Looking, Observation or surveillance Part 2

The use by video artists of themselves as the subject probably has as many underlying reasons as there are artists. I did find this quote:

"The quest for self-identity is at the heart of so many works because the face-to-face with one’s self that video allows encourages the search for self-definition. As the image evolves over time, the speaking subject weaves the narrative fabric of self, allowing identity to be conceived in full fictional depth. This allows artists to seize the territory of the video as a space for personal metamorphosis through an artistic, aesthetic act. This is not about using video in a psychoanalytical context to treat neuroses [4], but to reflect on the way in which artists play with this."

http://freepassproject.com/?p=28

How common this is amongst video artists I do not know but for me it offers a viable explanation although the relationship to the viewer remains obscure. another artist who uses the same medium, Milutin Gubash, stated in an interview (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSk4fD67qTE) that he was attempting to show what it is to be an artist by being the subject. When asked towards the end of the interview about forthcoming work he responded by saying "you will be looking at me  .. you will have to go shopping to find it (him)" that indicates that he sees an interactive relationship between the work he has created and the viewer where questions will be posited by the video that will require a thinking response from the viewer.


How do these relate to panopticism? The two quotes in the Course material are not very helpful other than to suggest that to use panopticism (is that really a word?) as a metaphor is to really stretch its meaning from its original concept in Bentham's thinking about the ideal prison. Of course if you create an 'ism' you are free to make it mean and cover what you like but I cannot help the feeling that it does not work. The panoptic was a design to minimise the number of staff required and to create in the prisoner the idea that he would always be observed even though in reality the odds were very much in his favour. In the present time we can see its modern counterpart in the CCTV cameras that are now so much a part of our urban landscape and the same ideas underpin its use - the number of policeman or other agents of law and order can be reduced and the citizen controlled by his own fears that he is being watched at all times although how this is taken to suggest that the images that we see in art and elsewhere are also part of the same system is a difficult leap to make.


I have argued in an earlier blog that 'looking', 'observing' and 'surveillance' (what happened to 'seeing') are part of the same continuum and that it is impossible to decide without a physical reaction from the person exactly where (s)he is on that continuum. Here is an image that I found on a web page (http://www.mentondailyphoto.com/2011/11/photomenton-looking-and-seeing.html) 

In the narrative accompanying this image are the words:

"Some people look and see the photos. Others look but their eyes are glazed. This visitor to PhotoMenton is really concentrating and absorbing what she sees."

I believe these words are written by the photographer. Clearly he has had the advantage of having observed the visitor to draw the conclusion that he has about her 'state'. Can we in all honesty draw the same conclusion from looking at the photograph. We cannot tell what she is looking at and there is nothing in her attitude to suggest that she is really concentrating. She may be doing nothing more than half-closing her eyes because of the bright sunlight as evidenced by the blown out element of the photograph immediately to her right. It is not that I deny the photographer's interpretation - just that we, with such limited information, cannot come to any conclusion based on the evidence before us.

It is also of interest that the photographer indicates that there is a state - concentrating - that is beyond seeing as he separates his choice from those who 'see' and a group whose 'eyes glaze over'

Let us examine an image, in this case a painting, to see if we are justified in drawing any conclusions about whether those in the picture are looking or observing.

Does the Subject Matter

Alfred Joh Munnings

The Munnings Collection at

The Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum

Here it is clear that the people in the painting are doing more than looking. We are able to draw this conclusion because their body language, exaggerated in the painting, is offered as a strong clue to what they are doing. (I am not to sure about the dog!). The painting supports my argument (hence its choice) that we need some indication of a physical reaction to draw conclusions about what a person is doing. 

In this second image the mental state of the person is less obvious:

The Balcony

John Phillip 1857

Leicester Arts and Museums Service

Can we realistically draw any firm conclusions about what the woman is doing. Her gaze seems to be somewhere in the middle distance but to me it is evidence of a person pursuing her inner thoughts and not really aware of at what she is looking. I am sure that there are others who would argue a different case and there is no possible way for me to refute their view or them to refute mine. In essence it is purely a personal view that possibly changes depending upon the feeling being experienced by the viewer at that time.

Looking, Observation or Surveillance

When first studying this part of the Course I had difficulties and initially could not understand why other than my usual responses to new material or old material presented in as different way. It could also have been that having many years experience of penal institutions and the very real dangers of isolating anyone from their fellow human beings the ideas of Jeremy Bentham in this area I find abhorrent. I then decided to try and discover the difference between 'looking' and 'seeing'. I came across the following quote:

"When you see something and you do not take much note, but when you look at it you try to analyse it"


http://wiki.answers.com/.  What is the difference between seeing and looking.


 I felt that this explanation stated how I would answer the question. Of course this is the opposite to how the terms are used in the Course material and the vast majority of other work I have read on the subject. However a close reading of this same material in general text shows confusion and overlapping in the way the words are used and they are often interchangeable. I decided that I would go with the majority opinion because as long as we agree how the terms should be used the actual words - the signifiers - are not relevant.


I would argue that 'looking' and 'seeing' are part of a continuum and that there is no specific time when it can be shown that we are doing one or the other. Assuming we are not looking for something specific that would pre-condition us to see and we are simply 'browsing', with no specific subject/object in mind there must be some sort of mental construct created that triggers an action that moves us along the continuum. Something worthy of greater attention must have been noticed, albeit unconsciously, for us to begin the mental activity of seeing.  Presumably there is a decision point or points when we increase the level of activity or dismiss it as not worthy of further attention. In the latter condition we have moved back to looking and it is possible in a some cases that we are unaware of what has just happened unless our interest is piqued again.

Let us consider the scenario where we are looking for something. For example we are visiting an art gallery to look at works of art that are relevant to a concept we have been asked to consider in an educational course such as the depiction of women in paintings through the generations. Amongst the many hundreds of paintings on view in the larger art galleries and museums we cannot afford the time to examine every painting we look at to find out if it meets the criteria. We have some construct in our mind that allows us to filter out those paintings that are not relevant to our purpose. As we walk through the galleries I would suggest we have moved some way along the continuum from looking to seeing but as yet do not see. Something will catch our eye, say a family portrait where the male figures are given dominance over the females, and we will stop and consider the painting further. If the painting offers the insight we are seeking we will study it further i.e. moving further along the continuum to 'seeing'. If not we move on. However this activity of decision making will take a measurable period of time and it would not be possible for an outside observer to know whether at any point we are looking or seeing.

As the main reading of this section of the Course relates to Bentham's ideas of how a prison should be built and operate (in practice this has never happened) I thought it might be useful to use the prison context to examine 'looking', 'seeing' and 'surveillance' as it is an environment and structure that demonstrates how all concerned are the object, subject and surveilled all at the same time.

When prisoners were finally allowed to leave their cells to undertake work with other prisoners almost without exception they were under the direct supervision of a Prison Officer (a Warder up until 1922 when the name was changed but the product remained the same). In the large workshops devoted to coir picking, sewing mail bags by hand or other similar tasks there was placed a Prison Officer whose primary task was to observe the prisoners, ensure that he had an accurate roll count and to respond (usually by summoning assistance) to any incidents. He sat on a chair sufficiently high off the ground to ensure he could see the whole workshop. He was not expected to converse with the prisoners nor interact with them in any other way. So what was he doing?

He (or in the case of female prions she) is observing. For the most part he is scanning the workshop and essentially is looking. It is possible that he may be thinking of many other things either job related or about his domestic life. His attention is not on any particular prisoner nor on any group of prisoners. He may notice a group of prisoners together and providing this is not unusual he will continue to look. However if he notices something out of the ordinary he will begin to analyse the situation. Implicit in this description is that the Officer has a mental picture of what should be happening (I originally wrote "what he should see" which is at odds with my proposition that he is only looking but it is the usual way to describe his actions)  and as long as this picture is not challenged he will continue to look and not see. This latter point is relevant to the behaviour of the subjects' of his looking - the prisoners and I will comment on this later.

Let us suppose that as the Officer is looking around the Workshop he notices a group of prisoners who normally do not congregate together. He will begin the process of seeing -  his senses will be heightened - and he will try and assess the level of threat posed by this new situation. If he quickly notices an Instructor in the midst of the group who is demonstrating some legitimate activity then he will quickly revert to looking. Alternatively if there is no obvious explanation he will continue to analyse the situation 'seeing' more and more until he is satisfied that the threat is real or the group has peacefully returned to their places of work. It is as well to recall that pressure is on the Officer to make a quick decision else he risks the situation getting out of control yet at the same time a false call for assistance will have a deleterious effect upon his reputation and also increase the level of risk in the rest of the prison. [When an alarm bell rings all available Officers respond to the site of the call. If prisoners realise that they can spook an Officer they can use this knowledge to draw staff away from another area where there fellow prisoners are up to no good].

By far the largest number of individuals in the Workshop will be prisoners. It is a mistake to assume that they will naturally act jointly and it was not uncommon for prisoners to come to the aid of staff. If the Officer is looking/observing the prisoners there can be little doubt that they are observing him. This is particularly true if he is an unknown quantity. It is important to them to assess what is likely to happen in any given situation and his likely response to being approached. Here I would suggest that some will have moved from looking to seeing either for their own individual reasons or for a collective reason. Initially it will be at the higher level of seeing as they examine his body language, how he scans the workshop and whether he is craftily reading the Times or Telegraph or Page 3. I referred earlier to the Officer's tendency to match the actuality of what he sees to his mental construct and if there remains a match he is much less likely to change from looking to seeing. It is therefore in the prisoners' interests to present this picture as consistently as possible whilst cutting the bars to facilitate an escape.

What relevance does this have to the rest of us? Although this sort of looking/seeing is unknown to most of us I would argue that we are all involved in the same process all the time (apart from sleeping and not dreaming). It is a necessary part of survival. We have to continually assess the environment for potential danger (think about driving whilst talking on the telephone (hands free of course!) when we are engaged in holding a conversation and may even be mentally visualising something that is being described to us or the person at the other end but at the same time safely negotiating traffic and avoiding hazards) or be on the look out for something/someone. There is no time when we are only looking i.e. not seeing albeit our level of seeing is very low.

The desire to be noticed and possibly photographed so prevalent in 'celebrities' would appear to be the opposite to the panopticon world described by Foucault. The whole purpose of the central tower is that the observer of the prison population cannot be observed by those in the cells. The prisoners would also have a strong desire to remain unnoticed because only in that way can they avoid possible repercussions for behaviour deemed to unacceptable. However the only way that the prisoner can retain any sense of his own identity is through some sort of interaction with another human being. (It was this lack of interaction that led to a noticeable increase in prisoner insanity at Pentonville that whilst not built on the panopticon design did physically separate the prisoner from all contact with fellow prisoners and had very limited contact with the prison staff). One way of generating this interaction would be to act outside the accepted norm that would force staff to respond. In terms of the celebrity the only way to retain the status of celebrity is to be treated like one. To be ignored by the paparazzi is the equivalent of celebrity death so that they desire the very thing that they claim not to want - the want to be seen.

Those who fear or reject social interaction are the equivalent of the prisoner who sits/stands in the same attitude all the time knowing that only in this way can he avoid being noticed and having his tightly controlled world disturbed or even shattered. Even in modern prisons that allow some interaction such as general exercise or the collection of meals some prisoners find ways to minimise this to the absolute minimum. The prisoner who seeks some form of solitary confinement or locks himself into his own mental world is a common sight.

'Surveillance' although often used loosely to describe someone looking at a person or a group of people has a specific meaning:

"close observation or supervision maintained over a person, group etc. esp. one in custody or under suspicion" [Collins English Dictionary  Harper-Collins Publishers 1995]

Although this would appear to include the scenario in prison described above it would be unusual for prison staff to have any individual  or group under surveillance. In the prison world all prisoners are under suspicion and whilst the general behaviour patterns in prison may be seen as a possible threat in the outside world they are so much the 'norm' that they do not raise the alarm. This is not to say that at specific times and acting on intelligence the individual or group of prisoners are not made subject to surveillance for a period of time.

It has been said the Great Britain is one of the most surveilled people in the world because of the wide use of CCTV. However in the vast majority of cases they are 'seen' as a small part of the scene that passes in front of the operator in a constant flow. There is no real difference between what the operator is doing and that described above for the Prison Officer in the workshop. Staff in control rooms are presented with a series of images with which they quickly become familiar. For the most part they are looking and only start to 'see' if something out of the ordinary appears on the screen. Their reaction times become slower and slower as their time on shift gets longer. Personal experience suggests that the event has to become more and more extreme to be noticed as the time spent watching the screens increases.

In conclusion it is my argument that 'looking' and 'seeing' are the two ends of a continuum and it is only by the physical actions of the person can it be deduced whether they are looking or seeing. I would further argue that to observe someone is of the same genre of looking and seeing and that surveillance is of the same ilk. Observation and surveillance are targeted but what the observer or surveiller is doing is no different than looking or seeing.

I will pursue this further in the next blog.

The Mirror Phase

Lacan's hypothesis of the Mirror Phase in a child's development raises a number of difficulties if taken literally. Not least of these is the question as to how does a congenitally blind child develops social and language skills or an awareness of itself as a separate entity from others. (see Raymond Tallis  Not Saussure: A critique of Post-Saussurian Literary Theory  Macmillan 1988 p.153 cited in Webster's 'The Cult of Lacan).  Tallis himself is accused of a superficial reading of Lacan's work and Nobus (Life and Death in the Glass-A New Look at the Mirror Stage in Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis p 120) states " The symbolic control of the imaginary implies that the assumption of a self-image can occur outside the field of vision. As such Lacan's purification of the mirror stage entails a reduction of its basis in the physiology of perception. Insofar as the symbolic governs the imaginary, a blind child can still assume a self-image, as long as the symbolic is there to replace and control its eyes, for then it will see itself through the words of the Other".

Lacan refined his 'mirror stage' thinking throughout his career not least in developing some of the implications of the concept.  The mirror stage,  whenever and however it occurs, establishes a relationship between the subject and the "Ideal 'I'".  In the words of the French poet Rimbaud (1854 - 1891)  "The 'I' is an Other" . We are aware throughout our lives that there is a difference between our image of ourselves and the messages we receive from our corporeal body. Although the 'mirror stage' is a phase in our psychic development the initial relationship between the child and its "ideal I" is the foundation for the child's future self-image as a social being and its relationships with others.

Lacan also argues that who we are can only be defined in relation to others.Our understanding of the world comes to us through the mediation of others; the language we speak is already in existence and our thoughts are bounded by concepts and linguistic structures that we have absorbed from others.From this arises a conflict between these learned norms and our instinctual drives such as sexuality that are in opposition to the way others would have us behave. Further there is a continuing mismatch between the Ideal I and the experiences we have leading to a sense of disappointment and frustration. We can never achieve a perfect match - there is always something lacking - in Lacan's terms the manque-a-etre  (the want to be).


In the mirror stage the primary identification is with the image and Lacan argued that this identification is 'fictional' insofar as the Ideal 'I" will never fully conform to the individual's own experiences. What the child sees in the mirror is not what it is feeling. The image appears whole and in control in conflict with the child's experience of being, and seeing, individual elements of which it has no power.

Lacan turned to art to illustrate examples of psychic actions and saw in the works of Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516) and the phantasmagorical figures depicted in his paintings manifestations of unconscious drives. In the Course material we are told that Lacan was associated with the Surrealist movement and to find works by this body of artists that "might have echoes" of the mirror phase.

Salvador Dali - Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937

1 Narcissus staring at his own reflection in the pool. Unable to embrace the reflection (it distorts and loses its beauty if he reaches into the water) he remains unable to join the reflection with reality and eventually, pining away, dies.

2 A double image with Narcissus transformed into a hand holding an egg from which a flower emerges.

3 Narcissus' reflection with which he falls in love, a love that is destined to remain unrequited. He is rejected as he rejected others.

In between these two images can be seen a group of people who Dali calls, in the text to this image, his "heterosexuals" and who we are told are pretenders of both sexes who were rejected by Narcissus.

The reflected image has all the characteristics of the mirror image in the work of Lacan. It can be seen but not touched and is an ideal that it is unobtainable. Of interest is that Narcissus is unaware that it is a reflection of himself and this relates to the time that the young child is able to see the reflection of itself but has yet to internalise the realisation that the image is of himself.

Diego Rivera Maternity 1916

1. The infant child suckling at its mother's breast

2. The nursing mother.

3 Note the angular sharp lines in the cubist tradition that are at odds both with the underlying concept of the image (motherhood and love) and the softness of the depiction of the breast.

There is a poignancy about this image in that it is a painting by Diego of his infant child who had died recently. It is therefore difficult to isolate the grief that Diego is feeling and the world as experienced by the child. It can be argued that the angularity and sharp edges in the image are a reflection of the grief felt by the painter and the mother at the loss of the child. It could also be argued that this is how the world is experienced by the young infant particularly during the time when it has little control over his body. Young children have a remarkable talent for bumping into things that cause pain. Early in life the mother provides the care and comfort that is necessary for the child and there is an association of the warmth and succour of the mother's breast that is a strong bond between the two.

The further tragedy is that Diego's wife was never able to have another child.

In the second part of the Course material for this blog we are asked to find two examples of the way the contemporary media make use of Lacan's ideas and show how. 

In a lecture given in 1966 in Baltimore Lacan associated advertising with the psychoanalytic problem of enjoyment. It is  argued that enjoyment either as a signifier, as an image or as a sub-text is always at the core of the promise offered by advertisements. "it is only the particular nature of this enjoyment that is at stake with certain car manufacturer's promising a surplus of  "advanced enjoyment" against the supposedly banal enjoyment offered by other cars......and doesn't enjoyment  exhibit all the paradoxical characteristics  of Lacan's  'jouissance'.1. 

'Jouissance' , in Lacan, denotes a paradoxical enjoyment beyond socially sanctioned pleasure, a pleasure that borders with displeasure, a satisfaction tied to dissatisfaction, an intensity that fails to be adequately represented and explained through symbolic means.2 

It is in the advertisers interest to create a longing for enjoyment that can never in reality be fulfilled. If its present product is successful in providing 'advanced enjoyment' then its chances of selling future products of the same kind are drastically reduced. To coin a phrase 'always leave them wanting more'. The existence of jouissance with its paradoxes ensures that enjoyment is a fleeting moment that quickly fades and leaves the punter dissatisfied and ripe for buying the same object.

In Cinema and Television production Lacan's 'want to be' is a key component in Lacan's analysis of cinema going and why we enjoy the activity. Although superficially Cinema and Television are offering the same sort of entertainment - a visual experience of something that is not 'real' and in the case of Cinema always created and presented, there is a fundamental difference that impacts upon the role of the spectator and how he/she responds. This difference was noted by Noble. According to him 'a night out at the cinema, in darkness, in an unfamiliar surrounding is designed to allow the spectator to forget who he is and where he is'. In effect he can be whoever he wants and this facilitates identification with one or more  of the characters in the film.

Television on the other hand us usually watched in familiar surroundings and often in the company of people familiar to the spectator. Furthermore , unlike cinema, television provides in many programmes continuity of characters and in long running soaps the spectator sees the character develop from callow youth to adulthood and eventually demise. Normally the spectator, rather than identifying with a particular character and internalising briefly all the characteristics becomes 'part of' the scene unfolding before him. He responds to the ongoing plot empathising with one or more characters and adopting the norm of their relationship with other characters in the drama. In this role he remains in one sense himself whilst at the same time filling the lack in his life by being fully involved in a way that is impossible to him in real life. The shy introvert can become verbally aggressive and  'in your face' without the risk he of responses that he fears.

Both cinema and television are necessarily temporary and at some point there will come an end whether it be the conclusion of the film when hopefully all plots are realised or at the end of the programme in television where in the series or serial version there is a break at a cliff-hanger moment. The sudden jarring return to 'reality signalled by the lights going up or the commercial break leaves the spectator with a strong desire to return to the imaginary world he has just left where he experienced, however fleetingly, completeness. He has become what all producers of film and TV programmes desire - the captured audience.

References

1  http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/lacan/guide5.html

2 (ibid)

Sources

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/09/mad men writers bone up on lac.html

http://www.grossolatos.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stavrakakis-gramma.pdf

http://www.psychoanalysis.ugent.be/pages/nl/artikels%20Frederic%20Declercq/Lacan%20on%20the

http://www.othervoices.org/1.3/bh/highway.php

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AA13275744/

Visual Studies - Visual Culture1 Freud, Oedipus and Castration

Failed to find a copy of Freud's article "The Dissolution of the Oedipal Complex" either in the stocks of Suffolk County Council Libraries or in online bookshops. However I did find several commentaries on the Web that, combined, provided a good insight into the contents of the original article. Whilst there are a number of counter-arguments presented by contemporaries of Freud such as Carl Jung and revisions and re-working by later psychoanalysts I have adhered, as far as possible to Freud's approach in tackling the required work in this blog.

The following comments are related to the numbers shown at the sides of the image.

1 The background to the image is of a dark forest or wood signifying a 'forbidden' place that is populated by mythical figures and unstated dangers. A place that once entered changes our lives forever. In Freudian terms the forest can be seen as our repressed thoughts and desires.

2 A female figure in a state of undress with disheveled hair suggestive of a sexual encounter. Her pose and facial expression is the outward manifestation of her inner thoughts that are centred around a feeling of deep regret and horror about what has just happened. However her stance does not suggest that she was an unwilling participant in whatever has happened but that she has come to realise that it was an act that is seen as 'bad' by the culture in which she lives.

3 Bedding laid on the forest floor reinforces the message that there has been some activity between the two figures probably of a sexual nature that is also suggested in the state of the female's dress.

4 Appears to be a box of sweets or chocolate indicative of 'bribery' or maintenance of the initial facade of innocent play.

5 Male figure, in appearance older than the female, in a posture of despair. In Freudian terms this is the 'father' figure who has been the object of the daughter's desire to have a baby by her father.

What is not clear from the image is whether what we are looking at is the record of an actual event or a dream of one or the other characters. Whatever the image is it can be interpreted in Freudian terms as the outcome of an incestuous act that is, according to Freud, a universal taboo.

One aspect of interest in the image is the difference in the reactions of the two individuals. The male is in a state of deep despair whilst that of the female is one of considerable anxiety but she is not burdened by the heavy weight of guilt displayed by the man.  Freud argues that whilst women suffer from penis-envy this is replaced by the desire to bear her father a child. He further argues that because the female does not suffer from the fear of castration her 'super-ego' (our conscience) is under-developed compared to that of the male who benefits from the need to repress his fear of castration. The under-development means that she is less moral than her male counterpart. As can be imagined such a view was and is highly controversial.

In the second part of this exercise we are asked to consider whether castration anxiety helps to explain the  images featuring a dominatrix or simply a large woman and a small man.  We are asked to consider the images using Freud's theories to see if they, in part at least, explain what is signified by the elements of the image. Freud's views on domination or sado-masochism changed over his professional life and it is difficult to unravel the contradictions in his various theories. He put forward the theory in 1905 that if, early in life, children witness sexual intercourse between adults they will view the act as "a sort of ill-treatment or act of subjugsation: they view it, that is, in a sadistic sense."  To offer an explanation for masochism Freud proposed that it was a way of controlling a desire to sexually dominate others. he also argued that desire for a submissive role in sexual activity can occur on its own when a man wants to assume the passive female role with domination activity signifying being "castrated or copulated with, or giving birth." In 1920 he proposed that sadism derived from the "death instinct". However the theory fails to offer an explanation why in some it leads to sadism whilst in others it results in masochism. 

"Because of its opacity and apparent remoteness from clinical practice (Freud himself acknowledged the "speculative" nature of its origins), the death drive became perhaps the most controversial aspect of Freud's theoretical corpus. A number of analytic theorists continued to explore its implications following Freud's death, especially Melanie Klein, in whose work the death drive figures prominently. (see http://science.jrank.org/pages/10903/Psychoanalysis-Dual-Instinct-Theory-Death-Drive.html). Given the breadth of Freud's explanations it is difficult to pinpoint one that offers an explanation of the "dominatrix or simply a large woman and a small man".

1 The speech contained within the bubble reinforces the image of the man as being the submissive partner in the relationship who seeks the advice of his wife on the possibility of help from a doctor with his lack of sexual desire.

2 This speech bubble also reinforces the relationship by stressing the domination of the woman who humiliates the man by her response that his sex urge is beyond help.

3 Here is the typical large woman of the seaside postcards who by her very size is placed as the dominant figure in the image.

4 The usual small man whose relative size signifies his inability both sexually and generally to dominate his wife and occupy the traditional place of man as the provider in a marriage.

My own view is that the use of different size relationship between women and men in postcard drawings (it can be seen in the reverse where there is a very muscular man and a petite female) is the artists way of turning the cultural relationship of men/women at this time on its head. Men were seen as the stronger and the more powerful of the two and their role was seen as being the protector and provider for the female. Only by exaggerating a difference would the possibility of such behaviour as depicted in the postcard drawing be acceptable.

There are however Freudian elements in the 'conversation' with the man clearly anxious about his sexual performance and the humiliating response from the wife. It could be argued that he has been 'castrated' from an early time in the marriage and his anxieties from childhood caused by threats of removal of his genitals if he did not stop being a 'dirty little boy' would be re-awakened leading to an increasing loss of libido.

I felt that there may be more mileage in exploring erotic postcards where the intention is obvious. 

I have not annotated the image as the purpose is obvious. A similar exaggeration of size of the female is present as in the seaside postcard particularly in the buttocks.  There can be very little doubt about the dominant person nor the very submissive nature of the male. Given the position and the most likely outcome, the death of the man the temptation is to go for Freud's view that such behaviour was related to the 'death wish'. However Freud had doubts about the relevance of this so it may be safer to assume that here the desire is generated by the need to adopt the totally submissive role where his continued existence relies solely upon the actions of the female - all choices for him have gone.

In this image we have a similar situation although the male is possibly at less risk although the element of danger is still there. Again there is total submission and the outcome is solely at the behest of the female.

These postcards are for viewing by those who derive sexual stimulation from the images that are portrayed. The viewer places himself in the position of the submissive or herself in the position of the dominatrix. The question arises as to why such images arouse sexual feelings in those whose preference is for this type of sexual relationship. Perhaps for the submissive all control is lost and anything that happens cannot be his fault and therefore he cannot be punished or threatened by the 'castration'.  All the anxieties generated in childhood by being scolded for masturbating can be negated by putting himself in the complete control of another. Often a child will try to avoid punishment by denying that it is him but some other person within him that is the guilty party.