Margaret Atwood once wrote this:
Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.
Much thought has been given to how we understand the societal formation of women through the gaze of the powers-that-be. The emancipation of women from structures of power seems to be one of the primary drivers of modern-day feminism. For a variety of reasons, I support this emancipation, but I can’t help but feel a sort of pessimism towards its work.
To answer Atwood, I do not think that everything is run by male fantasies. Fantasies, surely, but too often men become the easy scapegoat to a much bigger problem. Young, white liberals are not interesting in this conversation, perhaps because it raises a head so large and grotesque that it defies simple solutions. The real problem is the fantasy of the human body and the consumer desire which runs its factory.
Atwood has noticed what few are willing or able to notice, that every movement, every moment, and every situation, is now dutifully cataloged, considered, and noted. There are new narratives spun for each act under the gaze of the New Surveillance. And where is the engine and fuel for this new machine? Atwood correctly notes that we are both, that we are our own voyeurs. And as these voyeurs, in the New Surveillance, we are flattened utterly into a system of actions with explanations, of questions with answers, and thirst with water abundant.
The French philosopher and social critic Roland Barthes writes that the consumer mythology “deprives the object of which it speaks of all History. In it, history evaporates.” We can see that what is essentially stripped away from us is our ambiguity. Everything becomes clear and focused. Barthes continues:
It is a kind of servant: it prepares all things, brings them, lays them out, the master arrives, it silently disappears: all that is left for one to do is to enjoy this beautiful object without wondering where it comes from...We can see all the disturbing things which this felicitous figure removes from sight: both determinism and freedom. Nothing is produced, nothing is chosen: all one has to do is to possess these new objects from which all soiling trace of origin or choice has been removed.
This is the lie of theater. In a play we see beautiful actors dancing across the stage, their beautiful faces lit by bright lights. And yet when their act is finished and you see them standing beside the theater-goers, you notice to your horror that you have been hoodwinked. Their faces are caked with makeup, which now looks grotesque by the soft light emanating from the ticket stand. They also speak brutishly, like young people from the city, instead of like the richly furnished Lords and Ladies of Denmark.
The stage has played a trick on you. You were fooled into believing that these people really were something altogether more simple than they are. This is what happens to women in the consumer gaze. We are fooled into thinking that these women are simple, that they are capable of only a few expressions, and that whatever ills or issues they bring to us can be easily attributed to the story we have given them. And so they have learned the game. What Atwood fails to understand is that the actor she speaks of has learned so completely the moves of her character, and hardly recognizes the game that is being played upon her. She struts and frets her hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
And so who is to blame? Men certainly must be blamed for their willingness to play the game, but we must be careful in our diagnosis of the problem. It is the case that every actor (except those designated as Fools) must be given the mask of Whore or the mask of Debaucher. Men not only gladly fill the roles given to them but become the easy villains of the story. We groan and scream at their impiety, their astounding stupidity, and their easy corruption, and we crow at their defeat, vindictively digging our thorn into their side. Of course, we never ask where they have come from, or what they really desire. They, too, have been deprived of all History.
Let it be said, a man must be held to the standard of his personal responsibility. This is not meant to question whether or not we should begin victim-blaming, and this does not contend with the fact that women are often victims of powers outside of their control. This is merely a critique of our techniques for helping emancipate women from the consumer gaze. We constantly wish to toss out the villain, but few think to burn the theater. Is it an issue of the male gaze, or is the male gaze a puppet held by a much more evil hand hiding in the shadows?