Keith Garcia
In the first paragraph of Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" she talks about scopophilia and how people look at other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. She relates this with Freuds view and how he said these people or "objects" resemble the activities of curious children who want to see the forbidden. Think of it as being a kid around the week of Christmas. You know you have presents under the tree, but you don't know what's inside. You also know that you are not allowed to open them until Christmas, but that curiousity is lingering. In this case the content inside the wrapping is forbidden and maybe leads to snagging a peep.
Readers may ask..."What does this present business have to do with this blog?" Well it's like I mentioned earlier, people are curious about what's going on and will try to snag a peep given the opportunity. This also relates to cinema because we are put in the situation wondering what is going to happen next. In Alfred Hitchcocks "Rear Window" the main character, L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries is confined to his apartment and passes time by watching the everday activities of his neighbors. These strangers then turn into objects who he watches on a day-to-day basis. This goes back to the talk about scopophilia and the voyeuristic pleasure which is inherent in the act of watching an unknowing subject.
So what does all this business have to do with cinema? When people watch movies they are drawn in, curious as to what will happen to the characters. The actors/actresses in the movie don't know we are watching them, just as the people across the window don't know Jeffries is spectating their actions. Mulvey talks about how Jeffries girlfriend is no longer a person when she snoops around the apartment across the way, but is then viewed as an intruder in a world through his binoculars. Jeffries girlfriend was a person he had somewhat to very little interest in, but once she was on the other side of his window she became an object of desire.
Why does this matter though, why did Hitchcock make the view outside Jeffries window the focal point? The guy has a broken leg so he takes up the simple pleasures in life and starts to people watch. Think of the view outside Jeffries window as a television screen. Every window could represent a different channel, if he doesn't like what he sees he can focus his view on the next window with his binoculars. Or he can look at multiple windows with his own eyes, which could be similar to a televisions picture in picture function. Ethics comes to mind when thinking about watching the actions of others. Personally one might know it's wrong to spy on their neighbors, but there's that lingering temptation. People might criticse these actions much like Jeffries maid Stella. She gives him a hard time about his actions but is later drawn in to the lives of the people in the window. Both characters become fixated on the strangers across the alley and produce obsessive voyeurs, turning them into "peeping toms" who obtain satisfaction from watching an objectified other.
