That is the intention of this blog post.
To understand voyeurism is to understand a little bit of psychoanalytic theory...
Stay with me...
Scopophilia - "taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze" (3).
Norman Bates did that with Marion Crane in Psycho.
What's interesting here is that director Alfred Hitchcock creates tension by simple camera placement.
Notice in this scene how the perspective switches from a medium shot of Norman looking through the peephole to a seemingly first-person view of what Norman actually sees. This implicates the audience as the violators themselves; we become unwittingly responsible for the sin of scopophilia, not Norman!
Voyeurism itself is slightly different from scopophilia...
Scopophilia = objectification
Voyeurism = obsession
Merriam-Webster defines a voyeur as "someone who enjoys seeing and talking or writing about something that is considered to be private" (4). Scopophilia seems to always focus specifically on the objectification of one person by another.
Mulvey, on voyeurism:
"The mass of mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy" (3).
In her article titled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Mulvey also speaks specifically on the implication of the audience's voyeuristic tendencies by noting that "conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world..." (3).
Voyeurism usually has sexual connotations, but it isn't always like that...
Checking in on the "private world" of Truman Burbank
If to be a voyeur means to derive pleasure from seeing something considered to be private, then anyone around the world who enjoys watching the reality television program "The Truman Show" is a voyeur.
In the film The Truman Show, there are two levels of voyeurs within the world of the narrative: the "creator" in the television studio (Ed Harris) and the audience of viewers at home.
In this clip, the "creator" orchestrates a moment of beautiful emotion for the program's millions of viewers to enjoy:
Notice the intense focus of the "creator" throughout the scene. He is slightly obsessed with choosing the proper tools to create this moment of catharsis between Truman (Jim Carrey) and his long-lost father. Thus the "creator" is the ultimate voyeur to Truman's world. What's more is that director Peter Weir cuts between the studio and the actual live moment of Truman meeting his father. In doing so, he allows us, the spectators of the real-life Truman Show film, to derive the same sense of emotional release and pleasure as the audience in the story world viewing "The Truman Show" television program.
In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory's entry on "film and enunciation," theorist Christian Metz speaks on why we, and essentially the fans of Truman's television show, derive pleasure from watching fiction programs like The Truman Show and Psycho. There is a level of suspense derived from the seemingly illicit viewing of another person's private life. Metz says that voyeurism works in fiction film because "the mechanism of satisfaction relies on my awareness that the object I am watching is unaware of being watched" (1).
"...the mechanism of satisfaction relies on my awareness that the object I am watching is unaware of being watchted."
- Christian Metz (1)
Perhaps that's how Rear Window's L.B. Jeffries begins his obsession of watching his neighbor's curious goings-on...
Voyeurism and Gaze Theory
In keeping with the Hitchcock theme...
In Hitchcock's film Rear Window, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is sidelined with a broken leg, which confines him to a wheelchair in his small apartment with little to do but gaze at his neighbors and live vicariously through their experiences. He believes that the man living across the way, Mr. Thorwald (Raymond Burr), is acting suspicious. What's more is that the man's wife doesn't seem to be around anymore. What starts as an innocent hobby soon becomes an obsession for Jeffries as he works with his girlfriend Liza (Grace Kelly) to unravel the mystery of Mrs. Thorwald's disapperance.
Jeffries himself becomes a voyeur with his obsessive peering through the windows of his neighbors, especially those of Mr. Thorwald.
However, especially in Hitchcock's work, the voyeuristic gaze becomes a defining characteristic of gender within the text of the film.
Jeffries' caretaker notices his leering at the sexy "Miss Torso"
We get the sense that Jeffries may be girl-crazed from the start.
Who can blame him?
Hitchcock films Kelly in close-up here to emphasize her beauty. Theorist Linda Williams is cited in The Routledge Encyclopedia by saying that "while the voyeuristic male gaze derives pleasure from the fetishistic distance between the spectator and the filmed image, the body genre's pleasure can often be found in the very lack of distance from the filmed image that makes the body genre so captivating" (5).
In this case, the closeness between the viewer and the filmed subject (Kelly) puts us in Jeffries' shoes and forces the audience to identify with the male's perspective. For anyone viewing the film through a heterosexual male lens, this approach to the voyeuristic gaze is just as titilating, if not more so, as Metz's idea that pleasure comes from the subject's naïveté about being watched.
When bae agrees to help you solve a murder mystery...
Everything about the way Liza is framed and lit throughout this film highlights her sex appeal. Just look at the way Jeffries literally gazes at her!
Mulvey muses on the male gaze theory in an entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia:
"The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote 'to-be-looked-at-ness'."
- Laura Mulvey (2)
That's why Hitchcock always makes his women look appealing
Mulvey also says that "the image of woman as passive raw material for the active gaze of man takes the argument a step further into the structure of representation," but we'll leave that for another curation post (2).
ENDNOTES:
1.Metz, Christian. "Film and Enunciation." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory. Ed. Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland. New York: Routledge, 2014. 158. Print.
2. Mulvey, Laura. "Gaze Theory." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory. Ed. Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland. New York: Routledge, 2014. 225. Print.
3. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. Imlportfolio.usc.edu. Jahsonic. Web. 3 Dec. 2015. <http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf>.
4. "Voyeur." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Inc, n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2015. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voyeur>.
5. Williams, Linda. "History of Feminist Film Theory." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory. Ed. Edward Branigan and Warren Buckland. New York: Routledge, 2. 198. Print.
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