The Zoom Gaze

Caroline Bagesaanaatig Ferrante

Have you ever been in a Zoom meeting and noticed someone looking intently into a corner of their screen? Did you follow their gaze? Why? Have you ever experienced side-eye on the Zoom platform? If so, how did you come to that conclusion? (After all, we can’t be sure of our position on another attendee’s screen). Virtual meeting platforms are ubiquitous in today’s culture for family reunions, graduations, weddings, recreation, gaming, dating, work, and education. We don’t know where our video tile appears on the screens of others, yet we may have a sense of being scanned or examined by particular ways of looking (without concrete evidence). In this way, the act of looking on Zoom is uniquely mediated by the default technological setting, presenting our image alongside others in side-by-side video tiles. In a world where the gaze structures power relations, Zoom’s interface has significant implications for how we experience and navigate power dynamics in our daily lives.

Let me share a recent example of how this dynamic plays out. I’m a musician, and in a Zoom meeting in the Spring of 2024, I encountered Zoom’s ability to produce what I’ll term a “colonial binary gaze” when I presented two commissioned works to a colonial music gatekeeper organization in Baltimore, Maryland. I had been tasked to create two interactive family concerts that could appeal to diverse Baltimore families and help remedy dwindling attendance and ticket sales. I present as white and am of European and Pawnee descent; I identify as Two Spirit, which describes indigenous gender identities beyond the binary. After brief introductions, I shared my work with the group gathered on Zoom: classical musicians, a dancer, a staff composer, the acting Director of Educational Programs, and an assistant director. The first piece celebrates the Chesapeake Bay and the native peoples of the region. The second celebrates the monarch butterfly’s journey from Mexico to the Chesapeake Bay, featuring local and indigenous music styles along the migratory path.

When I began presenting my pitch, everyone visible on my screen seemed to respond positively, smiling, raising their eyebrows, widening their eyes, and moving their upper bodies to the rhythm. After a few moments, however, I noticed the Director of Education’s countenance change. He stopped moving, sat taller in his chair, and looked down into the camera with lowered eyebrows. Within 10-20 seconds, I observed some attendees scanning to the side. They appeared to observe and match the director’s expressions. After another 10-20 seconds, all the attendees stopped physically moving and scanned to the side – apparently checking the non-verbals in the Zoom room. Then they, too, mirrored the director’s expression: frowning, avoiding eye contact, even in one instance smirking. When my presentation ended a few minutes later, all of the expressions on the Zoom call appeared to align with one gaze – that of the acting Director of Education.

While I observed the changing expressions of the attendees, I scanned my self-view more frequently. I watched my affect change from wide eyes and a smile to downcast eyes and a flat expression. I felt doubt about my music. I felt scrutinized as I observed eyes scanning up and down, side to side. In the final minutes, it seemed that the assessment of my decolonial art form morphed into a colonial heteronormative gaze directed toward my Two-Spirit identity – in other words, into a colonial binary gaze.

Seeing my video tile immediately beside other videos made a direct side-by-side comparison inevitable. I saw my non-conforming gender expression next to the apparently normative gender of others in the space. I became self-conscious about my music being “less classical” than the Eurocentric ideal. I observed eyes scanning up and down. It appeared that they were looking at me, and I felt scrutinized. The attendees may not have been doing so, but the technological structure gave me that impression. This apparent dynamic reminded me that I do not fit into a colonial and Eurocentric gender binary. My style of dress, haircut, and posture felt out of place in direct comparison with the rest of the group. I felt a momentary urge to affect a more feminine demeanor by sitting lower in front of the camera, tilting my head, and adopting an equanimous expression. The scrutiny I felt while watching attendees’ darting eyes led me to scrutinize myself. While observing the attendees seemingly surveilling me, I felt a reflexive urge to mirror their perceived demeanor. I felt anxious and unsure. I experienced a desire to adopt an internal colonial and heteronormative gaze toward myself: the binary coloniality of the gaze.

To my surprise, the perceived Zoom dynamic did not reflect their estimation of the quality of the music. Immediately after my presentation, the acting Director of Education declared that he liked it, wanted to schedule the programs immediately, offered to score and help create sheet music, and asked which instruments I would like in the ensembles. After several minutes of discussion about the promising quality of my work, he then used a racial epithet toward me and laughingly made an inappropriate racial joke. Ultimately, I chose not to partner with this organization.

Months later, reflecting on this experience, I was struck by how the inappropriate comments were preceded by a non-verbal process where gaze in the Zoom room aligned with power. I turned to Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory for insight. Mulvey posits that Hollywood movies traditionally center on male heterosexual pleasure through their technical infrastructure since the looks of the camera and the unseen spectator align with the male perspective through the male protagonist. The “Male Gaze” is a voyeuristic, “unseen” presence that drives film narratives and erotic depictions of women.¹ Drawing on Lacanian theory, Mulvey argues that cinema structure leads audiences to identify with an idealized form that the spectator misrecognizes as the self. Mulvey posits that the audience identifies with the male characters and experiences a pleasurable ego boost from seeing themselves idealized and empowered in a voyeuristic space.

In the Zoom meeting, I experienced a different kind of alignment of multiple looks into a single gaze, but it was one no less steeped in power relations. In exercising the gaze (looking + power), the director appeared to establish himself as the one determining legitimacy in music – a gatekeeper. For Mulvey, the male gaze is a response to the threat the woman poses. In this case, the arts organization needed my help maintaining and growing its audience in Baltimore. Perhaps that was the perceived threat. I also wondered if my Two Spirit gender expression was perceived as a challenge. I felt exposed. Though I do not identify as trans, I found Jack Halberstam’s exploration of trans identities in film illuminating. Halberstam coined the term “Trans Gaze” to interrogate the treatment of trans identities in film narratives. Often, being seen and scrutinized leads to violence. “Visibility may be equated with jeopardy, danger, and exposure, and it often becomes necessary for the transgender character to disappear in order to remain viable.”²

To fully understand my experience, however, I have to go beyond classical gaze theory, which can’t fully account for the nonverbal alignment of other attendees’ gaze with the director’s look or my extreme discomfort with feeling scrutinized. I assert that Zoom’s default setting, presenting a mirror view alongside the images of others, promotes scanning, self-scrutiny, and nonverbal alignment with power.

In a traditional in-person meeting, participants often face one another. Those present cannot see themselves or monitor their appearance while simultaneously looking at others. Zoom meetings, however, present a mirrored view of self. This self-view is the opposite of Mulvey’s structure of Lacanian idealized (or ego) mirroring. On Zoom, you don’t see yourself as grander than you are. The coffee stain on your shirt, mismatched earrings, or messy hair is inescapable. Thus, a Zoom attendee cannot build their ego by misrecognizing an idealized self on screen. The Zoom structure invites self-scanning and scrutiny by presenting the self-view alongside the video of others.

Self-scrutiny is uncomfortable. As Brad Feld comments on his media blog entitled “Zoom Secret Magic Trick – Hide Self View,” dated October 23, 2020: “Staring at yourself for 10 hours a day is exhausting. If you are having trouble relating to this, put a mirror on your desk and look at it all day.”³ Would turning off self-view fully mitigate self-consciousness, self-monitoring, and side-by-side comparisons? Perhaps to some extent. However, hiding the self-view could amplify a feeling of being invisible. Being hidden could also create a dynamic where we feel scanned and scrutinized while we cannot directly observe ourselves.

In a boardroom meeting, office mores discourage scanning someone up and down and openly scrutinizing their appearance. In person, while physically occupying space, I would have to turn and move my head (possibly my body) up and down or side to side to scan someone. On the Zoom platform, scanning can be done with more discretion since the virtual group is arranged in tiles on a flat field, usually no more than 12-24 inches wide. One can look up and down and back and forth across a screen with minimal eye movement without changing physical posture or position. Though other attendees may notice one’s look, no one can be sure what someone else sees on their screen. Thus, even with the self-view hidden, the platform alters interactional dynamics.

Continuing to build on and beyond Mulvey, who draws on psychoanalysis to explain the phenomenon of the gaze, I want to consider early childhood development to understand my experience in the Zoom meeting further. Science substantiates that humans are wired to identify with power through the social gaze. From nine months old, infants turn their heads and “share attention” with the objects of caregivers’ gaze.⁴ We quite literally join our gaze with those in power over us. It is a matter of evolutionary survival. We are a species with enormous brains that require years of support until we become independent enough to stand on our own. So, throughout our evolution as a species, our alignment and identification with caregivers have been a matter of life and death.

Furthermore, brain chemistry encourages us to please those who have power over us and rewards us for gaining a positive expression from caregivers. When neurotypical children experience a smile or positive reception from others, they receive a shot of dopamine, which brings pleasure and fuels motivation. In the Zoom meeting example, non-verbal alignment reinforced patriarchal structures, heteronormativity, rationality, and even Eurocentric musical traditions. Likewise, humans are wired as children to mirror biases through non-verbal cues and the gaze of caregivers or teachers. Meltzoff and Gilliam maintain that:

A crucial component of how children “catch” racial biases comes from young children’s ability for observational social learning and imitation. Although all animals learn, human children are unique in the animal kingdom in their tendency to learn mannerisms, skills, social practices, and values simply by observing the nonverbal behavioral patterns of other people.⁵

By extension, the structure of online platforms like Zoom amplifies nonverbals and simultaneous self-view and may promote the mirroring of biases and alignment with power.

Perhaps more troubling, the mirroring effect of the gaze may lead to internalized bias, where individuals begin to adopt the negative perceptions directed toward themselves. In her book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Sara Ahmed describes the experience of being othered at a young age with: “... How some and not others become strangers; how emotions of fear and hatred stick to certain bodies; how some bodies become understood as the rightful occupants of certain spaces.”⁶ Similarly, even as an adult, my experience of Zoom scanning and scrutiny caused emotional discomfort. I felt the urge to disappear and effect a facade that would assuage the power holder in the heteronormative colonial space. I felt “othered” and experienced a desire to extend the colonial binary gaze toward myself.

Our gatherings, workplaces, and schools depend increasingly on virtual platforms like Zoom, fueling a burgeoning billion-dollar industry. Given the increasing ubiquity of such platforms in daily life, further examination of this phenomenon is warranted to understand how the act of looking on this technology shapes our sense of belonging, our perception of ourselves, and the daily contours of our lived experience.

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