"The Gaze" and the photo's from Abu Ghraib Prison.

"The Gaze", as defined in last night's lecture, is how practices of looking function within different social relationships. Basically, who is being looked at and why? Last night's lecture was based on how images, power, and social control are connected, and in regards to that, I found the question of "the gaze" to be a vital one. Even more specifically, nearing the end of the lecture when we began to talk about the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, that question of how we see things within different social relationships, resonated in my mind and begged to be pondered.
When the abusive pictures from Abu Ghraib surfaced, so many things came in to question; fundamentally, what is wrong with us, but also, what's the big deal? Personally, I felt sick to my stomach. I hated seeing that North American soldiers would do such things, but what I hated even more was that people around me didn't think it was a problem. My own family and close friends shocked me almost as much as the pictures themselves; they would say things like "they do it to their prisoners, so we can to" or "whatever, they deserve it...damn terrorists". I could not and still can not understand the ignorance of some people, and it drives me crazy for I believe tolerance and open mindedness are essential when listening to others' opinions. What's wrong with us, North America? - please, tell me.
Anyways, recalling those past arguments and throws of opinion brought me back to the idea of "the gaze", mostly because there were so many thoughts connecting the idea of how we look at things to differing social contexts. The pictures of Abu Ghraib raised issues we as a western society didn't even know existed, and those issues were raised because of perception. People saw the abusive images and went crazy; feelings of injustice and guilt spread like wildfire. We as a society share a social relationship with these images -- we are the onlookers who do nothing, the cultural brothers or sisters of the torturers. When we saw these images, we felt horrible because our subconscious questions were being answered; our instincts were being justified. Our practices of looking, our initial perceptions, were boosted by pre-inspired guilt so we reacted. We gazed at these images, and brought forth a unified meaning, we said 'this is wrong' and remedied the mistakes.
I'm not sure if much of this has made sense, however this entry is my attempt to understand 'the gaze' and try to apply it's meaning to an issue brought about in lecture. Hopefully, I've achieved this.