I put this as part of my comment on Kristi's post about Nakamura, but I figured that I'd also stick it on my own blog for those of you who might have missed it.
My question relates to Nakamura's assumption that the internet still adopts the white male gaze. Since many visual studies scholars are debating the existence/prevalence of the gaze in the first place (they're finally beginning to see that Laura Mulvey needs to re-read her Lacan as well as stop making stupid assumptions -- again, don't get me started), and since the Internet necessarily incorporates various users, I'm wondering how the Internet requires us to re-negotiate the "gaze" to account for the multiple users, situations, purposes (something neither Mulvey nor Nakamura really address), and production. The new media forms need to be considered under the aegis of visual studies, yet they also need to gain their own niche within it, that accounts for the ways that they may revise, update, or resist the status quo.
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Sarah, I don't think that Nakamura would deny the potential for new media in generating resistance to hegemony or "the male gaze". In fact, I think many of her examples (in part, at least) demonstrate resistance.
Arguably, however, even acts of resistance are linked to what Nakamura calls "the male gaze". In other words, a resistant act is still one that often invokes the power of hegemony through the act of resistance. I read Nakamura instead as asserting that it is possible to be culturally saavy and innovative in the ways that we construct our digital identities under the "male gaze". The "male gaze" affects, but does not determine how our identities are dynamically played out through interaction.
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