Curious spectatorship in the age of deepfakes

Abstract

ABSTRACT On social media platforms, deepfakes commonly show users inserting their own faces into figures from the history of Hollywood film and visual culture while reduplicating a range of gender stereotypes to self-represent. This paper considers the resonances between deepfakes and the writing of feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey on the male gaze and spectatorship. In particular, the paper looks at deepfake production from the framework of Mulvey’s concept of ‘curious spectatorship,’ a term that describes a process of playful spectator interaction with new technologies to remix old filmic media which leads to decipherment of the screen. Moving between the theoretical and the personal, I consider how early and late arguments in Mulvey’s writing anticipate deepfake practices. I argue that there is creative potential for deepfakes to revise patriarchal structures of looking in Hollywood film and offer a way to consider how new forms of subjectivity and self-perception are encouraged by playful interaction with figures on screen.