Modern Voyeurism

In this essay, I shall try to illustrate whether analysing the movie Rear Window as a classical example of the Freudian concept of voyeurism, is appropriate. Voyeurism is defined in The Penguin dictionary of psychology as:

AWe’re a race of Peeping Toms. People ought to get out of their homes and look at themselves.’

Alfred Hitchcock uses dramatic and verbal irony to explain women’s powerful intuition compared to men’s analytical skills. Gender differences are presented in a dramatic manner. Further, the short film explains the differences in gender character’s present in the society (Leitch, 18). For instance, men appear to have an arrogant feeling of superiority against women. This is highly evident in the society we live in because there are high levels of gender inequality. Moreover, women in the story act in solidarity-resisting men’s act of superiority. This brings the theme of feminism creatively in the film.

Both Laura Mulvey and bell hooks describe the idea of the “gaze” in film. In both of the theories presented by Mulvey and hooks, the “gaze” is the way in which viewers are subjected to a particular perspective because of their social standing. In Mulvey’s case, she argues that the “gaze” in which the audience is forced into is that of the “male gaze” while hooks argues a more nuanced “gaze” including the “oppositional gaze”. While some of Mulvey’s argument is accurate, hooks argues that it leaves out important other factors, in particular, race. Both arguments have many similarities and differences, and can be seen exemplified in many films, such as Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It.

In this essay, I shall try to illustrate whether analysing the movie Rear Window as a classical example of the Freudian concept of voyeurism, is appropriate. Voyeurism is defined in The Penguin dictionary of psychology as:

Gender roles have been, and unfortunately still are, evident in our everyday lives for quite sometime. Women are often portrayed as sexual objects, or delicate individuals; a body with no brain or strength. These traits are easily found within many novels and movies- old and new. In Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Rear Window and Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock begins his films representing women with the same characteristics as stated above. They are very stylish, attractive and presented as second-class individuals to males. But after examining these two films, Hitchcock does something that many directors in his time would not have dared to do. By making the women the heroine and arguably the protagonist of the storyline, Hitchcock proves to

Alfred Hitchcock’s, ‘Rear Window’ (1954), is ultimately a film presenting the ideas of a natural voyeuristic nature within society and how the concepts of the traditional gender roles for males of ‘participating’ were challenged during this time. ‘Rear Window’ is a film about a magazine photographer who’s active and adventurous life gets turned around when he is confined to a wheelchair in his small apartment for six weeks. During these weeks he’s found himself occupied by watching out his window and sneakily looking into his surrounding neighbours lives, gathering suspicions that one of them, Lars Thorwald has murdered his wife in cold blood, under the neighbours noses. The typical male gender roles in the 1950’s were challenged as Jeff was

Several film theorists have used a variety of tactics and view points to analyze feature films since their inception. One of the most prominent theorists of those that analyze films from a feminist perspective is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is famous for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which presents an array of theories involving the treatment of women in films. Arguably the most notable idea presented in Mulvey’s work is the existence of the “male gaze” in films. This essay will examine Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in relation to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo. Vertigo does not fit the criteria of a film that

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

Cléo from 5 to 7, directed by Agnes Varda, is a film about one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the possibility of her potential illness. Not only is Cléo struggling with her physical health, but she is also dealing with her beauty and the consequences of being an attractive woman in the modern world of the 1960s. When examined through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” theory, another aspect of the film comes to light. The film seems to objectify Cléo and thus trivialize her struggles with others’ perceptions of her throughout the film by adhering to the construct of the male gaze. Although Cléo from 5 to 7 appears to play into the construct of the male gaze through the repeated objectification of Cléo, it actually subverts this idea and instead confronts the viewer, and the notion of women as passive objects to be viewed.

Even though male gaze is still the fundamental construct in modern films, I do not think lesbians and majority of women these days enjoy objectification. Women are trying to break through gender differences and evolve as equal being to men. In trying to explain how women are positioned in films, Kaplan says “Psychoanalysis a crucial tool for explaining the needs, desires and male-female positioning that are reflected in film” p. (). Kaplan uses psychoanalysis to argue how women take

The issue of female persecution throughout many of Hitchcock’s films has been fiercely contested, none more so than the controversial issue of assault and the attempted rape of a woman. Views that Hitchcock represents the archetypal misogynist are supported, Modelski suggesting that his films invite “his audience to indulge their most sadistic fantasies against the female” (18). Through both the manipulation of sound and the use of language, none more so than in Blackmail and Frenzy, the idea of rape and violence does effectively silence and subdue not only the women in the films, but the also the women watching them (18).

In the early 1990s Laura Mulvey’s thesis concerning the patriarchal structure of an active male gaze has influenced feminist film critiques and Hollywood. Mulvey’s project is to use psychoanalysis to uncover the power of patriarchy in Hollywood cinema. Patriarchal influence upon cinema is found primarily in pleasure (pleasure in looking) or as Freud’s has put it, scopophilia. Mulvey suggests that it may be possible to create a new for of cinema due to the fact that patriarchy power to control cinematic pleasure has revealed.

What is a Voyeur? It’s a person who gets pleasure from secretly watching others in private moments. In The Living Room, the narrator’s voyeurism of her neighbors is wrong and she continually dismisses her intrusive violations of privacy of the couple. She expresses guilt that is due to her lack of non-consent from the couple and clearly violates their privacy. The person/s being viewed are intruded upon and are most often damaged by being watched. Throughout mankind we have been curious of the unknown and get pleasure from watching others and we have acknowledged this behavior and the acceptance of it as normal. The heavy appeal of social media and reality shows are now providing us with the ability to compare ourselves with other people in private or intimate situations that either we wish we could be in or happy we are not. This bad behavior is unacceptable, but where do the lines of privacy begin or end.

In her feminist essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey, she adopts Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic studies of the mirrors stage and Freudian psychology to explain how Hollywood cinema has reinforced the spectator identification with a patriarchal male while using women in films to fulfill voyeuristic fantasies from male spectators. She argues that in classical Hollywood cinema that active males drive the story while passive females are there to be exhibited as something pleasurable for the male character and the audience to look at. In the movie Funny Games (1997) directed