Scopophilia derives from Freud’s ‘scopic drive’: the infant’s libidinal drive to pleasurable viewing. The concept is further expanded by Freud’s ‘primal scene’ (male child, unseen, views parent’s copulating) and Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’ (the moment a male child realises his difference from his mother).
Voyeurism (viewing the activities of others, unbeknown to them) and fetishism (in Film, the overinvestment in other parts of the body, usually through agency) are two strategies adopted by males to counter the fear of sexual difference. Both have illicit connotations.
Task
Read and makes notes from The scoptophilic instinct and identification by Otto Fenichel. This is supplemented by Freud’s Fetishism.
Importantly, Fenichel states the goal of the scoptohphilic instinct is either, the impulse to injure the object seen or the desire to share, by the means of empathy, its experience. The elements of sadism suggest the desire to incorporate the objects looked at; implementing castration.
I was asked to think about the way humans formalise the act of looking and the customs, manners and taboos surrounding it.
• Does what you have read help your understanding of why and/how you look in a ritualised way, saying going to an art gallery?
The importance of looking and seeing is not only relevant to present culture but has significance throughout human history, evident due to its emphasis in myth (gorgon; Oedipus – blinded as punishment). The reading has helped my understanding of how and why we look in a ritualised way. For example when we go to an art gallery (a further development of sublimation?) we look for the recognition and substitution of the missing in the exhibits. Looking also signifies identification so we try and identify with the works in the art gallery. Does the artificial environment of the art gallery allow a “safe” place to do this?
• Do the articles suggest to you reasons for staring at someone being at best bad manners and worst threatening?
The articles do suggest the reasons for staring at someone being at best bad manners and at worst, threatening. To look is to have power. The Gaze objectifies and the pleasure of watching is at least the pleasure of controlling (objectifying) the other. The fixed gaze, e.g. stare, impairs the ego function.
Looking has been described using a lexis associated with other activities, usually in an extreme sense: ‘devouring ’. Strachey believes this ‘devouring’ is that of the unconscious thus to gaze is a form of sadistic incorporation (look at object – force it to grow like oneself). These sadistic impulses enter the instinctual act of looking and have acquired the significance of a modified form of destruction, thus it can be considered threatening.
• Can you make any suggestions as to the reasons for some people’s need to avidly watch television?
Freud suggests desire is crucial to looking; the scoptophilic instinct is a sexual one. Pleasure is derived from looking at an object to share its experience.
Some people’s need to avidly watch television may be due to a search of what is missing but also for identification (‘ocular introjection’) due to the importance of the mirror and the self image. Ultimately, we watch television because it is pleasurable.
• Do you have any visual fetishes that you are willing to share; such as landscape images as a substitute for the countryside for a city dweller?
It is problematic to speak of visual fetishes, one can like what they see, but to suggest a libidinzed form of looking does not imply perception but sexual gratification. Though if we use a simplified, and de-sexualised, view of fetish (to replace a missing ‘something’ with ‘something’ else) then it is understandable for a city dweller to incorporate images of the countryside.
• What about wedding photographs and family photographs?
Naturally people would presume to keep such images, at best, as a memento or, at worst, a form of narcissism. The importance of the mirror and the self image would play a greater role in the keeping of wedding/family photographs.
Thoughts
Exploring this concept will ultimately lead to the concept of voyeurism. This introduction to psychoanalysis, important to our understanding of visual culture, will certainly be expanded in later projects (e.g. Lacan and Mulvey’s seminal essay on the patriarchal nature of classical Hollywood cinema; Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema).
Bibliography
D’Alleva, Anne. (2005) Methods & Theories of Art History. London: Laurence King Publishing.
Fenichel, Otto., 1954. ‘The scoptophilic instinct and identification’. In: J. Evans, S. Hall ed. 1999 Visual culture: a reader. London: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 327-339.
Freud, Sigmund., 1927. ‘Fetishism’. In: J. Evans, S. Hall ed. 1999 Visual culture: a reader. London: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 324-326.
Hayward, Susan. (1996) Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge.
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