Authentic?

Part of last week's discussion, combined with a few random thoughts about some of what we talk about in the program in general....

We always talk about communication as being authentic vs inauthentic and in a variety of situations it means different things. Most of our discussions when we turn to this term, or paradox if you will, always focus on trying to determine what makes some form of communication an "authentic representation." When it comes to studying visual images, what or who is the key piece on the path to being considered authentic? Is it the creator, do they need to have the appropriate vision/idea that is seamlessly portrayed to the audience? Is it the subject - chosen to represent something/someone or an ideal - what needs to be the authentic piece of the puzzle? Or, is it the audience that needs, interprets, or even creates what is authentic?

I believe a lot of this can go back to the Hall piece and connotation and denotation. (which, I am still having slight confusions on, so please let's discuss!) Is attempting to determine the signifier and signified Hall's labels for unpacking the authenticity of the visual representation? If we come up with the exact answers the creator of the image intended, is it authentic because we agree? Or, does the real authenticity lie in the differences?

In some ways, I feel like a visual image is authentic as long as it resonates with someone, even just one person. So much of what makes visual images so powerful, both positively and negatively, is because just one person taking it as an authentic, or true, representation can cause these material consequences we chat about.

Yet, we are all individuals operating within an ensemble, and collective authenticity is more than likely going to dominate, even if it's wrong. So, does analyzing the authenticity of an image come down ultimately to a power and ideological struggle? Is that what Hall is trying to show?

When Connotation and Denotation Don't Match

In the above picture, it is clear there are two people. Based on the understandings of symbols, we comprehend this photograph a certain way. If we look only at the actual image itself and attempt not to infer meaning from it, we are led to describe it in certain ways. To take this photograph literally, then, is to acknowledge it as iconic. As Barthes writes, "At the level of literal message, the text replies--in a more or less direct, more or less partial manner--to the question: what is it?" (p. 39). Add to this a layer of questions--What are the signifiers? What is signified? What does the image present and how are we able to encode or decode it? What happens when the photo is read from a dominant/hegemonic position, a negotiated position, and an oppositional position?
The above photograph, taken from the movie "Boys Don't Cry" features two women, although just by looking at what is actually visible in the picture, it would be difficult to make that distinction. Since Hilary Swank's character (the one on the right) has purposefully been coded to be read as male. Particularly when it comes to hair and dress styles, so much of our culture has encouraged us to encode our appearances in order to sign for our particular gender, race, and class. Take, for example, how easily it is to create trouble in an upscale restaurant by entering without the proper dress code. Or, imagine the meanings created by a women in an Islamic country dressing in Western clothing. Although an image (a picture of a skirt) can simply denote a particular object (a skirt), its meaning is almost always changed depending on the context the object is in relation to (such as a woman or a man in a western country versus a woman or a man in an Islamic country).
Although Hall addresses more of the ability of a person's own experiences allowing them to read an image differently (through dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings), he still does not establish how particular cultural and identity contexts establish a meaning. Of particular importance, as this photo demonstrates, is the capacity for the body to also be symbolic. Taken as such, the body of Hilary Swank is also a sign, but what it signifies depends not only on our reading of her body (which gives a new heaviness to the panoptic gaze) but also how she reads her body herself. The body as a sign is an important understanding, one that shapes every relationship between individuals. Particularly humorous to me is the different cultural readings of body parts, and what it means in terms of human interactions (such as the idea of Eskimo kisses being when one individual rubs the tip of their nose on the other individual's nose).

Women in Advertising

These images were taken from three different publications. How do you think these images tie into Spitzack's article? Are they intended for different audiences or the same ones? Are they offensive in any way? How are they alike? different?

on cameras and privacy

Just a short thought, but as infringing as cameras may be on one's privacy, and in some cases people don't pay attention to them, don't you think they serve some good in terms of catching thieves or the like? Look at the case of the Chicago cop who beat up that bartender for not serving him..it was caught on camera..

The range of Panoptic view

Bentham’s Panopticon, Foucault tells us is an arrangement where the very idea of visibility is a trap. The inmates in the peripheral building are secluded from each other, their vision is tunneled; the eyes can only see the central tower of power. Foucault’s description of the hapless prisoner conjures up the image of a man with blinkers, his vision forced only and only in one direction. The Tower. The central tower on the other hand has a 360 degrees of vision. In a way this constriction in the degree of perceptibility also reinforces the idea of power. Restricted vision defines the suppressed, extended vision defines the suppressor.

What is very interesting is how such definitions get blurred when such an idea is put to the modern day context. Spitzack contextualizes the idea of the panopticon when she writes about women being trapped under a constant vigilance. They are being inspected all the time. What interests me here is the range of visibility that might define the position of power. A woman, according to Spitzack is at once the surveyor and the surveyed. She is surveyed by others, she surveys herself according to others; also she surveys others just the way she was surveyed. In that sense then, she is at once the power and the prisoner. She ‘does’ to everyone what everyone ‘does’ to her.
This I think is applicable to everyone who intends to be acknowledged in the human society. It is in our instinct to be acknowledged. And so almost unconsciously we assume the position of the power and the captivated. We critically view others and decide whether they are to be acknowledged or not. We also see ourselves being objectified in the same way. The range of vision for each human being therefore is at once restricted and extended. The position of power and that of the suppressed gets blurred- almost like a modern day painting with a riot of colors all forcefully blended into one another.

panoptic musings

To what extent do modern forms of surveillance exhibit panoptic effects? Within our own lifetimes, we have witnessed the introduction, adoption, and now widespread use of video and digital surveillance cameras. Do surveillance cameras provide the panoptic effect that Foucault identified was a result of certain forms of disciplinary architecture? In the panopticon, individuals were physically and visually separated from one another, but were constantly visible by an unseen seer. The panopticon disrupted the normal see/being seen dyad. Individuals within the panoption are aware that they may always be seen, even if they themselves cannot see who is looking at them. This was the genus of the panopticon's design.

The design of the panopticon conveys

power and serves as a disciplinary

mechanism. Those within the

panopticon are always visible, can

always be seen, every action may be

observed, and there is no privacyfrom the unseen looker. Even though

they cannot see who sees them, individuals are fully aware of theirvisibility. You better be good, cause "they're watching."

Foucault stated that the major effect of the panopticon was to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the functinoing of power (p. 201).

Do modern forms of public surveillance induce panoptic effects?

Digital and video surveillance is everywhere - in stores, on campus, on public roads and streets, in parking lots, in restaurants, at home... it is not uncommon to see many digital and video cameras during the course of a regular day. My apartment complex has its surveillance system broadcast to all its residents on television cable channel 87. There are over a dozen cameras in and around my aparment residence, and, if i am interested, i can watch any one of them while laying on my couch sipping whiskey. Driving around my neighborhood, I notice cameras on almost every streetlight. My favorite bar has at least 3 visible cameras. On campus, I notice cameras outside buildings, and as I enter, I see more. I grab some lunch and sit down, and as I pray to God that my professor may grant me grace, I see another camera above my head.

Our lives are saturated with the presence of digital and video surveillance cameras.

http://www.communitywalk.com/map/19256

Here is a portion of a surveillance camera map of downtown Philadelphia near univeristy city. An undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania documented over 500 cameras in thier neighborhood! They gave up trying to continue documentation: they couldn't keep up.

Does the presence of such a great density of surveillance cameras assure the automatic functioning of power that Foucault stated was a major effect of the panopticon? Surveillance cameras indicate the obviousness of our visibility. Cameras are for LOOKING, WATCHING, OBSERVING. We can't see who's looking at us. We are in a disrupted dyad of seeing/being seen. We know we are visible, yet we are not able to see our observer.

Has the obviousness of our visibility affected our behavior? In my own life, I have largely stopped noticing the cameras; they have largely become invisible. I pass them, paying little attention. They are so prevalent, they have become camoflaged; they have become installed in the urban landscape.

Perhaps there is something not compatable with public surveillance and Foucault's addressed panoptic effects. In the panopticon, individuals are enclosed, partitioned, segmented, and distributed, often into spaces that are small and easily manageable. Originally it was essential to panoptic power that individuals be separated from each other. Public surveillance fails to display this form. Surveillance cameras often observe open spaces, large spaces with many people. Perhaps panoptic effects can be generalizeable, or even extended - certainly as Spitzack demonstrates, all that is required for panoptic effects is that the individual internalize the its logic, and if this happens, we can exibit separation, even from our own selves, regardless of where we are.

Panoptic Images

I really like the second image Dan posted, but not probably for the obvious reason.

The image shows the ideal subject of the panoptic prison: a prisoner, penitent, on his knees, examining his own soul in solitude. He has internalized, to his very core, the panoptic gaze, the I/eye that watches from the center but is itself unwatched. He watches himself inwardly just as he is watched (from the center and by you and I) from the outside.

It is eloquent in this way. But what I find interesting is the way the viewer is positioned. The view which we are offered - of the penitent prisoner, of the central tower where the I/eye of power hides - is a view that cannot exist. There is no position behind the prisoner from which to see his conformity with the processes of subjection at work within and without.

This position is fictional, but where does it place us within the scene?

I think even though we are behind him, we are the penitent. Or better, we are witnesses, called by the image to testify to the efficacy of panoptic power - whether we like it or not.

So, what other images can people find that shed some light on contemporary panopticism?