Medusa: Sexuality, Power, Mastery, and Some Psychoanalytic Observations

Silverman, Doris K.

doi:10.1080/15240657.2016.1172926

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…39 Thereafter, the sight of her face would turn to stone the bodies of men and beasts who looked at her. Some commentators have thus read the story as a protest against the objectifying male gaze in general, and as a feminist fantasy of furious and devastating rape revenge (Silverman, 2016). This reading seems particularly plausible given that Medusa's gaze is nowhere recorded as being directed against other women.…”

Section: Returning the Criminal Justice Gaze?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…39 Thereafter the sight of her face would turn to stone the bodies of men and beasts who looked at it. Some commentators have thus read the story as a protest against the objectifying male gaze in general, and as a feminist fantasy of furious and devastating rape-revenge (Silverman, 2016 For example, there is firstly no evidence that Medusa had any power to direct her petrifying power strategically so it is difficult to think of her as 'empowered' by it particularly.…”

Section: A) Re-reading Medusa: the Object(ified) 'Looks Back'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…40Indeed, the power of Medusa is recorded by Ovid as accounting for several more deaths (even turning plants under the sea into coral), and then living on in the form of a symbol of protection reproduced on Athena's breastplate, on buildings, domestic objects and military equipment (Silverman, 2016, pp. 117, 121–122).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows

Gurnham

2018

International Journal of Law in Context

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This paper analyses the visualisation of rape and sexual assault in legal and scholarly language. It begins with a critique of the Court of Appeal ruling inR v. Evans (Chedwyn)and its forensic examination of the details of a female rape complainant's consensual sexual activity with other men. The case is analysed in light of a visual metaphor used by Ellison and Munro to describe the removal of popular misconceptions about rape. The paper contextualises that discussion with reference to the idea of the male gaze and its affirmation of a phallocentric cultural and social world in which the objectification of female difference is entrenched. The paper finally challenges that assessment, however, sketching an alternative approach to visual-critical scholarship that embraces interdisciplinarity and a literary sensibility to break (or at least to loosen) the association between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the criminal justice gaze.

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Section: Returning the Criminal Justice Gaze?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A) Re-reading Medusa: the Object(ified) 'Looks Back'mentioning

confidence: 99%