Ways of Seeing / John Berger - Summary and Review
John Berger's now classic article "Ways of Seeing" (1972) revolutionarily, for his time, analyses the manner in which men and women are culturally represented, and the subsequent results these representations have on their conduct and self as well and mutual perception. In "Ways of Seeing" Berger claims that the representations of men and women in visual culture entice different "gazes", different ways in which they are looked at, with men having the legitimization of examining women, and women – also examine women.
At the opening of "Ways of Seeing John Berger notes that the cultural presence of the woman is still very much different from that of the man. Berger argues that a man's presence in the world is all about his potency and is related to what he can do, power and ability. On the other hand, Berger says, a woman's presence is always related to itself, not the world, and she does not represent potential but rather only her herself, and what can or cannot be done to her, never by her. The sources of this identity are for Berger the age-old notion that the woman was destined to take care of the man. He argues that as a result, the woman is always self-conscious, always aware of her own presence in every action she performs. The woman constantly imagines and surveys herself and by this, her identity is split between that of the surveyor and that of the one being surveyed – the two rules that she has in relation to herself. For this reason, Berger notes, her self-value is measured through the manner in which she is portrayed, in her own eyes, in others' eyes, and in men's eyes.
Men say, Berger, survey women before they relate to them and the results of this measuring determine their relation to the woman. As a result, all of the women's actions and appearance are indications of the manner in which she would like to be treated. That is, a woman's actions indicate the way she would like to be observed, contrary to man's actions which are just actions. Berger simplifies this notion by arguing that "men act – women appear". Women look at themselves being looked at. A surveying woman is a man, the surveyed woman is a woman, and by this, the woman objectifies herself as a subject of a gaze, this is the meaning of Berger's title "Ways of Seeing" – essentially meaning that there are different ways of seeing man and woman.
In "Ways of Seeing" John Berger analyzes nude depictions of woman in the European artistic tradition. The first depiction of a woman discussed by Berger is that of Eve from the story of the Garden of Eden. Berger holds that the consciousness or nakedness in the story of Adam and Eve was the result of different ways in which man and woman looked at each other following the eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and the subsequent subordination of the woman to man's rule. Renaissance art stresses to moment of initial shame in which Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves, but Berger notes how their shame is from a third observer, not from each other. Eve's embarrassment is retained in late secular art with the woman's awareness for the fact that she in being gazed at. And as Berger puts it: she is not naked for herself; she is naked as the viewer sees her.
Berger also notes the hypocrisy of using the mirror to represent women's vanity – first, we paint a naked woman for our own pleasure of watching her, and then we place a mirror in her hand and criticize her for enjoying her own figure.
In the representations of Greek Mythology Paris the young man has to decide which of the gods is the prettier, and thus their appearance becomes a contest (the ancestor of the beauty pageant). Winning the contest means surrendering to the viewer's gaze. Berger notes that other cultures do not hold the same attitude towards female nudity.
In other words, ways of seeing are for Berger in fact ways of subjecting, and these differential ways of seeing/subjecting which distinguish a man's stance in the world for that of women's have a long history in western culture and are, at least partly, the cause of gender differences which persist even in the feminist era, because this is something much deeper than just formal equal rights.
Following Kenneth Clark John Berger, in "Ways of Seeing", distinguishes "naked" or "nakedness" from "nudity" in the European tradition, with nakedness simply being the state of having no clothes on and nudity being a form of artistic representation. The nature of this artistic mode is related, according to Berger, to what he terms "lived sexuality". Being naked is just being yourself, but being nude in the artistic sense of the word is being without clothes for the purpose of being looked at. A naked body has to become an object of a gaze in order to become a nude representation. Being naked means being without any costume that you put on, but being nude means that you become your own costume. Painting and photographs which portray nudity appeal to the viewer's sexuality, the male viewer, and have nothing to do with the portrayed woman's sexuality – women are there for men to look at, not for themselves, for man's sexuality, not their own. When there is a man figure in nude painting the woman seldom addressed him, for she is aiming at her "true lover" – the viewer, which is the central figure of the painting without even being present in it.
In "Ways of Seeing" Berger also discusses the meaning of being naked outside of the artistic context. He argues that in nakedness there is the relief of finding out that someone is indeed a man or a woman, and that at the moment of being naked an element of banality comes into play and that we require this banality because it dissolves the mystery which was present up until cloths were taken off and reality became simpler. Therefore nakedness in reality, unlike representation, is for Berger a process, not a state.
In concluding "Ways of Seeing" John Berger holds that the humanist tradition of European painting holds a contradiction: on the one hand the painter's, owner's, and the viewer's individualism and on the other the object, the woman, which is treated is an abstraction. These unequal relations between men and women are, in Berger's view, deeply assimilated in our culture and in the consciousness of women who do to themselves what men do to them –objectify themselves.
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