The Body And the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship

by Michele White

Rethinking the how the Internet/computer spectator is engaged, rendered, and regulated; theoretical models and case studies that range from text-based and graphical communication settings and women's webcams to male programmer's physical and psychic pain. Internet and computer users are often represented onscreen as active and empowered—as in AOL's striding yellow figure and the interface hand that appears to manipulate software and hypertext links. In The Body and the Screen Michele White suggests that users can more properly be understood as spectators rendered and regulated by technologies and representations, for whom looking and the mediation of the screen are significant aspects of engagement. Drawing on apparatus and feminist psychoanalytic film theories, art history, gender studies, queer theory, critical race and postcolonial studies, and other theories of cultural production, White conceptualizes Internet and computer spectatorship and provides theoretical models that can be employed in other analyses. She offers case studies and close visual and textual analysis of the construction of spectatorship in different settings. White shows that despite the onscreen promise of empowerment and coherence (through depictions of materiality that structure the experience), fragmentation and confusion are constant aspects of Internet spectatorship. She analyzes spectatorship in multi-user object-oriented settings (MOOs) by examining the textual process of looking and gazing, contrasts the experiences of the women's webcam spectator and operator, describes intentional technological failures in net art, and considers ways in which traditional conceptions of artistry, authorship, and production techniques persist in Internet and computer settings (as seen in the creation of virtual environment avatars and in digital imaging art). Finally, she analyzes the physical and psychic pain described by male programmers in Internet forums as another counternarrative to the common tale of the empowered user. Spectatorship, White argues, not only affects the way specific interfaces are understood but also helps shape larger conceptions of self and society.

Genres: Feminism

307 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Philip Cherny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will probably come across as an insensitive misogynist for saying this, but I would love to see more women new media theorists who do not feel the need to pull the “feminism card” in order add something “new” to the field of study. As of now, women new media theorists look scant in comparison to men, and the few extant tend to tug too hard on the feminist angle. The problem is that it slants some more interesting topics to talk about or stretches them too thin. The only two decent exceptions are N. Katherine Hayles and possibly Donna Haraway (if you can call her a new media theorist...and I should point out that Haraway does not take her own ideas as seriously as her followers do), who really brought something new to the table. And both of these scholars can discuss new media from a non-feminist angle (though they’re fated to always be asked feminist questions to every discussion panel or symposium they ever enter). Don’t get me wrong—I’m not arguing that feminist discussions aren’t relevant or that they should never be applied to new media studies. Nor am I claiming that feminist discussion has mostly been exhausted. I just think we need to be more sensitive with how we apply feminist theory and not just conveniently use it to carve out a niche and sell a point. Unfortunately, it seems that women writers are often expected to address feminist issues in order to be taken seriously (why men aren’t held to the same standards, I’m not sure.) E.g. some readers criticized Rachel Greene’s book Internet Art for not discussing feminist issues enough, even though she devoted an entire section and several other pages to cyberfeminism. How much do we really need to sufficiently talk about it and how much of it is just beating a dead horse?

[Aimée]

White, Michele. The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006.

I had almost given up on this book until I came to Chapter 4: The Aesthetic of Failure. This chapter discusses how the “Spectator’s engagement with net art aesthetics is informed by contemporary conceptions of art and new media” (White 2006: 87). The chapter cites the Oxford English dictionary’s definition of aesthetics as: the philosophy or theory or taste.” [White is one of the few scholars who make the move of consulting the dictionary to define the aesthetic.]

The chapter goes on to discuss how the field of aesthetics has been understood as a set of standards with which to judge art (based on visual, social, moral aspects). The chapter then goes on to discuss hot recent arguments insist that the social elements in the form of social and cultural meanings, values and beliefs also inform the domain of the aesthetic. “Aesthetic engagement is always an aspect of spectatorship since objects are understood through particular embodied positions, cultural values, beliefs and points of view” (White 2006: 87). White goes on to explain that people are also understood (judged?) by aesthetic criteria: “power is delivered to certain individuals through seemingly universal codes of beauty, which include particular body shapes and skin colors” (White 2006: 87).

[Diu · Rating 2 out of 5]

The logic goes like this : I want to show camgirls who refuse to how what male spectators want to see, because other reading would "risk damaging feminist politics, visibility, and empowerment".
I am not sure if this sort of mentality helps even the cause of feminism-the feminist politics is a priority over, (1) visibility of the counterexamples, and the general picture, (2) alternative interpretations.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a present from my buddy, for my 29th bday. Aw.