Gary’s Gone…

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 43, Number 3, pages 447-452.

Go to Tom Voire essay | Go to main Gary Marx page

Other essays in this series: Willis & Silbey: Self, Vigilance and Society | Nippert-Eng: Out of Sight, Out of Mind | Manning: Doubles and Tom Voire | Marx: Reflective Eyes and Moods Apart

William G. Staples

University of Kansas

Joane Nagel

University of Kansas

Direct all correspondence to William G. Staples, Department of Sociology, 716 Fraser Hall, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS

66045-7556; e-mail: staples@ku.edu

From: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

To: "Staples, William G" staples@ku.edu

Subject: Gary's gone . . .

Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:38:05 -0600

. . . too far on this one, I think. I just read his paper and it's too long he should have

just used the last section about Eve and that one-page introduction. I'm not sure

about the rest. What the hell are we going to write about this? Well, I'm sure glad

you're in this with me! See you tomorrow at Wheat. elds at 12:45 and we can talk

about it. J

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Professor Joane Nagel

Interim Associate Dean of Social Sciences

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

213 Bailey Hall

University of Kansas

Lawrence, KS 66045

785-864-3661 (voice)

785-864-5331 (fax)

nagel@ku.edu (internet)

http://www.clas.ukans.edu/clas/deansof.ce/nagel.html

From: "Bill Staples" staples@ku.edu

To: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

Subject: Re: Response to Gary's gone . . .

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 21:42:13 -0600

OK, I'll read it by then and we can think about some ideas. Bill

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William G. Staples

Professor and Chair

Department of Sociology

University of Kansas

staples@ku.edu

Voice: 785.864.9413

FAX: 785.864.5280

http://people.ku.edu/~staples

From: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

To: "Staples, William G" staples@ku.edu

Subject: RE: Response to Gary Marx's piece for TSQ

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 23:22:15 -0600

Bill,

Well, here we are, post-spring break and facing 10 blank pages to .ll for TSQ, and we're already a month late. Do you have time to meet again to talk about it this week? If not, maybe we can just throw our ideas down on e-mail and hash it out later? I was talking to Barry Shank about this and he said we should talk about what is bothering us about the piece tackle that head on and incorporate that into it. So, here's my initial response.

I've now read Gary's 50-plus pages about Tom I. Voire, and I have to say I'm a little disturbed by it. I think that was his goal, but I'm not sure it was entirely intentional. As I read it, I got to wondering where Gary is coming from, and where he wants his readers (and commentators) to go. It's making me wonder as much about Gary and his motives as those of our boy Tom. For instance, I like the issue he raises in the last few pages, in particular whether being surveilled is harmful if the individual being observed is unaware of it. This is a fascinating topic it raises all sorts of interesting and important questions about intentionality, privacy, public good, citizenship, rights, propriety, and positionality. Who has a right to watch us, know about us, keep track of us, report (to whom) about us?

But, it's the first and last in the above list intentionality and positionality that are bothering me. The long catalogue of creepy activities Tom's up to and Gary's articulation of his (whose?) rationales (neutralizations?) for a lot of sexual stalking stuff are making this sound to me a little like a white guy apologia.

Does Gary realize he's doing this? Why has he chosen to make his surveillance saga a sexual story and not, say, a chronicle of stolen identities or mistaken identities or even a sexual story where a man is being stalked by another man or a woman. What's with this female victim scenario? Is this to make a stronger point? If so, I'm not sure that isn't getting drowned out by the sexual static. The political buttons being pushed are disrupting the narrative. So, that's my .rst reaction. And it makes me wonder what we should respond to the content of the Tom tale or the intent of the Gary story? OK, Bill, you're a white guy what do you think? Joane

From: "Bill Staples" staples@ku.edu

To: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

Subject: Re: Response to Gary Marx's piece for TSQ

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 21:42:13 -0600

Joane,

Do you know that it's April Fools Day? Actually, my week is pretty full so meeting again won't work right now. Let's just hash something out here . . .

I'm not sure I can speak for all those "white guys" out there but here is my initial take. Tom I. Voire is a composite character, a product of a trippy postmodern, looking saturated culture where all the lines are blurred. Gary presents a variety of gazes for us to consider in his little parable. Some of them are framed as "legitimate" gazes (e.g., video monitors to prevent shoplifting) set against Tom's "illegitimate" gazes that somehow manage to cross an ill-defined line into the realm of "creepy."

And Gary has even brought our own gaze into the mix as we peruse Tom's supposed "confidential file." By doing so, Gary has made us confederates with Tom; we are drawn into his voyeuristic world and need to construct for ourselves our own justification for our sociological gaze. Gary, it seems, wants us to consider the basis upon which these distinctions are constructed and clearly he sees them as capricious at best. Enter your "white guy."

By using this "misunderstood" male character, it seems that, on the surface, Gary is trying to make the larger point about how politicized and possibly absurd some social and cultural distinctions are. A kind of, "if this is all about 'equality,' we're going about it the wrong way." Yet, the sub-text comes off as quite a bit of whining as you seem to have picked up on. "Intentionality" and "positionality" indeed! I am really not sure how much of this is intended. Are we suppose to feel sorry for Tom? I certainly don't! (Don't ask me to defend any "white guy-ness"!) Unwittingly or not, it strikes me that Gary has recreated the character Alex from Clockwork Orange. Tom, like Alex, is cast as the "real" victim in both his own head and in this "white guy" sub-plot of the narrator (Tom is even declared "rehabilitated" by correctional officials, as was Alex). While we observe both doing awful things (Alex's behavior patently illegal while Tom's operates barely within the bounds of legality but is way high on the "creepy" meter), we are somehow asked, in this sub-text, to see them both as potential "victims of the system." And much like sitting through the gut-wrenching portrait of Kubrick's Alex, we squirm as we wade through the seemingly endless pages of Gary's depiction of Tom's "exploits" (to use a loaded term). So, indeed, is it exploitive or harmful if the individual being observed is unaware of it? More later. Best, Bill

P.S. Have you read the Griffin and Sabine trilogy? The text of the books is a dreamy correspondence between a man and a woman where the reader actually opens up envelopes and reads their letters. Very voyeuristic.

From: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

To: "Staples, William G" staples@ku.edu

Subject: RE: Response to Gary Marx's piece for TSQ

Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 23:22:15 -0600

Bill,

Well, it's still April Fool's day, so here's more in the same vein. Your comments make me wonder about the motives underlying a lot (all) of our work and the ways in which we exploit our subjects and indulge our curiosity and thus paper over our subjectivity. I mean, we all have axes to grind, and postmodernism pretty much pulled the props out from under those claims of objectivity we used to make to justify our analyses and conclusions. Like, I gave a paper a couple of months ago about the ways that racial and ethnic stereotypes feed on sexualized images and magineries. A colleague told me that some people who heard or read my work might see my project as fetishizing ethnic and racial "Others." What she was saying was that as a white gal (see, it isn't just you white guys), my interest in ethnicity could be seen as unwholesome, my attentions considered unwelcome, my gaze denied as voyeuristic, as feeding on the abjection of others, as sating my own personal and intellectual appetites and agendas. This seems like sort of a similar issue is there any harm done to those we "study," those about whom we report, the subjects of our research . . . even if they've been dead for a hundred years, or are anonymous, or don't know they're being reported on? So anything we choose to study sets us up as suspects and cookie pushers, blinded by the limited horizons of our positionality, naive about ways in which our work reinforces the social order. It's a goodthing so few people listen to anything we have to say. But, still, Gary's piece bothers me. He makes up this sort of boohoo story about a hapless stalker, a misunderstood sociopath, a poor pervert who is a victim of his own [de]vices and is victimized by those who judge and "help" him. And of course, as you so nicely note, his story is narrated by the scientistic voice of the objective, disinterested therapist, "just the facts, ma'am, nothing but the facts."

It's hard to put your finger on the real villain or the real victim. No especially likable characters here. Maybe underlying the question of who really deserves our sympathy or ire (and who is harmed or not) is a matter of power and powerlessness. Again, what if the genders in the story had been reversed? Would I be as irked if it were Tammy Voire? Or if it were Geri Marx? Would my assessment of any damage done to an unknowing male subject of Tammy's surveillance be reduced? Would I be as suspicious or impatient with Geri Marx's lengthy ruminations? Weren't you doing something with gender in your own work on privacy? Or is that too dangerous a question for me to ask in light of the above? Joane

From: "Bill Staples" staples@ku.edu

To: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 09:50:53 –0600

Joane,

Sorry it's taken a few days to get back to you on this . . . Well, I certainly think that we should be more reflective about the voyeuristic tendencies in our work and the sometimes flimsy justifications for it. So, how would you respond if the gender in Gary's story were reversed? I'd guess with at least some sympathy or at least, what, pity? I have addressed questions of gender in my work on surveillance insofar as new techniques involve our bodies in important ways and those bodies are indeed gendered bodies (although I've been accused of only considering the universal [male] body, but that's another story). And, of course, gazes may be gendered as well. By reproducing the "male gaze," has Gary, in turn, reinforced the social (sexual) order, as you put it? The text places "Eve" at the center of a masculinist gaze where she is both objectified and completely subject-less a sort of Maxim mag fantasy where Tom is "in complete control." He can tweak her body to .t his perfect image, inscribe it as his property, and act as her "protector." While Tom enjoys the power and control in all this, she is left supposedly "unharmed" by his activities. Yet tapes can be found, stolen, confiscated. Cameras can be uncovered, investigations begun, and the object of his fixxation revealed. And he is constantly tempted to distribute her personal info, as he puts it, "After all what was the point of being a voyeur if you could not advertise your triumphs?" She is living on the edge, whether she knows it or not.

I find it interesting that while we are being asked to accept "Peeping Tom's" shenanigans as his personal right, no matter how seemingly twisted, when the tables are turned, Tom finds it very offensive to be the object of the gaze. He wears reflective glasses since "he wanted to see but not be seen." He likes to use the women's restroom at work because of its "greater level of privacy." Tom is the one who is victimized by "anonymous complaints"; he accuses others of "visual entrapment" and thinks that it is "wrong" to use a video camera to watch a "trusted employee," like himself, "especially without telling them"; he considers these "sneaky means" a "gross invasion of privacy." All this suggests that Tom is aware that there is power in knowing and potential threat when others are the ones who know. He quotes Sartre as "to look is to empower the other," yet Sartre also said, "What I apprehend immediately when I hear the branches cracking behind me is not that there is someone there; it is that I am vulnerable; that I have a body which can be hurt; that I occupy a place and I cannot in any case escape from this space in which I am without defense in short, I am seen." Bill

From: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

To: "Staples, William G" staples@ku.edu

Subject: The meat speaks

Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 09:02:21 -0500

Bill,

You know, this whole notion of reproducing the sexual (and gender) social order by writing from the position of the male gaze resting on the female body can be reversed, if we throw a little agency (responsibility?) in Eve's direction. Now this makes me nervous because it's kind of blaming the victim. What I mean here is Gary's, oops, Tom's statement: "From my reading of women's magazines in supermarket checkout stands, I know that most women want very much to be noticed by men." And vice versa, I'm sure. But three things on this: First, there's "notice" (as in a friendly smile) and then there's "NOTICE" (as in sick obsessional interest). Is the implication here that women who are looking (or not) for notice should be held responsible when they

get NOTICED? I don't think so. Second, and more important, what about Tom's presumptive claim that women's magazines are the articulators of the universal Eve's true desire and intent? Hmm. How about women's magazines as the wishful manipulators of Eve's desire and intent? Tom's powers of inference are a little causally distorted here, but still, manipulation only works when it has resonance we don't "hear" a message unless it's speaking our language. But it's speaking Tom's language as well as mine, so I don't think that the ball is entirely in my court.

But, finally (and setting aside the heavy duty heteronormative subtext, hell, text of this whole paper Tom and his women), there's the whole question of what women can do without being accused of acting seductive and invitational. I mean, I suspect Tom would think that the Taliban had it right. Anything we gals (but not guys?) do to adjust our appearance (brush our teeth, wash our face, cut our hair, wear a suit our size, or, god forbid, put on some lipstick, nail polish, high heels) is evidence of our wish to be surveilled, drooled over, mentally groped by every man who comes into our orbit. And if I do want to be drooled over and groped by a particular man (or woman), does that automatically require me to become available commercial meat in everyman's market? Can a person participate in a culture without reinforcing and being blamed for its most egregious excesses? Is wearing a dress really an invitation to be undressed? Joane

From: "Bill Staples" staples@ku.edu

To: "Nagel, Joane" nagel@ku.edu

Subject: The meat speaks

Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 11:50:53-0600

Joane,

Is wearing any dress an invitation to be undressed or only wearing certain dresses? At one point Tom says, "If they don't want to be looked at, why do they dress that way?" What does he mean by "that way?" Is there a line between the culture's "most egregious excesses" and the more everyday and mundane? Similarly, where is the border between "notice" (as in a friendly smile) and "NOTICE" (as in sick obsessional interest)? Gary, once again, is suggesting that lines are blurred, difficult to identify, and even more difficult to legislate. If Tom were a big fan of Talibanian cultural policy it would make a big dent in his voyeurism (it's really difficult to get "up skirt" video footage from under a burqa). No. What he resents is the attempt by the "gender police" to restrict his (male) gaze. In fact, he characterizes the company's zealot "gender relations facilitator" as having recently "immigrated from a country famous for its carpets, where she worked for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice." Again, he's the victim here.

Well, I think we'd better end our exchange, edit this into something more presentable as "real" sociology, and ship it off to Leicht. Whew! Thanks for canceling the Social Science Chair's Brown Bag this week. I've got a ton of other stuff to do. Want to have lunch? Bill

Go to Tom Voire essay | Go to main Gary Marx page

William G. Staples is professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Kansas. His books include Castles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800-1985 (Rutgers 1991) and Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life (Rowman and Littlefield 2000)

Joane Nagel is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas and is Sociology Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (2002-2004). Her most recent book is, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers (Oxford University Press 2002)