Panoptic Neighborhoods

So I haven't gotten to the response readings yet, but I want to talk about a few thoughts on my mind coming from tonight's screening. I'm going to mostly focus on Rear Window, but I've got a few things to say about King Kong too (outside of smarmy humorous remarks).

I'm wondering why we didn't screen Rear Window against Keenan's article, except that it's extremely relevant to Mulvey's work too (but than again, what movie isn't?). The window in Rear Window sets up various displays, frames, narratives; the lives of the people inside are given narratives by their framing, a sort of cinematic Mulveyian display. The people become a sort of language, their actions carrying meaning to the spying LB. Barthes talked about how images signify on the level of connotation; in Rear Window the lives of LB's neighbors become images to be seen and received as language. That image only exists if light passes from within the window to the outside (the darkened window or room carries no meaning, a projector that is not turned on). That language of window images transmit troubling information, and if anything Rear Window demonstrates a panopticon where it's inhabitants do not realize that they are being watched.

Honestly the first time I saw Rear Window it bored me out of my mind. Now, I still enjoy all the other Hitchcock films I've seen so far more (doesn't mean they are better), but Rear Window is much more interesting to me now, just because of my theoretical background maybe. Perhaps what is exciting to most people who see the film didn't excite me, which is watching an audience construct a narrative out of performances happening outside their own encapsulated private world. It was only when LB's world transgressed upon the private home of another, and when the Salesman transgressed onto LB's home was a really interested the first time I saw the film. And any sort of transgression or travel outside of LB's home is done by females. The first time I saw LB pull out his camera lens I couldn't help but notice how he lay it right down on his crotch. Rear Window is almost (or perhaps just outright is) parodying the way phallus is tied to vouyerism, yet it is female bodies that must perform actions for the male. Although this includes making him a sandwich in the kitchen, this also includes investigating, bringing about justice, and doing things that LB is powerless to do. In a sense, he is emasculated. After all, with that huge cast covering his crotch I imagine sex is very hard to do.

These are my scattered thoughts about the film (it's almost 3AM so perhaps I'm not in the best of shape to be replying currently) but I want to see what people think. The fun thing about King Kong was that at the time it was a film of technical brilliance, and the fun of the film was to try and almost figure out the apparatus behind the picture, to see how it was made. Now it's quite obvious how that works, but it removes a level of reading that can be made, which is when we realize that the actors really are "standing in front of and watching a screen" during sequences where stop-motion occurs in the background and live action in the foreground. Again, windows stare out at King Kong, and King Kong has the power to break past those windows and reach into the private domain for his woman. In short, the questions I want to ask are these: In what ways does this film support or deny Keenan's thesis? To what extent is the window also a cinematic screen - in both Rear Window and King Kong? At first in King Kong, we objectify the women, tribals, and monsters but is there a moment perhaps where we empathize with each of them, or resist the classic notions of cinema? In Rear Window, the woman is clearly in the position of the to-be-gazed according to Mulvey's theories, but at the same time that awareness is made clear through the woman inserting herself into the narratives behind the windows LB watches, and also as a sort of physical extension of the man (just as the camera lens, wheelchair, flash bulb, and binoculars become mechanical/cyborg extensions of LB). Does Rear Window somehow resist classic cinema portrayals or reinscribe them in a new way?

If I have any responses to the readings I will post those also.