Chapter 3 – Modernity

Modernity: Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge


When we look at an image, we don’t simply see the image—we see an array of things that include our contextual biases and the contexts of the image as well as the medium the image is captured in. If anyone is viewing the image with us, the contexts of that image expand to also include their experiences. When we look at images, we aren’t just using our sight; we are also including perceptions from our other senses, such as touch and smell, whether we are conscious of this or not.

Part of the goal of studying visual communication is to find out exactly how we experience the world as individuals.

Modernity is a term used to “refer to the historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment…); the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism; and to the idea of controlling nature through technology, science, and rationalism.” This ideology arose in mostly industrialized countries—and is not an ideology that occurred universally.

Although we usually use the word “modern” to refer to the time we are in now, it once referred to a culture that sees itself as a change from tradition to progress, from old to new, “modeling itself on a past era that is regarded as embodying timeless, classical principles.” During the Enlightenment, “modernity” was seen as a rejection of traditional things and the new support of the concept of reason. The idea of the individual being lost in the crowd has been a reaction to the “modernity” movement and has been written about by several poets, authors, and screenwriters within the last century. Sturken and Cartwright assert: “We live through associations between bodies, machines, nature, and inanimate objects and across biology, technology, culture and science.

Foucault argued that societies function on the basis of cooperation rather than coercion. This is supported by the fact that the presence of security cameras—or the potential for security cameras to exist—lead people in many situations to self-regulate their behavior, rather being explicitly and directly forced to behave in a certain way.

Photography became an important tool in defining “normal”—something that did not match a picture of something else could be considered “abnormal.”

The idea of the pleasure one has in looking without being seen as looking is known as “voyeurism.” Scopophilia refers to the pleasure in being looked at. Both terms sometimes carry a negative connotation. However, activities such as viewing a movie are kinds of voyeurism. “Men act; women appear.”

I thought it was interesting reading the last part of the chapter about how webcams raise the need to alter the thoughts about voyeurism because earlier today I figured out how to set up a webcam my sister gave me for graduation (I know, I know, I’m just now setting it up two years after getting it…) and then using Skype to communicate with family back home. It’s been very interesting—I kind of had no idea I could talk to my family while seeing them by using the internet (I mean, I knew I could in theory; I had just never really tried).

One problem I had with this chapter was that I had difficulty understanding what exactly was meant by the term “gaze,” which was a problem considering the entire chapter focused on the “gaze.”

Talking Point 1: What are some everyday examples of how we live through associates between all the things (bodies, machines, nature, objects, etc.) that Sturken and Cartwright claim we live through?

Talking Point 2: Do you think the practice of using surveillance cameras in public places is overused?

Talking Point 3: What do you think Said meant when he claimed that “the Orient is not strictly a place or culture in itself, but rather a European cultural construction”?

Talking Point 4: How has the picture in the Keri advertisement been even further Westernized and modernized than the original painting?