The Male Gaze

Your Gaze Hits The Side of My Face by Barbara Kruger represents the feminists view on the male gaze well. It does this because there is nothing that the viewer can do to avoid becoming a voyeur. The woman who is looking away suggests that she does not want to be seen, however she is not stopping the viewer. The superimposed words on the image become her thoughts, and seemingly tell the viewer not to look. This horrible position that the viewer (supposedly a man) is put in is inescapable. Kruger has made it impossible for the man to not be objectifying the woman, as in the picture she is an object. It is also impossible for your gaze to not hit her face, as this becomes the subject of the image.

I do not like this type of art because it stereotypes all men as bad people. As much as men objectify woman, this photo fights back and subsequently puts all men into one category, fighting fire with fire.

The film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock can relate well to this image by Kruger. The small segment that we watched in class was a great representation of objectifying. We see all things in this segment through the male’s eyes, he is spying on her and we only see her as an object. There is no eye content between viewer and subject, just like "your gaze hits the side of my face".

There is one part in the film where the gaze gets turned around. This is when the woman is looking at the painting. The viewer of the film is looking at the man who is looking at the woman who is looking painting, and the painting looks back at the viewer and the man and woman. This is the closest we get to eye contact. Another part in the film I liked is when the man is in the alleyway. We see both him and her in the same shot, however he is behind a door. This door literally represents the doorway between the viewer and the subject. She is the woman in "Your gaze hits the side of my face" and he becomes the viewer of the image. The only difference is he is there by choice.