Staring: How We LookFrom a very young age we are told not to stare, and one hallmark of maturation is the ability to resist (or at least hide) our staring behavior. And yet, rarely do we master the impulse. Despite the complicated role it plays in our development, and its unique brand of visual enticement, staring has not been considered before as a suitable object for socio-cultural analysis. What is it about certain kinds of people that makes it impossible to take our eyes off them? Why are some visual stimuli irresistible? Why does staring produce so much anxiety? Drawing on examples from art, media, fashion, history and memoir, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores the factors that motivate it, and considers the targets and the effects of the stare. A bodily inventory then enumerates how stares actually operate in daily life. A section on "Bodies" focuses on the question of size and scale as key indicators of normalcy, while certain body parts show themselves to be disproportionately arresting, as passages on "Faces" "Hands" and "Breasts" reveal. A concluding chapter on "Beholding" considers the frisson at play between starer and staree and offers an alternative way of understanding visual communication between people. Featuring over forty illustrations, Staring captures the stimulating combination of symbolic, material and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible while endeavoring to shift the usual response to staring, shame, into an engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this book advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors. |
Contents
Why Do We Stare? | 3 |
WHAT IS STARING? | 13 |
Regulating Our Looks | 63 |
Copyright | |
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Alison Lapper American amputated appearance armless attention Auld baroque staring beauty behavior breast cancer calls civil inattention conjoined twins Connolly cultural curiosity David Roche Deaf disability display dominance staring Doyne dwarfism dwarfs engaged staring Erving Goffman ethical example expect eyes face face-to-face face-work facial familiar figure film freak Frye gawk gaze gender gesture giants Goffman hands Harriet McBryde Johnson human variation images intense interaction interpersonal Jo Spence Johnson Kevin Connolly living Lomnicki look Lori Lucy Grealy Matuschka modern monsters mother mutual narrative normal novelty ordinary ourselves Ovitz performances person Peter Dinklage photographs political portraits prosthetic Reba recognition recognize response Robert Wadlow Roche's scenes of staring Schappell shape social Sontag spectacle stareable stareable sights starer and staree staring encounters startling status stigmatized story suggests tion understanding unusual bodies viewers vision Wadlow Weegee wheelchair woman women wonder words York York Times Magazine