When reading the third chapter of The Practices of Looking, Modernity: Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge, I could not help but apply the concepts found under the Discourse and Power and Gender and The Gaze section apply to the following human trafficking PSAs.
In this post, I have included photos from the International Organization for Migration's anti-human trafficking campaign (heavily analyzed by Rutvica Andrijasecvic in her 2007 article "Beautiful Dead Bodies"). This campaign, aims to warn Eastern European women of the dangers of traveling to work abroad.
We can apply these images to the concept of the "male gaze" and a gaze integral to systems of power. These anti-trafficking ads show women to be passive objects with faces shielded from our gaze. Given a cultural and historical background, you can begin to realize the science behind these borderline erotic images of women's bodies that reeks of a power play pertaining to migration control.
The concepts of female vulnerability and sexuality, represented by scantily clothed doll-like women, were carefully constructed among the grainy black and white images. The spacing of the photographs and text allows the spectator to pause and reflect on captions such as, "The return home won't be easy. Are you sure you know what's waiting for you?"
Overall, this campaign uses spectatorship, power and knowledge to depict women as something to be saved from men that are willing to objectify and exploit them.
