Apertures and Exposure: The Photographic Gaze and Control
Photography has been used by a variety of people, in a variety of social standings, in a variety of ways. It is both art to be admired, and a tool to be used. One way that the medium has been utilized is in the struggle for control. By solidifying people, places, moments into objects through one’s viewfinder, one can assert their view and shape what others see. As Susan Sontag says, “One can’t possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images” (On Photography 128). As films are also made with a camera, they allow for the same conversations to be had as photography while being able to deliver an extended narrative.
Lino Brocka’s 1989 film Orapronobis fictionalizes mostly real events in Philippine history post-Marcos dictatorship. It puts forth the argument that the early Aquino administration is not much different from the time of Marcos. The vigilante groups that were encouraged to fight for democracy are acting as fascist cults themselves, terrorizing the local population through intimidation, cannibalism, and murder. To underscore this, two different posters of actor Sylvester Stallone are displayed in the film, first as the rogue police officer in 1986’s Cobra and another as one of his signature characters, John Rambo. Both are displayed in each of the main antagonists’ base of operations, the former in a colonel’s office and the latter in a paramilitary group’s hideout. Both speak to a fascistic idea of a single man defying the law to fight what he deems a “bad guy.” Both are displayed alongside a president, the former with Aquino and the latter with Marcos, linking the two. These posters hang above both characters, it is more accurate to say that the photos (and the aspirational figures they represent) own them more than they own the photos.
This also reflects the embracing of a colonialist point of view, as these are American films in a Filipino context. Malek Alloula, speaking from the perspective of an Algerian who has seen the women of his land captured on film by a probing eye, claimed the postcard as a latecomer to colonialism that has nevertheless made an impact through the infatuation it elicits (318). In a former colony, is a poster of a powerful white man the reverse side of the postcard of a marginalized brown woman?
In a country in flux, the act of photography is used in the film as meaning-making, weapons in the struggle for control. Cameras are present throughout the movie, serving as stationary transmitters of ideas. Conversations from talk shows are interspersed between scenes, expositing on the state of the country at the time and the ideological battles that are happening. The conversations range from asking for peace, to advocating for vigilantism, to endorsing the titular cult under the guise of supporting democracy. Like all weapons, it can be used by any side, but those with power wield it more effectively. The most insidious interview is the last one, where the aforementioned colonel is lying about the horrific events that had just transpired, claiming that the brutally murdered hostages, which included the protagonist’s former girlfriend and child, were armed communist rebels who fought back. With no one to challenge his claims, this becomes the truth. A handshake between the colonel and the journalist seals the deal.
Control does not have to be political either, it can be personal. 1966’s Blow-Up presents a photographer named Thomas, in the mod era of London, and he is suffering from an identity crisis. He works in the fashion photography field, and is quite successful at it, but finds it a dissatisfying field. He stays at flophouses overnight to take photos of laborers, to find something to photograph with social relevance. He says he is “sick of the bitches” and wants money to be free. When asked what he would be free to do, he has no response. The control that he is searching for is personal meaning. He thinks he finds this meaning when he, using his camera, seems to have uncovered a murder and met an intriguing woman having an affair in a single afternoon. He tries to probe deeper into this mystery, blowing up the photo of the supposed murder repeatedly, until the image loses all meaning. His attempts to blackmail the woman leads nowhere, with her and the photos vanishing from sight. With no murder mystery, no woman, and no fulfillment from these that he was hoping for, Thomas loosens his grip on the camera, plays imaginary tennis with some mimes, and simply fades away.
“Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment,” Sontag writes (87), summing up what Thomas goes through in the film. With a life that comes across as purely transactional but with no clear idea of what he wants for himself, no wonder he gets sick of the sex, the photoshoots and the mod lifestyle. Yet in this ending, he finds himself fully detached and as such, has a tabula rasa. As the director Michelangelo Antonioni says, “at the end the photographer has understood a lot of things, including how to play with an imaginary ball — which is quite an achievement” (Rose). Perhaps he has other paths ahead of him.
Of course, men are not the only ones to take control of a camera. Eyes of Laura Mars from 1978 follows a photographer named Laura Mars, who photographs scenes of violence involving women. She is considered a controversial figure in the photography world, as she is accused of betraying and demeaning women. As one model states in rebuttal, “I think what Laura’s saying with the work is ‘Okay America, okay world, you are violent. You are pushing all this murder on us, so here it comes right back at you, and we’ll use murder to sell deodorant, so you’ll just get bored with murder’, right?”
The film inverts the classic dynamics of a man holding the camera and dealing with sexual and violent imagery. Laura’s photographic style and subject matter were produced by and patterned after the controversial photographer Helmut Newton and Rebecca Blake (Arnold). Having a woman on and off the screen taking these misogynistic photos invites questions of what changes, if anything, when the marginalized use the tools of the dominant.
Laura later confronts the violence she deals with, as she starts getting horrific visions from the eyes of a killer stalking and murdering people she is close to. Then the eyes of the killer get closer, and she sees herself. She asks Neville, her lover and the only police officer who believes her visions, what the motive could be for wanting to harm her. He replies that either someone is jealous of her success or that they feel she is promoting violence and perversion through her work and it has to be stopped. Neville reveals that he is the one responsible for the crimes, and that Laura can either love him, or kill him. With Laura unable to do neither, Neville makes the choice for her, helping her pull the trigger.
For attempting to control the violent dynamics of gender, Laura is scorned and threatened, while her loved ones are murdered in her full view. Feminist film theorists such as Linda Williams would argue that this is typical for films where a woman attempts to look the way that men do, which threatens male power (65). It is telling how even her final physical action of the film is done for her by a man. She is able to recompose herself and assert her own identity, but the film ends on an ambiguous tone, more melancholy than anything. Will Laura, having survived this experience, continue with her photography or not? Having finished our time with this world, the only thing left is to speculate.
In the last chapter of On Photography, Sontag puts forth the claim that the real world may be in the process of being replaced with an image-world. Could it not be argued that film is creating the most of these image-worlds? No matter how true to life it may strive to be, it is still a world crafted through the lens of other people. That is, for about two hours at a time, we choose to look at a sequence of events beyond our control and accept it as reality. And considering how the culture wars of today are being fought, perhaps for some people, it is.
Works Cited
Alloula, Malek. The Colonial Harem. 1986.
Arnold, Gary. “‘Laura Mars’: Not Even Good On the Eyes.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Aug. 1978, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/08/03/laura-mars-not-even-good-on-the-eyes/69c514d4–2c12–4af1–9d6b-6046fe1ba120.
Blow-Up. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, performances by David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Peter Bowles and John Castle, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1966.
Eyes of Laura Mars. Directed by Irvin Kershner, performances by Faye Dunaway, Tommy LeeJones, Raul Julia, and Rene Auberjonois, Columbia Pictures. 1978.
Orapronobis. Directed by Lino Brocka, performances by Phillip Salvador, Gina Alajar, Dina Bonnevie, Joel Lamangan, and Bembol Roco, Bernadette Associates International. 1989.
Rose, Steve. “Blown up — How Cinema Captured the Dark Heart of the Swinging 60s.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Apr. 2016, www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/21/blown-up-how-cinema-captured-the-dark-heart-of-the-swinging-60s.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. RosettaBooks, 2005.
Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, by Barry Keith Grant, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 61–66.
