Diagnostic Essay

1. Read the attached book by John Berger, The Ways of Seeing. Take notes on how gender roles shapes the types of images that are produced and consumed in society.

ways-of-seeing-john-berger-5.7.pdf

2. Diagnostic Essay: In Berger's text, he states the following: "One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."

Find an image in advertising, either a still image or a video, in which the opposite is true. In other words, find an example in recent advertising in which men are no longer the watchers but are the watched. Or perhaps an example in which women are no longer being watched, but are the actors or surveyors. Describe the material of the image - literally what is happening in the video or on the page visually - in order to change this trend in image-making. How does the image, or moving image, change our perception of human/gender relations? Minimum 2 pages.