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Comment by trimethylpurine | Hacker News Reader

Berger had no credentials or education in anthropology or any science whatsoever but invented a whole movement that I think doesn't carry any scientific weight. His reputation is truly undeserved.

I think the fact that his work has been largely adopted by media experts, and is taught as dogma in film/media studies course work at the college level should be a strong signal that our ideas as a society about sex and body image are severely distorted and deeply problematic. Not in light of his work but because of it.

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What does anthopology have to do with Berger's work? He was an art critic and an artist, what makes his work unfit for being used in film/media studies that overlap with film criticism as a disciplince that, when looked from a broad perspective, is just a brunch of art criticism? I think the connection is pretty straightforward.

John Ruskin's ideas are also used in film studies even though he formulated them before film as a medium existed.

Sexual preferences are a subject well within the realm of anthropology, especially if the claim is that they arise from contemporary culture, art, ritual, etc.

Berger doesn't claim that.

Yeah, you're right, but there is much literature that does, largely stemming from the supposition that we can divine such knowledge from a painting. And that supposition is Berger's.

If I had to simplify Berger's thesis, I would say that there cannot be a complete objective interpretation of the image, "what it means" is context-dependent, where what's displayed, who's looking at it, what they experienced in life, and what mood they're in can change what they "see" in the image. Traditionally, image locations were relatively stable, so at least that aspect of "seeing" was controlled, but with the advance of technology, we can replicate images and embed them in different contexts with different purposes, and so art criticism and analysis should focus not only on the image in isolation but also on who and how distributes it, because that part of art (where it's displayed, by whom, to whom) carries meaning in itself. As I said, he was an art critic, so he focused on the methodology of how art can be analyzed.

I really don't know where you got the idea that he was saying that one can divine some knowledge from a painting or that paintings and culture influence our sexuality.

Edit: Spelling and punctuation. God, I really should enable a spellchecker. I'm a terrible speller, I apologize.

Tea leaves

You can apply a scientific method for the analysis itself if you wish to. It doesn't conflict with Berger's ideas from these essays.

I think you've overlooked some of Berger's claims.

I didn't. Berger himself was a Marxist and his analysis was often political (he wrote a lot but none of it made the impact as the Ways of Seeing which did become influencial in media and art criticism), but the Ways of Seeing largely talks about the methodology. He cites studies in the first essay to demonstrate how the context of a visual piece changes based on where the person sees it. His analyses didn't become mainstream and stayed confined mostly to Marxist circles (and he still didn't make claims about sexual preferences being formed by the culture), his methodology did though.

Where can I buy a contextometer?

I'm reaching way back here so correct me if I'm wrong.

Berger discussed the nude as a convention that tells you about ownership, power, and who the picture was made for.

Claude says that's chapters 3 and 5, so I'm fairly sure my memory serves.

That said, your summary is accurate. These claims aren't the primary topic of his work, so maybe I am being overly harsh on Berger.

Still, the claims have been influential. They do belong to him. And they've led to all manner of supposition about art, history, feminism, and human behavior.

I’m confused, so now that he is considered influential in the fields he lacked credentials for how is that in any way a negative

Unless you think those fields were scientifically rigorous until they decided to adopt his ideas?

Maybe you just disagree with the existence of “male gaze”

He's most certainly not considered influential in any scientific fields. You've misunderstood my comment.

I think maybe the feminist movements adopted his beliefs and repeated them infinitely to the extent that they've become as facts without any scientific basis. Regardless, I hear people regurgitating Berger-like beliefs in art museums around the world.

Male gaze, sure. (That's not Berger's btw. It's Mulvey using Berger beliefs. Great example.)

The idea that we can draw much knowledge about the owner of the painting of a fat woman, simply from the painting, is just not based in any science.

Hopefully that's more clear.

His work is most definitely not taught as dogma. I assure you, there are plenty of courses that will be happy to explain to you about the old masters.

Interesting. I'm happy to know that at least in some places it's being challenged.

It’s less that it’s being challenged and more that it’s never brought up

What's your major?

I minored in film/media around the mid 2000's and this was discussed in nearly every course.

Computer Science. I guess this kind of makes sense? His ideas are still a fairly new school of thought, so low-level GE classes probably won't really cover it, but more advanced ones will want to explore new perspectives for doing analysis

Can you expand on that and point me at resources in this topic? Interesting.

Berger claims we can know a lot about ownership and power based on paintings. That's not very well grounded in science.

Authors like Mulvey have taken this as fact and used it to make claims about sexuality.

And society generally believes this stuff, at present. That's my experience, anyway.

You could look to Laura Mulvey, Lynda Nead, Naomi Wolf, etc.

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