CTS//Hyperreality/The Man's Gaze Seminar.

CTS//Hyperreality/The Man's Gaze Seminar
Notes from this morning's seminar with tutor, Richard Miles.



HYPERREALITY


- Discussed Plato's allegory of the cave- as an allegory of society. Society is kept under control and believe what they are lead to believe- never questioning their reality. Our knowledge of reality is closer to the images cast on a wall than the world outside. What "we" think is not real- but it is hyperreal.

- Jean Baudrillard (Philosopher) is a post- Marxist. "We have no way of accessing reality"- stemmed from Western corporate, commercial images- creates a distancing from the real world.

- Commodity culture removes us from the true reality of the world and detaches us from society, eg. Hadon Sundblom (1930's)'s depiction of a red-clothed Santa Claus for Coca-Cola.


- Images cause a physical effect on ourselves and how we engage (eg The Pepsi challenge- not being able to  distinguish the taste difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi in a blind taste test).


- Jean Baudillard- Post Structuralist, French intellectual. Other contemporaries included Derrida, Barthes, Foucault (followed on from Structuralism- where the structure of language is assigned to other things).


- We live through images, and they mediate our existence.


- Georges Bataille, Philosopher, Novelist and Poet- was a Surrealist, but was "kicked out" for being "insane"- talked about ritual sacrifice and mortality heavily in his works.


- What remains is simulacra, and what fades is reality. The simulacra then leads to the creation of other simulacra (no basis in reality, only in simulation- gets further and further away from reality- our only understanding comes from repeats and copies). 


- Our experiences are not always genuine emotion- by preceded by simulacra which informs our reality (eg New York as depicted in films).


- Ribena is a chemical simulacra of blackcurrant (!).


- Hyperreality is how the copies make an effect on the real world. How the image informs reality.


- Spinal Tap are a simulacra of metal bands.


- Disney is an example of the hyperreal.





THE GAZE


- Berger, 1972, "Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at."


- Women are the secondary gender, therefore made for men's interests, Biblical foundations.


- Inequality- Men are producers, made to serve the interests of men.


- Engles, 'The Origin of the Family', pre- historic families were matriarchal and non- monogamous. Due to the birth of posession and commodities (spears, axes, weapons) the family unit was formed as males wanted to be sure they could pass possessions on to future generations, their own biological children.

- Hans Memling's 'Vanity'- she doesn't challenge our gaze, she is passive. The male ideal of a perfect woman- these images are the foundation of pornography, made for rich men to fantasise.