Refugee and Geopolitics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................... iii

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... iv

List of Diagrams .............................................................................................................. v

List of Table .................................................................................................................... vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1

1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1

1.2. Statement of the research problem ............................................................................. 3

1.3. Research objectives ................................................................................................... 6

1.4. Methodology ............................................................................................................. 7

1.5. Scope ........................................................................................................................ 9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................ 10

2. Review of literature .................................................................................................... 10

2.2. State interests and refugee protection ....................................................................... 12

2.3. Refugee regime in non-signatory States ................................................................... 15

2.4. The regional geopolitics and its influence on the refugees........................................ 17

CHAPTER 3: HISTORICAL, POLITICAL TREATMENT OF THE REFUGEES ........ 20

3. Historical, political treatment of the refugees .............................................................. 20

3.1. The Bhutanese refugees ........................................................................................... 21

3.1.1. The flight.............................................................................................................. 21

3.1.2. The trap ................................................................................................................ 23

3.1.3. The bilateral talks ................................................................................................. 24

3.2. The Tibetan refugees ............................................................................................... 27

3.2.1. The early exodus and the armed rebellion ............................................................. 27

3.2.2. The gentleman’s agreement .................................................................................. 29

3.2.3. Changed US policy and the impact of Tibetan refugees in Nepal .......................... 31

3.2.4. The Indian influence ............................................................................................. 33 viii

CHAPTER 4: LOCATING DURABLE SOLUTIONS ................................................... 36

4. Treatment of the refugees in terms of locating durable solutions ................................. 36

4.1. Durable solutions to the Bhutanese refugees ............................................................ 37

4.1.1. Locating resettlement as the ‘durable solution’ ..................................................... 37

4.1.2. The Indian influence ............................................................................................. 39

4.1.3. US influence in changing Nepal’s policy towards the Bhutanese refugees ............ 41

4.1.4. Information campaign as method of influencing resettlement ............................... 43

4.1.5. Concern for security in the refugee camps ............................................................ 45

4.2. Whither durable solution to the Tibetan refugees? ................................................... 48

4.2.1. Eligibility of Tibetan refugees for resettlement ..................................................... 49

4.2.2. The US role .......................................................................................................... 51

4.2.3. Indian role ............................................................................................................ 52

4.2.4. Comparing with the Bhutanese ............................................................................. 54

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS .............................................................................................. 56

5. Findings ..................................................................................................................... 56

5.1. Nepal as passive recipient of external influence ....................................................... 56

5.2. US and India as key players in Nepal ....................................................................... 56

5.3. US-India collaboration on refugee issues in Nepal ................................................... 57

5.4. Persistent differential treatments to refugees ............................................................ 58

5.5. US foreign policy shift affected treatment of refugees ............................................. 60

5.6. US, Indian refugees policy operated on two levels ................................................... 60

5.7. Continued vitality of States’ self-interest as motivating factor ................................. 61

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 63

REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 65

ANNEDIX 1 .................................................................................................................. 84

BIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 85

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

The main objective of this research was to study the US and Indian influences on the treatment of the Tibetan and the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. To that end, drawing upon the theoretical frames and the geopolitical background laid out in Chapter 2, the study mainly focused on two areas: first, in the general treatment of the refugees in course of their flight and the subsequent political and economic struggles (Chapter 3); and second, the treatment in terms of locating durable solutions (Chapter 4). This allowed the researcher to come up with the findings (Chapter 5) based on the comparative study of the treatment of the two refugee groups by the host country and the key external powers in the given geopolitical context – an issue which had not been studied in detail before. Though a single study is unlikely to cover the whole range of issues, this study has brought to fore the complex historical and geopolitical realities under which the two refugees were treated very differently by the host and the other supporting countries, thus confirming with the Goodwin-Gill’s theory on geopolitics and refugee protection. The study showed that the influences have been very concrete, far-reaching and substantive.

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CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS

5. Findings
The points below are the major findings summarised from the discussions made in the earlier chapters.
5.1. Nepal as passive recipient of external influence
Nepal’s historical, political, economic, social and cultural realities show, as discussed in Chapter 2.4, that it has long been susceptible to influence of mainly India and other world powers such as the US. As a geographically small and economically poor country, Nepal has been heavily dependent on foreign aid from developed countries including India and the US. This allowed donor nations to have greater leverage on affairs in Nepal that were of strategic importance to the former. The two protracted refugee situations – that of the Tibetan and the Bhutanese – have been one of those affairs within Nepal that have drawn political interests and thus influences from the external powers, mainly the US and India.

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CHAPTER 4: LOCATING DURABLE SOLUTIONS

As laid out earlier in Chapter 2, this chapter focuses on the second major task of the research—the analysis of the US and Indian influences in terms of locating durable solutions to the two refugee communities. Structured in the following two major chapters are the discussions centred around the geopolitics that affected the choice of solutions proposed and implemented such as the US push for third-country resettlement for the Bhutanese refugees and the general lack of motivation in the resettlement of the Tibetan refugees.

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CHAPTER 3: HISTORICAL, POLITICAL TREATMENT OF THE REFUGEES

As framed earlier in Chapter 2, this chapter concentrates on first major task of the research: the assessment and analysis of the US and Indian influences in the historical/political treatment of the refugees. The second task to be undertaken in the next chapter is to examine the same influences in locating durable solutions for the refugees. In line with the limitations explained earlier in Chapter 1, the treatment has been understood as the treatment in the form of support to the refugees in course of their flights, in course of securing them asylum, in providing humanitarian as well as political support while in the host country. This chapter also explores how the States have influenced the refugees in all these processes or stages since their first flight.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter critically analyses the literature available on the Bhutanese and the Tibetan refugees assessing the gaps therein and pointing out the need for a comparative study of the treatment of the two refugees locating them in the exact geopolitical context. The chapter then moves on to discuss the theoretical possibilities in the study of refugee protection and geopolitics, especially the behaviour of local stakeholders such as Government of Nepal and UNHCR alongside the direct and indirect engagement of the external forces, mainly the US and India. The chapter further throws light on the norms and mechanisms that govern the refugee protection in non-signatory States like Nepal and the realities on the ground.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Introduction

The Tibetans, around 20,0001 in number, and the Bhutanese, around 38,100 as of April 26, 2013, are the two largest refugee groups sheltering in Nepal since 1950s and 1990s respectively (UNHCR Nepal 2012, TJC 2002, p. 2; UNHCR Nepal 2013). There were 108,000 Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal till 2006, but the number went down to 38,100 after around 80,000 were resettled in the US and other Western countries in the period between October 2007 and April 2013 (UNHCR Nepal 2013). Though Nepal is yet to ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Optional Protocol, it has agreed to certain informal as well as formal mechanisms to handle these two protracted refugees situations. Both the refugee groups are currently under UNHCR protection.2 As a poor country sandwiched between two of the world's powerful and competing States, China and India, Nepal has been struggling to balance the conflicting interests of these two neighbouring States, and the world powers, including the US while dealing with the refugees. Given the geo-strategically sensitive location of Nepal and its lack of any domestic framework to deal with refugee issues, the refugees have long been subject to ad-hoc, un-principled and differential treatment from the host country and the international community, whose behaviour is guided by their own geo-strategic and political interests.

What inspired this research was the post-2006 developments in the Bhutanese refugee camps, where a durable solution seems to have been found – mass resettlement to the third countries. Introduced formally in 2007, this program suddenly changed the whole dynamics in the Bhutanese refugee camps, opening up both opportunities and challenges for the refugees.

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Preface - REFUGEES AND GEOPOLITICS: EXPLORING THE US AND INDIAN INFLUENCES IN THE TREATMENT OF BHUTANESE AND TIBETAN REFUGEES IN NEPAL

REFUGEES AND GEOPOLITICS: EXPLORING THE US AND INDIAN INFLUENCES IN THE TREATMENT OF BHUTANESE AND TIBETAN REFUGEES IN NEPAL

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRATISATION)

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

MAHIDOL UNIVERSITY

2013

COPYRIGHT OF MAHIDOL UNIVERSITY

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Politics of Look and Gaze

Look and Gaze

[Reserach on Look and Gaze by Kamal Raj Sigdel]

[This research was awarded Martin Chauthary Media Fellowship in 2006 and a full text of the report was published in the journal, Media Studies Vol. 1 (Nepali version). A copy of the journal can be found at Martin Chautary Library, Thapathali, Kathmandu. If you have any questions regarding the research, don't hesitate to contact the researcher (blogger) at kamal.sigdel [at] gmail.com ] [Copyright: Kamal Raj Sigdel]

Table of Contents (Look and Gaze)

Abstract (of the research)
Contents (Look and Gaze)
Introduction: Criticism on Nepalese
Politics of picture and ad aesthetics
The male gaze
Psychology of looking
Voyeurism and fetishism
Power of gaze
Television commercials and the gaze
Voyeuristic gaze and fetish substitution
Disciplining individuals
Constructing active and passive image
What is the focus: Body or product?
Monopoly of male audience
Possibility of Female Gaze
Ideological formations
Conclusion
Works Cited
Look and Gaze

This is an article I just cut pest

Politics of snow leopard by Abhi Subedi (Published in The Kathmandu Post)

Six mountaineers announced that they would hoist eight-party flags on top of Mt Everest in their historical Loktantra II expedition in April 2007. 'Snow leopard', the 60-year old Ang Rita Sherpa will be a member of the team. They will call this venture "Democratic Everest Expedition". I would like to call them 'snowmen' with respect and love.

Besides the eight-party flags, the snowmen will also hoist flags and probably put mementos there of the Amnesty International, different human rights organisations, Janaandolan II martyrs, the UN and other peace societies. That means the Madheshi Sadbhavana party's flag will be hoisted on Mt Everest by the Sherpas for the first time.

Symbolically, this will be a very important reversal of the Pahadi dominated perception of Nepali nationalism and deconstruction of Nepali state's mountain geographic logocentrism. The metaphor "horizontal comradeship" that Benedict Anderson uses for nationalism will be reflected in the vertical movement of the snowmen, mostly the great Sherpa explorers who are the most accommodative people in the world. Instead of putting forth slogans like the Everest region for the Sherpas only, the Sherpas have invited the flags and signifiers of diverse groups and nationalities to put on the Everest summit.

This news has drawn some flak. Apologists of the 'leave Mt Everest alone' say this is a politicisation of Mt Everest. But interestingly, this statement is 'always already deconstructed' because the name Everest itself has political genesis. Anyone little familiar with colonial history of this region must know that this highest peak of the world was named by Colonel Andrew Waugh after Colonel George Everest ignoring the happy note of discovery by an obscure chief Bengali computing officer Radhanath Sickdhar who wrote to him, "Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world". A certain 'Brian Hodgson', who was a political officer of the Raj in India at that time objected to the naming. He advocated for the continuity of the native names that were used then.

Everest was considered the third pole. Since north and south poles were conquered by Robert Peary in 1909 and 1911 respectively, Everest remained to be conquered. And the British undertook the mission. Death of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on June 8th, 1924, was the anticlimax of imperial 'noble desire'. Mallory's letter written to Rupert Thompson on 12 July 1921 speaks of the irony. He wrote, "I sometimes think of this expedition as a fraud from beginning to end, invented by the wild enthusiasm of one man, Young husband; … and imposed upon the youthful ardour of your humble servant....The prospect of ascent in any direction is almost nil, and our present job is to rub our noses against the impossible in such a way as to persuade mankind that some noble heroism has failed once again." Mallory later saw the absurdity of the political imaginary of the empire.

This dream culminated in the conquest of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953. The victory was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth on her coronation four days after on 2^nd June. Tenzing Norgay making a grand victory tour was photographed in London folding hands in namaste wearing watches on both wrists. Clash of Mallory's personal aspirations with those of the British Raj was the climax of the imperial dream. Since then climbing Everest never saw the irony resulting out of a clash between personal aspirations and statism. But one thing is certain. Climbing Everest has always represented covert political desires.

Scaling mountains, covering miles on the ground and crossing seas and rivers are the familiar tropes of the politics of colonialism. The Himalayas, especially Mt Everest, has drawn the attention of the British, Chinese, Nepalis, Indians and others. But it was the British who held on to the history of the peak metaphor and associated it with imperial nostalgia. Others shared their nostalgia with fun and textual indifference. In the imperial and nationalistic imaginary Everest became the signifier of an invincible and inaccessible altitude that should be explored, touched and walked upon. The three nation Japanese led crowded and visual media savvy expedition in 1988 turned it into a postmodernist mountain exercise.

The snowmen's humble expedition, though it appears like a postmodernist game of littering the highest mountain with festoons, is at heart a symbolic journey of a 'New' democratic Nepal. The snowmen's excitement is a very meaningful historical phenomenon. To rush up to the summit with flags by these snowmen is to deconstruct the grand Everest narration, the grande récit used by both the British Empire and the Nepali feudal history. This "Democratic Everest Expedition" will give a new meaning to the history.

The snowmen's projection of Everest metaphor at a time when all the other metaphors of Nepali "horizontal comradeship" are sustaining cut injuries like the broken finger of Prithwinarayan Shah's statue is a very important reminder of the Hamletian dilemma of to be or not to be or to keep or not to keep Nepal as an independent nation. I personally consider the snowmen's decision to take eight-party and other flags to the Everest summit now as a powerful call for a democratic restructuring of the "horizontal comradeship" of New Nepali state. (TKP, March 21, 2007)

Contents (Look and Gaze)

[This research was awarded Martin Chauthary Media Fellowship in 2006 and a full text of the report was published in the journal, Media Studies Vol. 1 (Nepali version). A copy of the journal can be found at Martin Chautary Library, Thapathali, Kathmandu. If you have any questions regarding the research, don't hesitate to contact the researcher (blogger) at kamal.sigdel [at] gmail.com ] [Copyright: Kamal Raj Sigdel]

Full text of the research in English "Male Gaze and Ideological Formations in Nepalese Television Commercials" can be downloaded here from Tribhuvan University Central Library 

Key words: Nepali Advertisements #GenderResponsive Advertisements # GenderAnalysis #NepaliAds #SexistAds #Commercials #AdvertisingIndustry

Below are chapter wise loose text: 

Abstract (of the research)
Table of Contents (Look and Gaze)
Introduction: Criticism on Nepalese
Politics of picture and ad aesthetics
The male gaze
Psychology of looking
Voyeurism and fetishism
Power of gaze
Television commercials and the gaze
Voyeuristic gaze and fetish substitution
Disciplining individuals
Constructing active and passive image
What is the focus: Body or product?
Monopoly of male audience
Possibility of Female Gaze
Ideological formations
Conclusion
Works Cited

Abstract 1
Introduction 2
Politics of picture and ad aesthetics 3
The male gaze 4
Psychology of looking 5
Voyeurism and fetishism 7
Power of gaze 8
Television commercials and the gaze 9
Voyeuristic gaze and fetish substitution 10
Disciplining individuals 13
Constructing active and passive image 16
What is the focus: Body or product? 17
Monopoly of male audience 18
Ideological formations 19
Conclusion 20

Works Cited 21

Abstract (of the research)

Abstract
This paper explores into semiotics of Nepalese mass media, especially the television commercials which display a sort of obsession with portraying men-women relation in a manner that caters to male voyeuristic gaze. The structuration of the Nepalese television commercials shows how an all-pervasive psychological force gears to monopolize the audience of the television commercials -- i.e. the belief that only males are the audience -- by positioning the women characters therein as passive sexual objects who can only exhibit to-be-looked-at-ness and the male characters as the principal viewer.
This paper examines the Nepalese television commercials with the theoretical possibilities provided by the psychoanalysis, where the idea of voyeurism and fetishism are central, and the Focauldian concept of gaze, where the activity of looking images under certain spectacles provide privileged power for dominion over what is being looked at. The research thus takes on to explicate how the combination of these two effects in Nepalese television commercials leads to ideological formations.

Introduction: Criticism on Nepalese

Introduction
Of the scholars who have published criticism on representation of women and men in Nepalese print and television media, surprisingly few have examined the media's role in formation of ideologies, and of these few, none have dealt with the operation of "male gaze" in representation.
Particularly, most critics have ignored the fact that the media representations always present women's images with over invested sexual meanings not because of dominion but because of the "fear" that haunts a male every time he faces a woman. As a result, these critics have overlooked the critical possibilities, which arise when psychological forces operate to influence the media and society, and have therefore failed to uncover the underlying elements -- the voyeuristic and fetishistic fantasies -- that are guiding the posture and shape of images in the advertisements and are forming ideologies. Mass media, through continuous reinforcement and broadcasting of same advertisements formulate ideologies in society, because the ...
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... commercials taken as works of art, which in many respect, are similar to what other critics do while making criticism on films and fictions. This research, thus, begins by exploring the possibility of analysing how the culture of looking is operating in production of Nepalese advertisements.
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Politics of picture and ad aesthetics

Advertisements, be it photographic or videographic, tend to be more and more pictorial and glamorous as they all presume certain viewers whom, as Sangita Rayamajhi says advertisers want to “win” through the display of bodies and their parts that have associations with sex and erotica. Those audiences are won or overpowered by the power of pictures presented in the commercials as to attract them to a desired direction.

Advertisements and commercials share a large part of the mass media as they generate the largest revenue for operation of the media itself. Television has become a part of our lives and is all-pervasive in our present day society. None remains untouched by the glamour of media. Media have become the very powerful systems operating in modern society to the extent that they control society and its people. Indeed, media maintain strong nexus with knowledge and power as they have become the public domain. Media are the public, which views, observes and controls the image, and they are made up of pictures:
nowadays there is no physical public domain, and politics is not ‘of populace’. Contemporary politics is representative in both senses of the term; citizens are represented by a chosen few, and politics is represented to the public via the various media of communication. Representative political space is literally made of pictures – they constitute the public domain. (35)
So the pictures once introduced in the media, play a role of politics, for example, favouring some existing ideologies and reinforcing their norms and values through frequent broadcasting. A study of the photographs used in a Kodak’s photography guide Home Movies Made Easy, indicates how the Kodak film company has contributed to the politicisation of family life and formation of gendered ideologies through the treatment of images in media:
Kodak’s Home Movies Made Easy is one such guide, whose advice is summarized in ‘OUR FAMILY PICNIN’, starring Mom, Dad, Betsy and Butch, in a banal tale of travel, food preparation and consumption, playing games and clearing up. The family is cast in traditional roles; mother and daughter set the table and roast marshmallows, while Dad oversees the barbecue  ...

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[Contents in this blog are copyrighted, no unauthorized copies are allowed. For full text, consult Martin Chautari Media Journal Vol 1]

ay nothing of picnic (48). The pictures in the public domain play certain role in changing society of the audiences, toward which the pictures or the visuals are directed. This indicates of the fact that the pictures and the visual images broadcasted in the public domain have certain power to control the society or the audience. The power of looking as described by Harltey has the power to control, objectify and define or categorize so as to put that in discipline. Such powerful look is near to what Jaques Lacan, Michael Foucault, and Laura Mulvey say “gaze.”

And advertisements are the actual platform where there is significant operation of looks with power -- or to be more precise the “gazes” -- that bring together media, commercials, body politics, power, knowledge and even the process of ideological formations, a unique politics of picture.

Before we explore the operation of “gaze” in Nepalese television advertisements, it is necessary to throw light on the difference between look and “gaze” .....

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The male gaze

By Kamal Raj Sigdel 
(This is an excerpt from a research on male gaze and Nepali television commercials.)

[Download a Nepali version of this journal Article published in Media Studies, Martin Chautari, Vol 1: 

https://martinchautari.org.np/storage/files/media-adhyayan-1-article-kamalraj-sigdel.pdf 

https://martinchautari.org.np/mc-publications/media-adhyayan-1

 

Summary

This research explores into the semiotics of Nepalese mass media, especially the television commercials which display a sort of obsession with portraying men-women relation in a manner that caters to male voyeuristic gaze. The structuration of the Nepalese television advertisements shows how an all-pervasive psychological force, gears to monopolize the audience of the television commercials as only males by positioning the women characters therein as passive sexual objects who can only exhibit to-be-looked-at-ness and the male characters as the principal viewer. This paper examines the Nepalese television commercials with the theoretical possibilities provided by the psychoanalysis, where the idea of voyeurism and fetishism are central and the Focauldian concept of gaze, where the activity of looking images under certain spectacles provide privileged power for dominion over what is being looked at. The research thus takes on to explicate how the combination of these two effects in Nepalese television commercials lead to ideological formations.

The Male Gaze

There is a basic difference between look and gaze. To look normally means to have a normal sight of something that our eyes can catch. But gaze is different form look; it is more associated with power. Gaze normally refers to a stare, which means to look at something continuously without winking our eyes so as to carefully observe or dominate what is being looked at. It is natural that none objects or cares when we look people but everyone feels uncomfortable or even gets angry when we gaze them curiously. When a male looks at objects through this particular kind of gaze, it is normally called male gaze and when a female does so, it is called female gaze. 

This normal meaning could help us understand how look and gaze are operational in commercials, the subject of study of this research. 

When we look at an object, we see more than just the thing itself: we see the relation between the thing and ourselves. Some objects are intentionally made to be looked upon. While constructing the objects that are to be looked upon, a viewer is always presupposed. For example, if we take the trend of Nepalese television and print advertisements, in most of them a male is often, if not always, the presupposed viewer and the female are the viewed. The image of woman in those advertisements are portrayed usually as inactive, submissive and passive, or sometimes even shown admiring her own image in a mirror. All this is done to nurture the presupposed viewer's sense of possession and control. 

The "portrayal of woman and her beauty in such a position offers up the pleasure for the male spectator" (Mulvey 5). So the male gaze here is the powerful look which can control and possess the images that are fearlessly looked at for his pleasure. But the spectator's gaze sees not merely the object of the gaze, but sees the relationship between the object and the self. He sees her as a creature of his domain, under his gaze of possession. So, male gaze refers to a powerful and purposive stare at the women’s images to take pleasure of looking at women’s body parts through a secure vantage point. 

In the case of recorded texts such as photographs, advertisements and films, a key feature of the gaze is that the object of the gaze is not aware of the current viewer (though they may originally have been aware of being filmed, photographed, painted etc.). 

Viewing such recorded images gives the viewer's gaze a voyeuristic dimension. This applies to cinema and advertisements where the situation is such that the viewer is privileged to be in a position where the images that walk and talk in the screen cannot look back at the viewer. This privileged position gives the viewer a chance to fearlessly identify his “self” to the acting protagonist’s self in the screen. 

The male gaze is seen operating in viewing produced cinema or commercials through a voyeuristic fantasy, but it also operates through fetishism. This occurs especially when a male confronts a female body in such a situation where the male viewer is visible to the female also. 

The male gaze is said to be the outcome of the fear that all man harbour throughout their life. This fear, according to Laura Mulvey, emerges whenever male sees female body parts, which reminds them of “castration anxiety”. And the male gaze is the way out to overcome the “castration anxiety” (Mulvey 5). So depending on the situation, the male gaze leads either to fetishization of women’s body parts or to voyeuristic victimization of the fetish.

Read the full text of the research here.

Follow Kamal on Twitter: @Kamalraj99

Psychology of looking

Media are not new things. Its history is as old as the history of human civilization. The facility of visibility in human beings paved way for media of representation. Human ability to look and see things has been the central formative factors in determining the process of representation in relation to the human individual self. Behind this human impulse of looking, interpreting and representing things on their own relation -- that has been the base of all human knowledge till date -- there are some psychological forces at work. Psychologists like Jaques Lacan and Sigmund Freud including the 1970s film critic Laura Mulvey and postmodernist thinker Michael Foucault have presented some very convincing ideas on the dynamics of looking and process of representation.

Sigmund Freud, the first most influential psychologist, gave an insight into human unconscious when he defined human psychology as something not in the control of the self but as collective functioning of three conflicting forces namely: id, ego and superego, which led to the formulation of psychoanalysis. He divided human psychosocial development into three different phases in explaining how a child is socialized and how his psychology works. Freud believed that in course of socialization, every child must pass through the three different phases of psychological development: oral phase, anal phase and latent phase (Malson 17). When a child enters into the latent phase he realizes the sexual deference which contributes to the formation of what he calls “penisenvy” in female child and “castration anxiety” in male child which leads to “Oedipus complex”.
The fear aroused by “castration anxiety” in a male child is instrumental in our analysis of human habit of looking and interpreting things. Though the concept of “lack” in female psychology or the “castration anxiety” in male triggered by the same “lack” has been the subject of much criticism among the feminist theorists, this has been, however, a point of departure for many of them.
Freud’s psychoanalysis here functions as a basic theory for the interpretation of the operation of what we have been calling “the looking culture” or to be more precise the male gaze.
When a child is born, the sex of child is not noticed by the child itself. Since birth to a certain point of realization, both male and female infant grow up in same undifferentiated and engendered state. Both boys and girls take mother as “love-object” (Freud 299) and both share similar experience during oral and anal phases of psychosexual development. And it is not until “the phallic phase” of development that the two sexes begin to diverge psychologically:

During this stage, the penis or clitoris becomes the principle erotogenic zone, and physical differences thus become significant. For boy, phallic eroticism leads to phallic desires for the mother so that the father becomes an oedipal rival. Fearing castration by the father in relation for these desires, he renounces the mother as love-object, forming instead an identification with the father, thus taking up a masculine position. (Malson 13-14)
Then onwards, the child, especially the male one, whenever confronts a female body, begins to experience a “castration anxiety” that any time he could be punished.
The British critic and psychoanalyst, Laura Mulvey, takes this case of child’s “castration anxiety” to a point where he manages to overcome it through a powerful “gaze”, where the fear is transformed into pleasure.
Mulvey reaches to this point by taking up Freudian ideas through Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud, in his Three Essays on Sexuality, invents a term "socopholia" to designate a component instinct of sexuality. "Socopholia," according to Freud is the pleasure a viewer gets from looking at other people or their images which are “under control”.
This pleasure of looking, as Freud says, is triggered by the situation where a viewer can, while looking, take other people as objects, and can subject them to a controlling gaze. Developing this idea, Lacan further interpreted the pleasure of looking as a narcissistic tendency prevalent in every child. He elaborated it through his mirror analogy.
When a child reaches to what he calls “mirror phase” s/he realizes his/her full identity in the reflection of mirror. (Lacan 898).
Jacques Lacan's concept of gaze emerged from this theory of the mirror stage, where a child sees itself in the mirror and misrecognizes it as the real "self". By viewing itself in the mirror, the subject at the mirror stage begins its entrance into culture and language by establishing its own subjectivity through the fantasy image inside the ..........[some sections missing] ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........

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................ ..........[some sections missing] ...........ook how this human fascination with image functions in actual life, we must observe our (or the common audiences’) reaction to images that we confront in our day-to-day life. More than anything else, the facility of visual documentation and observation made possible by the advancement of science and technology like cinema, advertisement and photography offers a number of possible pleasures to the viewer. This pleasure is associated with Lacan’s concept of “mirror stare” and the narcissism therein.

Voyeurism and fetishism

After constructing two different pleasures of looking, it is now much logical to dig into the human psychology and its subconscious processes that lead to the formation of “male gaze”. Psychologists have traced two major processes through which viewers generally derive pleasure when looking images in the screen. They are voyeurism and fetishism.
Jaques Lacan while describing “the mirror phase” indicated the possibility of two kinds of libidinal desires: one was narcissistic libido and the other was sexual libido. He said that it was the outcome of one’s universal desire or fascination with the beautiful and idealized image (in the mirror or anywhere) to which he or she always aspires. Lacan’s division of libidinal desire is therefore indicative of the two kinds of activities through which a child or adult could reach to gratification. The narcissistic libido and the sexual libido are identical to what Laura Mulvey called fetishistic and voyeuristic fantasy of male in watching images in screen or in the mirror.
Mulvey distinguishes between two modes of looking especially for the film spectator: voyeuristic and fetishistic, which she presents in Freudian terms as responses to male “castration anxiety”. I want to recall Mulvey’s observation on this subject here:
… in psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father.
Explicating the castration complex that a female character generates, Mulvey shows how a male gaze being operational in overcoming it comes into effect:
… the woman, as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, … always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma, counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment, or saving of the guilty object; or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This second avenue, fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The first avenue, voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt, asserting control, and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. (12-13 Mulvey)
There is indeed a unique situation in the act of watching cinema where audiences gratify their desires through identification. As Lacan has said, this is an inherent tendency in human beings to have fascinations with images which leads to voyeurism and fetishism.

Power of gaze

Up to now, I was stating that the gaze or the look gives pleasures and it gratifies libidinal desires in human being, especially the males. But the gaze also is a vehicle to exercise power; it gives power to the gazer. So, now, to gaze is to involve oneself in power politics.

To gaze is to have a powerful look, which can objectify the other person -- who is looked upon --, subject him/her to a curious stare, categorize, define and take control over him/her. The gazing activity, therefore, carries a sense of being objectified, subordinated, or threatened by the look of another (Brooker 90).

Foucault, who linked knowledge with power, related the gaze to discourse of power rather than to discourse of gender in his discussion of surveillance. Foucault focuses on how a “gaze” becomes a technique to utilize the power of looking into what is look at. He associates the “gaze” to the surveillance effect of a modern scientific camera.

It is interesting to see how power could be exercised upon the viewed through the gaze. Foucault’s panoptical prison is the best analogy where the prisoners are taken into control through a mechanism of looking/watching which enables the controller to see all the prisoners in their cell but disables the prisoners to see their observer while they are aware of the fact that someone is keeping a constant eye over them.

Functions of photography or vediography therefore can be seen in the context of Michel Foucault's analysis of the rise of surveillance in modern society. Photography promotes “the normalising gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates and judges them” (Malson 25).

In Discipline and Punish Foucault argues that the gaze of camera plays a central role in formation of disciplines among the viewed. In media, especially in the production commercials and advertisement camera plays the central role of gazing. This gaze of the camera thus produces the women's images in the perspective of male gaze. As Foucault stats the "examination" of the male gaze in the commercial advertisements plays central role in defining what is desired by the mass audience. The observation and examination of gaze:
introduces individuality into the field of documentation. The examination leaves behind it a whole meticulous archive . . . [it] places individuals in a field of surveillance, it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them". (Malson 170)

This very observation, examination and categorization of the women's images through male gaze contribute to the formation of ideologies in the society because the mass media repeatedly broadcasts them.

The gaze of male in vediography and photography and of course in television advertisements thus retains a controlling power over the individual in focus or surveillance.

Television commercials and the gaze

It is now interesting to observe how these psycho-political factors associated with the activity of looking affect the production of media images. The pleasure principle and the power politics are discernible in almost all the media contents being broadcast in Nepali mass media. In the chapters below, I will be examining the operation of male gaze with some particular examples of advertisements taken from the ...........[some sections missing] ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........  ...........

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Voyeuristic gaze and fetish substitution

Television commercial is one of the most effective and powerful means of product advertising in today's world of media and technology as it provides possibilities for the use of both audio and visual effects to draw the attention of audience. When ultimate aim of the advertiser is to capture the psychology of the audience and draw his/her interest to consume the product, creativity is used to design advertisements with all possible visual and audio effects intermixed.

Creativity and the work of art or literature it creates, as Freud says, is associated with creator's conscious and unconscious desire. Most of the advertisements, at least Nepalese ones, are created by male designers. And the female designers also, if any, follow the majority. At such a scenario, it is obvious, even from observation, that most of the advertisements produced are influenced by the conscious/unconscious desire of the designer, i.e. male gaze. It is also because the supposed desire of the common audience is the central focus of most of the designers and that desire is what they try to exploit.
The advertisement designers in doing so take recourse to voyeurism. The spectacle provided by the television advertisements makes a safe and secure place for the voyeurs to take pleasure from looking secretly. The screen of the television is such a spectacle which distances the viewed from the viewer where the observer can look at the images in the screen but the images in the screen could not look back or disturb the observer. The advertisements that try to exploit this situation fall under this category of advertisements which victimize women’s images in the screen through voyeuristic male gaze.
The situation in television is likened to that of the darkened cinema hall, where the audience feels secure as the darkness distances him/her from the images of the cinema and other people in the hall. The more the position of the audience is secure, the more the possibility for him/her to get pleasure of looking images secretly. So as the darkness of the cinema hall, which is a public domain, facilitates voyeurs towards pleasure of looking, the television set and its privacy constitute necessary spectacles for voyeuristic pleasure.
Let's make an analysis of some advertisements where voyeurism is pervasive. Advertisements which cater to the expectation of male voyeuristic gaze could best be seen in soap advertisements. One of the advertisements recorded for analysis in this research is of a toilet soap named Citrus Lime. The audio version of the advertisement when translated into English reads like this:
Citrus Lime;
Freshness of Citrus Lime, each moment each celebration
A product of Mahashakti Soap. (My Translation)

As the audio narration of the advertisement conveys, the soap is designed to bring freshness. But this effect of the soap is contradicted by the image of woman presented (Clip 2). More than freshness the advertisement focuses in arising sexual desire to the audience through presentation of a woman in swimming costume. Besides, the advertisement’s focal point is on the fetish parts of the women, viz: exposed underarm, breasts, neck and belly. The woman is presented as a sexual object to be viewed by voyeurs. To supply a secure position for the voyeuristic male gaze, the woman is made to close her eyes while stretching her both arms upward so that voyeur could fearlessly watch her as there will be no possibility of her looking back. This is a necessary spectacle for creating pleasure of looking for the voyeurs, as voyeurs can only peep or secretly watch. In this advertisement, the "socopholia" or the pleasure of looking is the central force that is guiding the designer in its production.

Some advertisements like that of Mini Water Pump are explicitly affected by voyeuristic pleasure of looking. The advertiser to introduce a new product, Mini Water Pump, uses a scene of a woman bathing in her bathroom, a typical situation for peeping. The advertisement opens up with alight interior of a cozy bathroom and focuses on the back side of a naked woman (Clip 3), who is taking shower. An old man peeps into her bathroom and takes pleasure in secretely looking a beautiful woman bathing naked. Other men outside follow the first old man and start peeping, and in few seconds, whole villagers are peeping inside. The woman notices this and throws a bucket full of water through the same peeping holes and all of the voyeurs run away. With this scene the advertisement ends.
The visuals displayed in this advertisement do not have anything to do with the water pump, which is the product the advertisement wants to advertise. The sexual and voyeuristic images of the advertisement are used only to draw the audience's attention, which is nothing more than catering to the desire of male voyeuristic gaze.
Similarly, there is another advertisement of Rite Juce. To quote the audio versions of the advertisement the advertisement reads like this:
Every thirst demands, Rite juice.
Now available in one litter pack!
On buying one litter Rite Juice, a glass free! (My Translation)
This short audio visual advertisement of Rite Juice displays the image of a woman with wet hair and body which is accompanied by the above audio narration. Unlike the advertisement of the soap Citrus Lime, here the woman can look back at the audience also. But yet, the way she is presented together with the juice could be analysed as one of the effects of male gaze. It is a fact that the product, juice, has its consumer without regard to sex and gender. But the advertisement makes sense as if the males are only the consumer of the product. The women's image in the advertisement (Clip 4) is the major focus rather than the product itself. The image of woman is over invested with sexual meanings as if she is the metaphor of thirst, a sexual lust of male. The advertisement has presupposed only the male audience and it presents men and women in the perspective of male gaze. This as too clearly displays voyeuristic features.

The advertisement of New Liril Orange is yet another example of advertisements which have voyeuristic features. One may ask looking at the clip of the advertisement placed here (Clip 5): why she is exposing herself without looking at the audience? The answer is simple. Had she been presented with her look, there would have been fewer chances for the voyeurs to have pleasure of looking at her body. There would have been less confident spectacles for the voyeur’s pleasure. In other words, her looking back would have generated “fear” in the audience. The advertisement thus is in the perspective of male gaze. The woman is presented as a field of observation and her body parts exposed with over invested sexual meanings. She cannot look back, she is passive and so she could only exhibit to-be-looked-atness. Had she been presented with a look of her own, she would have her own identity. But the way she is presented rules out the possibility of acknowledging her identity. She is acknowledged in the advertisement simply as an object. As Sangita Rayamajhi writes in her study, Use of language in Nepali Press:
Even Kantipur Weekly, in spite of its exemplary write-ups, Q&A and opinion columns etc., the photo clips of women on the cover page and the blow up posters in the center page of some weeklies tend to devaluate the position of women in society. Women have been commodified to provide pleasure and hence increase the sale of the weekly. (34)
While images of women in magazines are commodified to provide pleasure, the marketing strategy is guided by voyeurism. The belief is that the pleasure of looking women’s body parts, is the demand of audience. This makes the magazines full of blow up posters that cater to male gaze. Same applies to the television commercials as well.

Fetishistic pleasure is the second central force that is guiding the structure and content of Nepalese advertisements. Advertisements that cater to male gaze are produced with the central aim of offering fetishistic pleasure of looking. Substituting certain objects or parts of body with fetish is the major tendency of such advertisements. The substituted parts are, in general look, “very inappropriate for sexual purpose, e.g. a piece of clothing or underlinen” but they bear relation to sexuality. Such substitutes are with some justice linked to the fetishes (Freud 297).

This psychological trend of making fetish substitutes in media is not uncommon in Nepalese context as well, for this comes with the power of unconscious and human desire for pleasure at looking. Dr. Abhi Suedi tresses this trend in multiple modes of media:
In many weeklies and newspapers young women's photographic texts become fetish, which is the feature of the female photographs produced by the male gaze. This feature applies to paintings as well where the concept of male gaze is very important subject of feminist interpretation of artistic works. (Subdi 15)

This feature also applies to Nepalese television advertisements where moving images of women are fetishisized. The advertisement of Kailash Tea, for instance, shows how the parts of body are used as sexual genitals. The audio version of the advertisement of Kailash Tea translated into English reads like this:

Golden earring, golden ring, golden top, golden Fulli and silver Pauju for myself, all in one tea. Thousands of prizes in purchase of Kailash Tea! Kailash Tea, changes your mood instantly! (My Translation)

The advertisement starts with the display of a meticulously made up women’s face, and as the narration proceeds, the camera shifts its focus gradually from one body part to another: on her fingers, her nose, her ears, her neck and lastly her feet (Clip 6). The advertisement exposes her feet intentionally to arise libidinal desires in the audience as the woman pulls over her Sarie to show her Pauju that she wore around her feet. The white coloured legs here are exposed as fetish, which are presented as substitute for sexual genitals. The advertisement thus fetishizes the feet/limbs of the women.