Essay On Rear Window

In Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she writes about the relationship between voyeurism, cinema, and gender. She begins by describing the concept of scopophilia, which means to gain pleasure from looking. She writes that scopophilia is inherently active/masculine, and that pleasure is derived from looking at other people as mere objects. On the other hand, the passive/feminine is derived from the experience of being looked at (pg.188). Mulvey sees this binary relationship between viewer and object being viewed as a part of our culture, and the greatest example of this is found in cinema. She argues that the act of moviegoing satisfies these voyeuristic desires in people. She writes, “The mass of mainstream film portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy,” (pg. 186). In this essay, I will further discuss her viewpoints on cinema and voyeurism, and how it connects to the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that follows the

Jeffries is a voyeur by trade, he’s a photographer, his job is looking; while Lisa’s life revolves around the world of fashion, around the concept of being looked at and being pleasant and attractive to look at it. She is attractive and dresses beautifully, she acts as both eye candy for her boyfriend Jeffries and the audience. They both embody the male (active) and female (passive) divide in voyeurism (pg.192). Lisa’s importance to the plot is completely dependent on her relationship with Jeffries, she’s his girlfriend, and her character arc revolves around whether or not she can convince him to marry her. She has to prove herself worthy to him and she goes about doing this by embracing more masculine