The gaze implies a concentration of the spectator’s activity into that of looking, the glance implies that no extraordinary effort is being invested in the activity of looking. The very terms we habitually use to designate the person who watches TV or the cinema screen tend to indicate this difference. The cinema-looker is a spectator: caught by the projection yet separate from its illusion. The TV looker is a viewer, casting a lazy eye over proceedings, keeping an eye on events, or, as the slightly archaic designation had it, “looking in.”
ATTRIBUTION:
John Ellis (b. 1952), British film critic. Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video, ch. 8, Routledge (1982).
