairytale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.  Magic tales often speak of a spell being cast by way of a look, paralysing the victim.

Phallic significance of the eye > erection symbolism.

Looking and imitating- looking at something can unconsciously compel the viewer to imitate what they see e.g. movements, gestures of another person

Looking and identification – unconsciously identify yourself with what you are looking at, impose it on our own mind and make it ours – ’to force it to grow like oneself’ (p.329)

Next we are to read the essay Fetishism by Freud (Freud, 1999)

Definition of fetishism:
My immediate thought of fetishism was that it has sexual connotations and this is the way that I found it mostly to be defined.  However I also had in the back of my mind the thought that fetishism could also relate to an irrational, compulsive collecting of specific objects such as shoes so I was pleased to find the following definitions of fetish in the online Oxford dictionaries:

‘1.  A form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc

•        a man with a fetish for surgical masks 
•        a foot fetish 
•        some may have fetishes, like dressing up in women’s clothes.  Victorian men developed    fetishes focusing on feet, shoes, and boots

1.1  An excessive and irrational devotion or commitment to a particular thing:

• men will never understand a woman’s fetish for shoes and handbags
• the western fetish for all things North African

2.  An inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.’

Definition of scotomize by Oxford Dictionaries:
‘To avoid or deny (an undesirable fact or reality) through the creation of a mental ‘blind spot’.

Freud’s essay on fetishism is quite particular in its direction, dominated by  sexual gratification and Freud’s opinion that the male fetish is ‘a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and – for reasons familiar to us – does not want to give up’ (Freud, 1999:324)

> scotomization of the woman’s lack of a penis – belief that she still has one albeit in a different form.

> another object is chosen as substitute for the missing penis – the object is not known to other people so it is not withheld from him and it is easy for him to gain sexual satisfaction from it.

> idea of female castration > narcissism in relation to his own penis > horror of castration

> aversion to the female genitalia

p.325 ‘it [the fetish] remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it’

p. 325 Objects chosen as substitutes for the penis are not necessarily symbolic of it – ‘It seems rather that when the fetish is instituted some process occurs which reminds one of the stopping of memory in traumatic amnesia … the subject’s interest comes to a halt half-way, as it were; it is as though the last impression before the uncanny and the traumatic one is retained as a fetish.’

Back now to Fenichel and his essay The scoptophilic instinct and identification (Fenichel, 1999)  I soon realised that this is a fairly advanced psychology essay and I struggled to understand some of Fenichel’s concepts, an issue not helped by his verbose writing.  I’ve made notes on the points that I found the most pertinent and understandable, but realise that I’ve probably only addressed a small amount of what Fenichel was aiming to impart.  My comments are in square brackets.

p. 330  Aim of the scoptophilic instinct is to look at the sexual object.

p.330  ‘Anyone who desires to witness the sexual activities of a man and woman really always desires to share their experience by a process of empathy, generally in a homosexual sense’ [From what I read/see in the media it would seem that sex offences/sex offenders and the viewing of pornography are often intertwined]

p.330  Introduction of sadism into the equation – ‘Very often sadistic impulses enter into the instinctual aim of looking; one wishes to destroy something by means of looking at it, or else the act of looking itself has already acquired the significance of a modified form of destruction’. [Back to the idea of castration (and Freud) again].

p. 331  Discussion about the eye and way of looking > fixed gaze, stare – ‘When looking has become libidinised, so that the aim of the person who looks is not perception but sexual gratification, it differs from the ordinary kind of looking … the person looking makes an onslaught with his eye upon the world, in order to ‘devour’ it’.

p.332 Perception and identification – ‘imitation of the external world as perceived’

p.333  Recognition that the eye is a phallic symbol > blindness signifies castration.

P.333  ‘If the eye stands for the penis, then the eye fixed in a stare stands for the penis in erection’ – principle of incorporation.

p.334 Glaring eye – symbol for female genitalia.  In folklore turns people to stone as punishment (Medusa).  Turning to stone symbolises erection and castration; glaring eye symbolises penis, mouth, vagina.

p.334 Libidinal seeing – ‘when subject is confused with object and ego with the outside world’

p.337 Camera – ‘devouring eye’ created by man which ‘looks at and incorporates the external world and later projects it outward again’.

p.337 punishments for scoptophiliacs – being blinded and being turned to stone.  Punishment for exhibitionists – the eye which looks at him will bite or devour him.

p.337 Fenichel believes that alterations to the eye (e.g. short-sightedness) can in some cases (but not all) be caused by libidinous looking – ‘the constant use of the eye for the libidinal gratification of scoptophilic impulses causes it actively to strain in the direction of objects …’ > leading to a stretching of the eye?  But he recognises that not all scoptophilics suffer from visual problems.

My conclusion:

At this early stage of my studies I found both these essays difficult to read (the Fenichel more so than the Freud) due to both the way in which they were written as well as the subject matter.   I am not familiar with reading texts written from a psychoanalytical viewpoint and I also found some of the concepts quite bizarre and hard to grasp.  However, as for the first project in the course, I found reading both articles a number of times made them more comprehensible and I feel that I have gained some sort of understanding about the human acts of looking and seeing as well as how psychological reasons can cause certain people to look at objects in a completely different way from others.

Bibliography

D’Alleva, A. (2005) Methods & Theories of Art History.  London: Laurence King Publishing

Dictionary.com (s.d.) ‘Identification’ definition psychology [online].  At: http://dictionary.reference.com  (accessed on 23 September 2015)

Fenichel, O. (1999) ‘The scoptophilic instinct and identification’.  In: Evans, J. and Hall, S. (eds.)  Visual Culture: The Reader.  London: Sage. pp.327-339

Freud, S. (1999) ‘Fetishism’.  In: Evans, J and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual Culture: The Reader.  London: Sage. pp.324-326

Law, S. (2007)  The Great Philosophers: The Lives and Ideas of History’s Greatest Thinkers.  London: Quercus

Macey, D. (2002) The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory  London: Penguin Books

Pooke, G & Newall, D. (2008) Art history: The Basics.  Abingdon: Routledge

Oxford Dictionaries (s.d.) ‘Scopophilia‘ [online].   At: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com    (accessed on 23 September 2015)