The Role of Gaze and Viewer Perspective in Emotional Elicitation in CVR: The Case study of "The Fury"(2023)
The Fury (Shirin Neshat, 2023) became my favorite VR film at LFF Expanded, continuing through a virtual reality work that transports the audience into the violent memories of an Iranian woman's detention. This piece brought me a profound emotional experience and can be considered the enlightenment of my CVR project. The intense emotional experience it brought made me ponder whether CVR is more suited to expressing trauma and memory, as I have never felt such sensations in traditional screen cinema. Additionally, it made me think about the reasons why this work could evoke such strong emotional engagement. Firstly, I believe one reason is the extensive use of gaze. Here, the gaze is not just being gazed upon but also actively gazing. Laura Mulvey innovatively introduced the concept of the Male gaze in her article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (2006). Laura Mulvey believes that the pleasure of viewing comes from two parts, the first being scopophilic, “from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight” (2006, p10), and the other "developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen" (2006, p10).
In The Fury (2023), both types of viewing are present. Firstly, when we experience the gaze of male officers in first-person perspective gazing at a female dancer, the male gaze is no longer exclusive to men but to every viewer. I intensely felt the "pleasure" of gazing at a woman as a sexual object. My eyes moved over the body of the female dancer, as if touching her skin.
The Fury (Shirin Neshat, 2023)
However, this gaze quickly switches to the first-person perspective of the female dancer being gazed upon, where I am this female dancer. Surrounded by officers, I rotate my gaze, but I cannot escape being gazed upon. The officers' gazes continuously meet mine, and if I choose to meet their gaze, this uncomfortable emotional experience intensifies.
The Fury (Shirin Neshat, 2023)
The first-person perspective allows me to experience the pleasure of gazing as a male officer, as well as the intense emotional discomfort of the female dancer being gazed upon. As a woman, experiencing the perspective of a male officer is unprecedented for me, and I guess the experience for male viewers in the first-person perspective of the female dancer being gazed upon is also unprecedented. The feeling of women being gazed upon as sexual objects is effectively conveyed to every viewer, exciting me.
Official Trailer of The Fury (2023)
Mulvey also mentioned another type of viewing pleasure that is better embodied in CVR. In traditional screen cinema, this pleasure comes from the fascination with and recognition of the likeness, combining the self with the object on the screen, where the self is temporarily lost (2006, p9). In CVR, the boundaries of the self are even more blurred, and we fully enter into the world of the story. This increases the pleasure of viewing, which is a deeper form of emotional engagement, namely the loss of self.
The Fury (2023) excels in expressing trauma and memory for another reason due to the provision of multiple perspectives. Nicolae (2018, p174) believes that CVR eliminates the distance between the viewer and the screen by providing three different perspectives, thus better engaging the audience emotionally:
Spectator (third-person perspective): In this mode, the characters in the virtual reality film do not notice the existence of the audience, and the audience's role is more like an invisible bystander.
Hero (first-person perspective): The audience is placed at the center of the story, experiencing events from the protagonist’s perspective but retaining their own identity and characteristics.
Stand-in (first-person perspective of a non-protagonist): In this mode, the viewer's viewpoint merges with that of a character in the film, temporarily "playing" that role, deeply experiencing the psychological and emotional state of the character.
These three perspectives complement each other in The Fury (2023), better helping the audience understand the experiences of the female protagonist. Under the hero (first-person perspective), the audience can experience the oppression and discomfort of being surrounded and gazed upon by male officers, which deepens emotional involvement. In the stand-in (first-person perspective of a non-protagonist), we gaze at the female dancer from the perspective of male officers, becoming the perpetrator, thus understanding the trauma of the female protagonist on a deeper level. The spectator (third-person perspective) appears when the audience is immersively emotionally involved in the first-person perspective. At first, I was not used to the sudden switch to the third-person perspective. But after several times, I found that the third-person perspective ended my strong emotional resonance, giving me time and opportunity to rationally think about the content. When I felt intense anger and helplessness from the perspective of the female dancer being gazed upon, the sudden third-person perspective gave me time to think about the content, rather than just being immersed in the emotions. Therefore, I believe these three perspectives interact to help the audience understand trauma and individual memory. Therefore, this also becomes a reason why CVR can better express trauma and memory; we need not only to experience trauma and memory, but also to understand it. Although CVR viewers are not allowed to have a safe and contemplative space to experience this artwork, we have had the opportunity to see the artwork from within (Nicolae, 2018; Bartlem 2005).
Bibliography
Johnny Azari, 2023 "The Fury" - OFFICIAL TRAILER - Shirin Neshat.24 January. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjcM0WZzv0 [Accessed 20 August 2024]
Mulvey, L., 2006. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Media and cultural studies: Keyworks, pp.342-352.
Nicolae, D.F., 2018. Spectator perspectives in virtual reality cinematography. The witness, the hero and the impersonator. Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 20(2), pp.168-180.
