IT LOOKS AT YOU

The Returned Gaze of Cinema

Wheeler Winston Dixon

 

This is a study of the "returned gaze" from the

cinema screen, demonstrating that the films that we watch

watch us, guide us, control our gaze, and enforce societal

codes.

 

"I think this is a work of both brilliant synthesis and

stunning originality." -- David Desser, University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

This book is a study of one of the most insidious and

pervasive phenomena in the study and reception of cinema: the

"returned gaze" from the screen, in which the audience is

actually surveilled by the film being projected on the

screen. Rather than the usual process of watching a film, in

those films which return the gaze of the viewer, the film

looks at us, confronting our voyeur's embrace of the

spectacle it presents. The book cites examples as diverse as

Andy Warhol's Vinyl, Laurel and Hardy two-reel comedies, the

films of Jean-Marie Straub, Jean-Luc Godard, Roberto

Rossellini, and Wesley E. Barry's Creation of the Humanoids.

It also discusses the history of the returned gaze in video,

pornography, surveillance systems, and the related plastic

arts.

192 pages March 1995

paperback ISBN 0-7914-2340-9

hardcover ISBN 0-7914-2339-5

 

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