The Power of the Gaze: "When Captives becomes their own Captors. TheElf on the Shelf represents more than a holiday tradition."

“This architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.”-Michel Foucault

       Preface: I recogonize I am biased in my own gender as well as flawed and broken relying on God for continued growth and transformation.    

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is probably most known as the father of utilitarianism.  This philosophical view is based on the notion of maximizing the most utility that brings about the most good for the most people.  Implicit in this view is the idea that the means by which the greater good is accomplished is justified by the end results.  Some have reduced this school of thought this way, “The ends justifies the means.”  Bentham’s lesser known contribution to western philosophy and social construction is his architectural model for the emerging penitentiary industry of the 18th century entitled the Panopticon.  For the sake of keeping this essay somewhat brief and manageable, I want to provide a succinct explanation of Bentham’s Panopticon.

Panopticon

The Panopticon was Bentham’s vision for creating an efficient facility for the purpose of supervising criminals in a penitentiary.  Bentham’s contribution came during a transition from the practice of penal colonies (i.e. Australia) and penal ships (putting the insane and convicted on a ship to house them away from society) to fixed structures or facilities to house criminals.  This shift in penal philosophy was more than just the logistics of domiciling the convicted, it was Bentham's unique worldview that criminals could be reformed.  In order to bring his panopticon blueprint to reality, it required making a sales pitch to various countries that his new prison model would be both efficient to manage and productive in reforming the criminals.  This is where Bentham’s genius is highlighted.  In order for the panopticon to be efficient and cost effective, it needed to be managed by few individuals.  The architectural renderings of centralized guard houses with prisoner cells located in radius to the center created a vantage point where one person could essentially view the entire radius, or at least give the appearance of supervision, while never leaving the guard room.  Through other 18^th century technology, Bentham’s plan even had a model of tubes that connected the cells to the guard shack allowing the guard to listen into each cell.  All the while, the guard shack was designed with tinted windows so that the people being watched were never fully aware the shack was manned. 

            
From this 18^th century model, which never made it to construction during Bentham’s life, comes our modern day school and prison architectural renderings.  The idea of keeping the power holders in centralized locations and those under surveillance on the periphery is the ubiquitous model of construction today.  Transcending the architecture of facilities, Bentham’s panopticon exposed a psychological effect that is still relevant today.  When individuals are housed or kept under constant surveillance, over time, they will begin to self-monitor.  The self-monitoring initially is to appease the power holders so as not to get into trouble.  This self-monitoring appeasement later turns into a subconscious self-monitoring where, essentially, the persons under surveillance becomes their own captors.  They subconsciously self-regulate to meet the initial demands of their captors without even realizing they are perpetuating their own captivity.

            
Some two hundred years later, French philosopher Michel Foucault picks up Bentham’s Panopticon and identifies his physical structure as a philosophical construct that can be employed by power holders to effectively and efficiently keep individuals that are powerless under oppressive control.  The genius of this model is its efficiency.  Rather than needing an expensive police force to control large groups of people, implementing panoptic practices of constant gaze and the appearance of constant surveillance effectively and psychologically changes the minds and practices of people so that they begin to police themselves.  For a simple example of panopticism, the use of traffic cameras achieves this goal.  In our city there are cameras that are actually working and from time to time send me a ticket in the mail when I make an illegal right hand turn on red and then there are other “dummy” cameras that keep me honest.  The infrequent tickets are just enough to alter my psyche so that when I see a camera, real or not, I conform my behavior to the wishes of the camera owners. 

Another example of panopticism are the elevated boxes that are located in large parking lots that are designed to give the appearance that there are either individuals or cameras in the structure “watching” over the area.  The idea is to deter criminals because they are under the impression they are being watched.  These mobile police cranes get moved around town to give the appearance that they are effective in deterring crime. 

The panoptic lesson is if you wish to manage an individual or groups of individuals create an environment with the perception of constant gaze making sure that from time to time there are actual moments of surveillance, and the individuals under surveillance will self-regulate their behavior in compliance with the power of the gaze.

We take full advantage of the power of panopticism with our girls this time of year with the “Elf on the Shelf” method.  We introduce the elf and tell our little girls that he is Santa’s helper.  Put in panoptic terms, the elf is Santa’s gaze.  Through parent trickery and slight of hand, we have them convinced the elf moves about freely at night to new locations. This practice keeps the idea fresh in the minds of our kids that the elf is actually conducting surveillance.  Side note, this is a pretty twisted practice that probably has its roots in B-rated horror movies from the 80s where stuffed animals came alive and tormented their owners.  And yet, this cheap method of artificial surveillance, when practiced frequently enough, provides parents the benefits of achieving behavior modification.  Our children learn on their own that the elf, or in Casion terms, the Big Eye in the sky sees everything. 

Allow me to take a slight philosophical left turn with Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s panopticism and draw the analogy with the power of the male gaze in our culture.  It is painfully obvious that our sexualized culture is ubiquitous.  And it is terrible to think that the first place our girls begin to experience the power of the male gaze is in school.  Schools in this country are the public spaces that undergird practices of male gaze that over time plant seeds of male surveillance in the minds of our young girls.  This, coupled with media that constantly portray female value as being directly connected to male approval, constructs a worldview for girls in our culture, at a young age, that they get their attention through their looks and their utility to a male.

I am not pretending to have the solutions for all of the ways our western society creates innocuous systems and practices of sexualizing our kids, I am, however, taking a more keen eye to these institutions and media conglomerates (Disney) that are actively telling my girls that their identity and value are connected to how a male will perceive them.  Remember, the psychological power of the gaze, in this context, have our girls self-monitoring their own fashion, sense of value and purpose, and body image to meet the expectations of those behind the gaze.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the power holders are men.  As a result, it is impossible to escape the sexualizing gaze that finds safe haven in nearly every aspect and institution in this country. 

To put this in even more direct language, we have set up systems and institutions that specialize in trafficking our girls for the purpose of appeasing the male gaze.  Over time, our young girls grow up and self-traffic with the misguided idea that our society's definition of beauty and utility are actually their own views of beauty and utility.  When this power is left unchecked, we grow up girls that become moms that perpetuate these panoptic principles in their own parenting with their daughters.  When insecure moms are still struggling with their own sense of identity and utility because they are still living to appease the power of the gaze, they end up passing their adult insecurities on to their daughters.  

The ultimate expression of the power of the gaze is the generational self-monitoring and behavior modification that takes place by moms with their daughters. Caveat: I am not suggesting that we take the puritanical approach to parenting.  To suggest that our girls and young ladies cannot wear fashion that is culturally relevant is an easy way out.  Of course, wisdom and discretion is important for both genders as it relates to just how much of our culture we embrace.  Also, to get the guys off the hook by saying to our young ladies, "Just stop wearing those kinds of clothes" is not acceptable.  I recommend the Job 31:1 approach, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman."  This is a great opportunity for parents to talk about disciplining our eyes, minds, and hearts to look upon others in ways that glorify God and affirm value of others.

Conclusion:

How does one negotiate a male-gaze dominated society?  It starts with a healthy and frequent dose of God’s truths spoken frequently to our girls.  The identity, value, and purpose of our girls are not connected to their ability to appease the gaze.  Rather, our children are infinitely valuable because they are made in the image of God and Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection gives them hope and value.  Put differently, the power of the Gospel has the ability to free our girls from the generational bondage of insecurity that manifests in dysfunctional relationships and in some cases sexually broken relationships. 

         
 For the sake of redundancy on exposing the power of panopticism, well-intentioned parents don’t even realize we are doing the work for the enemy by maintaining the very beliefs and practices of our hyper sexualized culture in our homes by allowing networks like Disney to innocuously shape the minds of our boys and girls to a set of values and norms that are NOT grounded on God’s truth.  As a result, the long reach of Disney is engaging in a  battle for the minds and hearts of our kids as well as successfully converting our children into consumers.  The consumerism of our children is another essay for another time. 

Disclaimer: My intention is not to pass judgment on families, Disney, or schools.  This social commentary is intended to be introductory material to the power of the panopticon that shapes our minds and hearts and converts us into our own captors engaging in practices that tighten the very shackles that keep us locked down in a confinement of insecurity, purposelessness, and, in some cases, a low view of God’s will to bring hope and happiness.