Chapter Three

Chapter three talks a great deal about modernity. This is associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of a market economy are the hallmarks of social progress. Modernity reached its height in the late nineteenth century when more people began moving towards the city and away from the rural areas. In modernity, technological advances were seen as a way of progress. However, if technology had not gotten as far as it has, would scientists still believe that we were in modernity? As society progresses we always believe we have made great advances, whether we have changed a lot or not. Therefore, isn't modernity always happening?

Penopticon means to be able to have authority without communication. The examples the text gives us is the Penopticon Penitentiary. This is where the prison is built a certain way so that the prisoners will always believe that a guard is watching them, whether one is there or not. This innate sense of always being watched will then make the prisoners behavior better and under control, and easier for the watchmen and guards. This is also like how surveillance cameras have become a part of society. We do not even notice most of them anymore. However, whenever they are needed, they are always there.

This chapter also talks about the gaze. According to Lacan, the gaze is a property of the object and not the subject who looks. It is a process in which the object functions to make the subject look, making the subject appear to himself or herself as lacking. This means that whenever something catches our eye or whenever we are interested in something we look at, the person who is gazing focuses on and puts all of their thoughts into that object, ignoring everything around it.

Gender also plays a role in gazing. For example, Laura Mulvey criticizes Hollywood and the cinema because her theory is that they depict women as passive and only there to be gazed at  - "to be looked-at-ness". However, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window proves this theory wrong. In the movie, Jeffries is injured, and to keep from going insane in his apartment, he gazes out his window at all of his neighbors all day. He comes to learn their "lives" and habits by doing so, but also reveals one of his neighbors is a murderer. His girlfriend, Lisa, would be the "looked at" subject that Mulvey talks about. However, Lisa is not the typical woman that is just gazed upon. Instead, Lisa is active and does all of the investigating. In the end, it is Lisa that provides the evidence that Thorvald, the neighbor, murdered his wife, proving Mulvey's theory wrong.