Voyeurism In Rear Window And The “Post-War Crisis of Masculinity”

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 production Rear Window is undoubtedly a film that is concerned with voyeurism. It has been argued that it thematises cinematic spectatorship in the sense that it is a movie about watching movies. This is because the central character Jeff is confined to his wheelchair watching the people in the windows across the courtyard similar to the cinemagoer that is confined to their seat with the sole purpose to gaze upon the screen that tells the story of other peoples’ lives. This voyeuristic element that is fundamental to the plot of the film can be seen as a response to the crisis of masculinity that occurred in America in the era immediately after the Second World War. This paper will examine key arguments put forward by leading theorists such as Laura Mulvey, Elise Lemire, John Belton and Tania Modleski to elaborate upon the intentions and complications of voyeurism in Rear Window. However, as well as the historical information of 1950s American society, it is also important to acknowledge the role and influence of Paramount on its productions in the 1950s. Paramount wanted financial success in the box office from its big pro

Tania Modleski, a feminist film critic of the 1980s, questioned Mulvey’s views on cinematic spectatorship, and in particular those relating to Rear Window in her book The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. Modleski argued that although women are inherently different to men, it does not mean that they are less powerful, as she argues that men are in fact more afraid that women aren’t castrated at all. Modleski also demonstrates how Lisa’s point of view is evident as the film shows many differences in the way that Jeff, the man, and Lisa, the woman observe the same thing. She argues that the man will objectify a female figure whereas a woman will identify and empathise. An example of this is with the different observations of Miss Torso. Whilst Jeff sees her as a “queen bee with her pick of the drones”, Lisa considers her to be “doing a woman’s hardest job – juggling the wolves” (9).

Psychoanalytic film theorists have suggested since about the 1960s, that cinematic spectatorship is similar to being in a dream like state in the sense that the spectator can symbolically fulfil their unconscious wishes according to Freud. Mulvey further investigated psychoanalytical film theory in order to confirm her theories on the dynamics of cinematic spectatorship. Mulvey was particularly interested in Freud’s theory of how children become gendered beings, called the Oedipus complex, as she argues that this is similar to the process of pleasure that a spectator gains from their cinematic experience. Freud argued that children engage in voyeuristic activities in an attempt to discover the forbidden; this desire to see then becomes a part of that person’s sexuality in their adult life. Although Mulvey acknowledges that the images portrayed on screen in the cinema are not forbidden, she argues that the whole point of film is that “the conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world” (6) and is therefore acting as if it is forbidden.

Despite this new status for single men, Modleski argues that Jeff has more particular reasons linked to her sexual assertiveness, for not wanting to marry Lisa. Modleski believes that Hitchcock has already reversed the stereo-typical gender roles of this period by making Jeff the one who is confined to the domestic sphere, whilst Lisa is independent and working. By Lisa repeatedly throwing herself at Jeff, Modleski believes her assertiveness is robbing him of his potency and makes him feel even more feminised. Lemire even suggests that the film links “Lisa’s sexual assertiveness specifically to her professional identity in the public sphere, the sphere from which Jeff’s accident has barred him” (14). This theory is confirmed by the scholar Elaine Tyler May who believes that during the 1950s, “society saw that the increasing expression of female sexuality and women’s entering the paid labor force were two sides of the same dangerous coin” (14).

Elise Lemire’s discussion of Rear Window also exposes how Jeff’s pleasure that he gets from secretly watching his neighbours and therefore invading their privacy is also sadistic. Belton argues that any type of voyeurism is sadistic because it is “a pleasure based on domination” (4). Belton also demonstrates how this sadism occurs in Jeff’s relationship with Lisa, as she provides herself as an exhibition in response to his voyeuristic nature. She wants to be the object of his gaze in order to control his voyeuristic element. However

Some topics in this essay:
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