1. One of the main premises in this episode is Berger’s distinction between nakedness and the nude female form as it is traditionally represented in Western art. What are the differences between these things and why are these differences significant? Do they apply to images you have encountered in your experience?

Berger thinks nudity is immoral, and the audience’s eyes make them feel shame and become more ordinary. Some people think nudity is an art because the differences in the art are different in everyone’s mind. It is important to keep your own point of view and respect the opinions of others.

2. According to Berger, how have Western works of art depicted and defined different roles for men and women? According to Berger, what is the significance of this? Do these depictions influence the ways we think of the differences between men’s and women’s roles in society today?

From the works of art, we can see that most of the descriptions from women come from men because at that time men’s status was higher than women’s. in the painting, women don’t wear clothes, but men wear clothes, which shows that women’s status was lower at that time. In today’s society, gender discrimination still exists, but it has been greatly improved. Especially in developed countries, Women are in the same position as men.

3. How does Berger describe the significance of the mirror in paintings depicting women? What does this object say about the ways beauty is defined in these paintings? What does Berger say about the depiction of the female gaze in the paintings he discusses? What kinds of more contemporary examples does he relate this to, and what significance does he draw from these connections between older European art and depictions of women today?

The mirror is a symbol of women’s vanity. Women regard themselves as scenery, while men look at the scenery. It also expresses men’s hypocrisy. And the description of women can make men have the pleasure of peeping and personal interest. Beautiful women are often sold and used as gifts. This is the difference between gender evidence.

1. Being naked means being yourself, being who you are. But when we talk about nude it means being watched by someone else. I believe the most significant difference between them is the loss of the essence. When women are depicted nude in art they get material values, being seen as an object. We can use as an example the Brazilian Carnaval, women are exposed seminaked in the most commercials and advertisements as a trophy.

2. According to Berger, the paintings do not represent the women’s own feelings but their submission for the men, they are created for the male satisfaction. The pictures represent women being constantly judged by men, where the most beautiful women will be “chosen” by them. The woman is seen as a sexual object. I believe that it is still possible to see many men who see women as an object, as cleaner or as someone that needs to be there to serve them, as represented in the depictions.

3. In Berger’s description the mirror is represented as a vanity symbol of women. He also highlights that the pictures are painted for the men’s pleasure. While a woman looks at herself through the mirror, she’s thinking of the way men will see her. During his interview some of the women described the paintings as unreal, saying that the older European art paintings do not show dynamism and women are represented in a humiliation context, portraying women as “inanimate pleasure symbol”.

In the European painting, there are differences between nakedness and nude. Theses differences are more visible for women than men because of the tradition. For John Berger, being necked is to be oneself and being nude is to be seeing necked by others and not yet recognize by oneself. That mean we can compare nudity to the object such as how we see women in the art without clothes. Therefore, we can realize that this form of women representation can be applied to pictures and we can illustrate this fact in many images we have seen in our life.

At the beginning of this episode, Berger said that men dream to women and women dream to themselves. Also, he mentioned that women are taught how to appear to others, particularly to men because in the western tradition, the community taught women that their success depend to the way they look like for men. In this situation, western works of art consider women as an object that the beauty can be appreciate by men. These depictions have influenced the way we think, the place of women in our society. But in our modern society, women are fighting to be considered not as men’s objects but as a person who has the right as men. In the episode, we see the conversation between Berger and some women around the table, we can understand how these women want the society change the perception of western tradition painting related to the nudity of women.
During the presentation, we see women using mirror to look themselves and Berger shows some arts where women are looking themselves in the mirror. What are they looking for by using the mirror? Are they looking the imperfection of the form of their body? we see that mirror is very important for women, they use it to see how they look or how they should look like. Women pay attention to every detail that has a connection to their face and body, they are worry about their beauty, they want to be perfect in the eyes of men. According to Berger, behind this glace, there is judgments. Even today, this old European art still affects the society where we are living. In our daily life we see that women are more interested to their beauty than men.

1.According to this episode, John Berger explains that to be naked is to be oneself and to be nude is to be seen naked by others which is not recogonized for oneself.  In Berger’s view of it, he emphasizes the initiative of being naked and being nude totally depends on other people. His opinion about the difference between nakedness and nude is kind of different from Kenneth Clark which makes us have deeper understanding of those old European oil paintings.

2.In this video, we can see the majority of male roles in those paintings are dressed. On the contrary, almost all of them are naked or forced to be naked. Men get huge pleasure from those beautiful and sexy women’s bodies. For those male viewers, women are a kind of attractive artwork but not the real individuals. The criteria for a man to judge a woman is pretty face and good figure. I think that is so superficial. However, this outdated view on women still influence people deeply. Nowadays, some people still hold the view that the value of women is to please men rather than realize their own value in life. So hundreds and thousands women can’t get the equal rights with men. They are restricted from going out to work. Even some of them get jobs due to their excellent abilities, they are still discriminated against at work.

3.According to Berger, the significance of the mirror in those paintings is to show the women’s vanity. All of those paintings convey the same concept to us that the beauty of women is defined by male. The female characters in paintings need to cater men’s tastes. So the gaze of them is out of the frame and towards those male viewers which seems that they are seducing them. Except for their gaze, there is anohter important point we should notice is that all of those nudes don’t draw the hair on women’s bodies. Because hair will reduce the sexuality of male sepectators. As I said in question #2, all of these arrangement is to please male. Additional, a female interviewee appeared in the second half of the video mentions that women lose their dynamism as well as their own activities. They are always waiting for the reactions from men.

Q1. Nudity and nakedness do not wear clothes in some sense. However, according to Berger in the video, he has a different opinion. When people are naked, the naked body becomes nude. Nudity is a way of showing naked body. Naked is a person without clothes. In the video, this is important because it implies how people should understand the different relationships between men and women in society in these bare paintings.

Q2. Male nudity represents victory, glory and power, while female nudity is a symbol of fertility, reproduction and sexuality. It exposes social inequality between men and women. Women are used for viewing and are regarded as objects. women are watched by men, so women are always paying attention to their own behavior and appearance. Women are seen as a landscape or object in the painting, and the viewer is the owner of the painting which means women belong to them. In today’s society, these situations still exist. In some families, women still play housewives, and then men make money to support their families. Women belong to men, and men occupy women in these families.

Q3. Mirrors appear in many nude paintings, and it is common for women to use mirrors in Western oil paintings. The appearance of the mirror is to show the vanity of women. a woman cares a lot about whether she is beautiful, so she always sees how she looks in a man’s eyes, whether a woman’s face and body meet the standards of a man. Women satisfy themselves by satisfying men。This mirror also means that in addition to men judging women, women are also judging themselves. At the same time, he connects the gazes of these women with some pornographic magazines. This gaze is like a temptation that tempts people to produce Unlimited reverie. 

Question 1:

According to Berger, nakedness means someone without clothes and it could be recognized, but  nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized by oneself .Besides , he also mentions that a nude has to be seen as an object.Honestly , I don’t realize they have different meanings before watching this video , but I do now.It’s quite significant to distinguish the meanings of  these two words because they are totally different with each other.We usually use the word “naked” to state somebody’s status , it’s more like an objective description. However , when we use the “word” nude to describe a person , it probably means that person is naked for particular reason .Therefore , I suppose “nude” contains deeper meanings on the base of “nakedness”.

Question 2:

Due to the huge influence of the story of Adam and Eve among western countries, western works firstly depicted and defined men as the agent of god and women were servants of men .Hence, during a very long time since then , men were always portrayed as strong ,majestic and powerful.On the other hand , women were more like objects that could appeal men.In many old European oil paintings would depict and emphasize women’s beauty and nude body only because it could attract more men to look at these paintings.As a result , these depictions really influenced the ways we think of men’s role and women’ role even on today.Nowadays,there are still many people have the thought that husband should take whole responsibility to the family such as making money and making decision, what wife should do is taking good care of children at home and obeying their husband’s order.Fortunately, this unequal relationship between men and women has changed since the one hundred years ago , and more and more  females aware that they can have the same rights and status as males.

Question 3:

Berger describes that a mirror could make women realize how they look like and how they would be judge by men .Gradually , mirror became a symbol of vanity to women and the define of beauty changed, it became a competition among women by how men judged them . Berger also states that the reason why women were depicted as naked is not because they would like to be naked ,it’s because they were charming subjects which could satisfy males’ sexual gaze.However , according to Berger’s interview , they don’t think those old European oil paintings have many connections with women today because they are immensely exaggerated and hard to identify.

Reading/Viewing Questions

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing Episode 2 

After you watch episode 2 of Ways of Seeing (or even while you are watching it), provide short answers to the questions below. 

1. One of the main premises in this episode is Berger’s distinction between nakedness and the nude female form as it is traditionally represented in Western art. What are the differences between these things and why are these differences significant? Do they apply to images you have encountered in your experience?

John Berger in episode two of Ways of Seeing, he discusses the difference between nude and nakedness for a woman. He explains that nakedness is just the human female body without clothes. An appropriate example would be a woman in the shower by herself is naked. Nude is when there is an audience there to judge and sexualize the body of a female. This is significant in society as it is a reflection of inequality of women and how women are seen and viewed in western culture. I think this applies equally today as it did during the renaissance, or during the 70’s when this video was produced. I think we have substituted photography for the paintings. As he mentioned in his previous episode the camera, and as time has progressed technology has somewhat changed the perspective of the nude. I think the internet and social media has created a new version of the nude, that encompasses women who are not even naked. They may have a bikini or just a revealing outfit that is meant to entice the male sexuality, but the result is the same. The images have stripped that person of who they are, and replaced their identity with an image “that is first and foremost a sight to be looked at” as Berger states in his video.

1. According to Berger, how have Western works of art depicted and defined different roles for men and women? According to Berger, what is the significance of this? Do these depictions influence the ways we think of the differences between men’s and women’s roles in society today? 

Berger states that in western works of art, women are depicted in a subservient role. He explains this is representative of western culture. He uses the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden as a prime example. He notes two striking themes in the story. The first is how they become aware of their nakedness, and the second is the blame god places on the woman. This theme has resonated throughout western history and created a subordinate role for women in our culture. It has been present in Judean-Chrsitian-Muslim cultures for thousands of years. Western works of art are a clear depiction of this as they mostly show women in a passive role. They are there to be viewed for male enjoyment and who they truly are has been reduced to an image only there to be sexuallized for the viewers pleasure. I do not believe these depictions influence the ways we think of gender roles today, but they are rather just visual representations of the culture that has been ingrained in society by traditional religions. Traditional religions have marginalized the role of women in relation to men for thousands of years.

1. How does Berger describe the significance of the mirror in paintings depicting women? What does this object say about the ways beauty is defined in these paintings? What does Berger say about the depiction of the female gaze in the paintings he discusses? What kinds of more contemporary examples does he relate this to, and what significance does he draw from these connections between older European art and depictions of women today?

Berger uses the mirror to display the hypocrisy in society’s perspective of women. In western art, and society as well, women are considered narcissistic for examining themselves in the mirror. In contrast, men are justified for seeing a woman for her beauty, and expect a woman to use the tools at her disposal to attain beauty for those same men.  When she does so, she is then considered a narcissist and therein lies the double standard. Berger also discusses how the females in western art are almost always depicted as looking seductively back at the viewer. They rarely are looking at anything in the painting, but rather their expression is meant only to seduce the viewer. They often have almost the same provocative expressions.  He compares a model from what is considered a masterpiece of western art, to “an ill paid model for a photograph in a girly magazine” and finds the extremely similar. I believe we can extrapolate his theory to make conclusions about women and social media today. When viewing pictures on Instagram or Facebook, we quite often see these same or similar expressions. They are intentionally flirtatious and often altered to appear sexier. This ultimately reinforces the same societal gender roles that have existed for years.