The Gaze: Looking at You Looking at Me

Abstract

Chapter 2 posed some questions about the nature of looking in a situation that might be a more troubling site of spectatorship than many sporting or entertainment sites. Visibility plays an important part in the making of sporting spectacles, although there are also more routine encounters, for example, in training where body practices take priority over any sense of being seen. Chapter 2 raised questions about the particularities of looking in the sport of boxing and explored some of the connections and disconnections between the drama which is the subject of virtual performance, the reality of embodied performance and the actuality of being there, for athletes and, especially for my purposes in this book, for spectators. In sport, athletes perform largely according to the rules of engagement and are the object of the gaze of those who watch. There is a relationship between those who perform and those who watch which is mediated by the cultural and social as well as specific norms of the sport. This chapter aims to take the arguments about the relationship between the actual and the virtual and the nature of making visible and invisible further, by exploring the relationship between the viewer and what is viewed in more detail.