Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 15:41:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Roger Warren Beebe <rwb1-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: Point-of-view, primary id and all that jazz


so, yeah, malgosia you are not alone.  spectator theory as it has come 
down to us (from the lacanians at least) doesn't seem to allow for a
great variety of spectatorial responses.  (this is where i come in.)
Some of the feminist spectator theorists seem to have increased the 
complexity of the basic Metzian/Baudrian models in their debates on
the place of the female spectator in the masculinized theory of the
gaze, although there is a lot that still goes unaccounted.  (Camp
is one of those "abnormal" (read: resistant) responses that seems not
to have found a place in any of these theories.  Nor have slumming,
Brechtian spectating, &c.  Nor even is the simple spectacular pleasure
of seeing the chase scenes in Top Gun adequately accounted for.)

Does this mean that spectator theory always does some kind of violence
to "abnormal" responses?  I don't think so, but it definitely requires
some loosening of the rigid confines of the dominant spectatorial 
paradigms.  

You are not alone,
Roger.

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