Chapter 9: Exquisite corpse assignment

Ch. 10 Digital Foundations - Amelia Earhart the astronaut

PO Looking

Practices of looking

In the article Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge the idea that the spectator, from a psychoanalytical theorist's point of view, is in a regressive mode, which defines the spectator as existing in an infantile state. I think there's merit to this idea, because when we look at an image, we immediately subconsciously associate everything we see with certain feelings/emotions connected to whatever image in our head we relate to what we're observing. For instance, in the poster depicted above: the viewer's eye is immediately drawn towards the title. The image below is fairly spacious, directing the spectator's view to the female police officer kneeling next to a bloody corpse. Seeing the police officer alone would subconsciously emote feelings of danger, because it's an institution that closely relates to feelings of danger, paired with conjuring up the concept of conflict, specifically between authoritative powers and criminals. This is particularly interesting because both of these are themes of the movie.