The Left Gaze

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Trevor's got an in-depth analysis of the "Gee" video and the male gaze or absence thereof. If I'm interpreting his basic point right, it's that the video is about girls having fun with girls, not about how they appear to some guy — or maybe more emphatically, it's about the girls having fun with girls while abandoning the gaze of some guy. As far as it goes, this analysis seems right, and matches what I think about Miss A's live routine for "Breathe," which is that it's not about some guy making them breathless; rather, the supposed breathlessness is a pretext for the young women* to clown around with each other.

Except I don't think that puts the issue to rest, not by a long shot. What I find limited in Trevor's analysis is that he's talking about the story in the video but he's not talking about the story of the video in the world. For instance, I'm looking at the video. So's Trevor. So are you. I don't see that the video has subtracted our eyes.

An incomplete list of gazes, gazers, etc. that might be relevant:

--The characters in the video
--The performers in the video
--Who the videomakers envision might be looking at the video
--The videomakers themselves (incl. performers, costumers, editors, financiers, etc.)
--The assumptions the videomakers make about the audiences for the video, about the audiences' expectations regarding music etc., audiences' role in fandom and their vision of the world, and about how the audiences are likely to use the video, etc.**
--The experiences and assumptions of the videomakers themselves about video, music, life; their vision of potential worlds etc.
--The actual audiences for the video and how they see such videos; their visions of the world and of potential worlds; how they use the video in their lives
--The people writing about the video; the writers' assumptions and visions etc. and their assumptions about their readers' assumptions and visions etc.
--The social classes/categories of the aforementioned (which obv. include age and gender but include a lot of other stuff too)
--How all these gazes, gazers, uses, etc. may change over time, the use of the video not being fixed

( More gazing, plus footnotes )

2 true Sone here

Those of you who don't frequent the SNSD Free For All missed The Adventure Of Taeyeon And The Moth:

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Favorite YouTube comments:

"This is gross, it wasn't necessary to kill the moth
How can people celebrate this? you guys are sick!"

"2 true SONE here. One willing to die and one willing to kill for Taeyeon's attention."

("Sones" is the name for SNSD fans.)