Spectatorship in this chapter basically leads to talking about the term 'gazing'. Gaze is more a field of vision rather than a person's act of looking. To me, gazing is kind of mindless staring, while thinking deeply about what you see. For example, if you are at the top of a mountain and look over the edge, you will 'gaze' at the site, not just look. It's impossible to just look and then turn away. A gaze is a deeper form of looking. It's about taking things in and really thinking about them.
Diego Velaquez's painting Las Meninas is an example of where gazing is necessary in art.
An interesting thing the book talked about was the power of images. There was a neat description of a guard tower (that I don't really fully understand) that described guard towers being covered in blinds, so the prisoners would always think they were being watched, even when sometimes there would in fact be no guard inside. It was power of 'mind over mind'. The same can now be said about CCTV in various cities.
Gaze is also 'seen' in movies We as watchers typically identifies specific characters as well as the overall ideology. This often is due to identification with the position of the camera.
Gender has a lot to do with gaze as well, which can be seen in art. Art historically were geared towards male viewers, so there were a lot of nudes and good looking women to attract males. This can still be seen in today's version of art: advertising. Ralph Lauren has an ad where a beautiful woman is being kissed in what looks like a park by a man laying on top of her. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is a film that is explicitly about gender looking. (Movie similar to Disturbia)
More recently gender gazing is attempting to turn towards women: so that the men will be the objects of gazing. In advertising we have seen this is Abercrombie and Fitch ads as well as cologne ads. Overall to me this chapter seemed to focus on deeper thinking (gazing) in respect to the cinema, art, and advertising. Though some parts were hard to grasp, overall it wasn't too bad.
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