Spectators

"Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes, sir. How's that for a bit of home-spun philosophy?"--Stella in Rear Window

I must begin by saying that this week's screenings were very enjoyable. (Despite the fact that I completely forgot two movies meant almost four hours). My favorite connection among them was the character's prying curiosity mixed with the need for visual pleasure. As Cowie says, “[it] invokes the specifically sexual pleasure of looking that is identified as exemplary of classical Hollywood." (492)

It's true we love watching other people and sometimes for no good reason. Jeff had been sitting in his apartment for six weeks and considering that he nicknamed all his neighbors, he must have done nothing but look out that window. Looking gave him a pleasure that hypnotized him one way or another.

"Rear Window explores the limitations such voyeurism produces in our relations to others. Instead, it demands that we recognize our implication, and pleasure, in voyeuristic looking and what this makes us blind to." (492)

This visual pleasure does blind us to our surroundings. Take for example the scene where King Kong is being photographed by reporters. The audience just loved looking at the drama and did not become aware of the danger they were in.* Or just Carl’s curiosity about King Kong, and how that led to him capturing King Kong, despite the fact that King Kong had killed half the crew.

Which this all just leads my mind to Third Cinema. If we weren’t yearning for more drama then maybe we’d realized that those stories are based on real facts that need to be solved.




*(Did King Kong's rage at being photograph not remind anyone of Britney Spears and her umbrella?)