This reading of the keyword Gaze reminded me of the thought process I went through when I first learned about the power gaze has and how it plays a role in visual media especially. When I first learned about gaze I had not known the difference between it and appealing to the target audience. After I learned a little more about gaze I came to understand it by thinking about it in a historical way. Just as a historian looks at the author and why they may have written something the way they have when looking at a source is the same when a video or visual media is created. When analyzing visual media the watcher has to see who has made it and why they may have made it because if they do not it may distort the future watchers thinking just as an uncredible or biased source may in history. If all visual media is made through a white heterosexual gaze it will distort future watchers because they will lose perspective of all other people and begin thinking that that gaze is the correct gaze.
2 thoughts on “Gaze Response- Thomas Takele”
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I think your view point of the word gaze if very intriguing because I have never thought to consider it in the eyes of a historian. I agree that knowing the backstory and origin of the media created is a very important and crucial part of understanding a certain gaze within the media. In present day society, we find more and more people being forced to look through a certain gaze in order to conform to society norms and parental structure. In movies, people show that the man must save the women and yet this is not always the truth. However, society has taught people that this is the way the story must be written.
I agree and also think it’s very interesting how so many historical TV shows, movies, and books are written/directed by straight, white, men. It often gives a fake understanding of how some people actually think about certain things. I once argued with an English teacher my senior year about how a white person could never write from the perspective of a black person. They have never stepped foot in their shoes and will never know what it’s liked to be opressed the same way they do. No matter how much research you could do, you haven’t experienced the same things as them, therefore, it’s inaccurate.