G. Anna Leeper

Position Paper

Anne Friedberg, “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity”

           

In "The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity:Flâneur/Flâneuse" Anne Friedberg discusses the 'extension of the visible' in the nineteenth century through various newly developed apparatuses.  The idea of the 'Flâneur' and his gaze is also discussed in relation to gender and as a figure whose 'mobilized gaze is contrasted with the fixed gazes of those using the pre-cinematic viewing technology .

 

The 'panoptic system' of viewing is one in which the viewer observes from an unseen central point and is able to see everyone else who is confined in this system.  This mode of viewing involves a power structure where the observer exercises power over those observed, through their awareness of an unseen observer.  Friedberg also analyzes the panorama and the diorama with the visual experiences they offer. Unlike the panopticon, the panorama can transport the viewer spatially and temporally by surrounding him with sights from another time or place.  While the panorama viewer remains stationary, the diorama shifts to a more mobile gaze as the stage was able to rotate, periodically changing the audience's view. 

 

The most mobile form of gazing is exercised by the 'flâneur,'  defined by Friedberg as "a model for an observer who follows a style of visuality different from the model of power and vision so frequently linked with modernity."  Baudelaire's concept of the flâneur, which relies heavily on freedom and the ability to move and view, is also discussed.  This model of the 'flâneur' is a male ideal, due to Baudelaire's language and the fact that women could not freely move and view the urban landscape.  Friedberg, however, argues for the existence of the 'flâneuse,' a mobile female observer, during the nineteenth century.  The flâneuse's gaze had to be exercised in spaces created just for it, usually shopping areas.

 

Is it valid to dub the practice of  independent female shopping as 'flânerie' ?  How  does Friedberg re-work Baudelaire's concept of the 'flâneur' in devising her own definition?  Even when one removes the requirement of being male from Baudelaire's 'flânerie,' the women moving through shopping districts seems to bear little resemblance to the picture of the urbane individual freely wandering the city, watching the crowds that Baudelaire paints. The flâneur seems to observe for his own pleasure and understanding, even simply for the sake of observing, but not to further someone else's commercial interests.  It is at least partially admitted by Friedberg that the scenes available to the flâneuse are not authentic but contrived -- arguably as contrived as those in the panoramas and dioramas.  According to Friedberg's own definition of the flâneur, the flâneur's visual experience should be separate from a model of 'power and vision.'  Yet one could say that this commercial version of flânerie that women had access to intimately connects 'power and vision' -- one looks and if one has money one has the power to buy.  In turn, the merchants exercise power over the flâneuses by engineering the only public environment in which they are free to move independently, by creating in them desires and needs they had not formerly had.

 

Because Baudelaire's concept was so intricately connected with being male, it was necessary for Friedberg to re-define 'flâneur' somewhat, so that a female version could exist.  What particularly struck me was that because of the emphasis on visuality disconnected from power, and the lack of emphasis on mobility, could it be argued that observing the scenes of a diorama or panorama is also 'flânerie'?  If so was this Friedberg's intention?