Stop Staring. Its Creepy: Mulvey and the Rear Window

Remember when being a peeping tom wasn’t super creepy? Neither do I. In fact, I still remember the first time my mother had me watch The Rear Window. I was about twelve or thirteen and we had watch Birds the night before. Or maybe it was North by Northwest. I can’t remember. The point is, she assured me it was just as genius as the movie the night before. However, as a child, I remember being immersed in the film but having inkling that there was something wrong with what our protagonist was embarking on. Yes, he had good intention, but he sure was being a creeper about it. More importantly, he seemed to enjoy watching these people. Mulvey would of course have a lot to say about young Bob’s reaction to this. She would use cool words like scopophilia (I KNEW that one was going to get a red line,) and reference Freud a lot. So instead of dancing around it, let’s dive right into this.

Scopophilia is defined as pleasure in looking. I will from here on probably refer to it as “enjoying looking at stuff” because let’s be honest, we all like looking at stuff and we’re kind of scopophiliacs (another red line!).  So what would Mulvey say about the Rear Window and specifically how Jeffries setting affects his actions? Mulvey almost directly addresses this by saying “the extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium (which isolates the spectators from one another) and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation” (382). Obviously this quote refers to the act of “looking at stuff” by the audience and not the characters in the film, but the gaze of Jeffries is just as important as gaze of the audience. Jeffries is almost always shrouded in darkness throughout the film and at some points even escapes to the darkness to achieve this separation from the object he is watching. Young Bob was separated from Jeffries as well, in the darkness of his living room and we as a class we separated as well. Essentially,  we were scopophiliacs of a scopophiliac (scopophiliac^2).

                This effect is even apparent when Jeffries is gazing at Grace Kelly (what was her name? She is always Grace Kelly to me, whatever.) We see this whenever she enters, as he gazes at her. The light-contrast is very apparent when the detective is visiting. He notices Lisa’s (Lisa, that was it!) night things on the counter and gazes at her shadow on the ceiling, with the light behind her and them in near darkness. The detective was separated just as Jeffries was separated from Miss Torso, Lonelyhearts and Mr. Thorwald.

                The way Jeffries gazes at the different sexes (Torso, Lonelyhearts and Lisa v. Thorwald) are starkly different as well. How would Mulvey compare Jeffries gazes toward women versus toward men?

            Also, Grace Kelly was a fox. Wait, did I just do what Mulvey said we do?

 Mulvey says, “please in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female” (383). This seems to be very true in the rear window. Jeffries watches Torso and Lonelyhearts with a sense of curiousity, seeing them as objects. He watches as Lonelyhearts circles the drain and as Torso…does Torso-y things. He even watches his girlfriend Lisa with a passive eye, as she is something to watch. All of these examples, they are never treated as an active way to advance the story but as something sexual and erotic (best example of course being Torso and Lisa.) Thorwald on the other hand is that of spectacle and advances the plot. In fact, the act of watching Thorwald is the major driving point of the plot.

                Mulvey would say the reason for all of this is for the audience to identify with the man (which they do) and to objectify the women (which it does in some but not all cases, ie. Lonelyhearts) and to her is proof of Freudian attitudes built into the audience (most involving castration and other delightful topics). While Mulvey’s interpretation is interesting and definitely merits the above observation, it is incomplete, but that isn’t the point of this blog, now is it?

Move along, nothing to see here. Stop staring. It’s creepy.