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Ethical Issues In Rear Window

873 Words4 Pages

Rear Window Argues that people should mind their own business. Do you agree?

Rear Window, a 1954 romance/murder-mystery by the renowned golden age director Alfred Hitchcock, is a film that explores a multitude of themes and genres through the voyeuristic gaze of protagonist L.B. Jefferies. Jefferies, or ‘Jeff’ as he commonly known throughout the film, is a middle-aged bachelor recently hospitalised due to his high-risk career as a photojournalist. This hindered condition serves as an important foundation on which the movie is built upon as Jeff’s forced lifestyle being in a wheelchair causes an abrupt stop in his usual high intensity way of life and causes him to quench his boredom in other ways, predominantly watching the other residents in his apartment complex through the ‘rear window’ of his apartment. Observing the events that happen in the privacy of each of his neighbours’ apartments is certainly not minding one’s business but Jeff continues to do so anyway and ends up in all …show more content…

Another of Lars’ exploits within the movie was the smothering of an innocent dog owned by one of Jeff’s neighbours in the apartment complex in order to help keep any evidence of his murder to a minimum. In a very heartfelt scene the owner of the dog, distraught over her recent loss, cries into the night, admonishing her neighbours for their cruelty shouting ‘You don 't know the meaning of the word 'neighbours '! Neighbours like each other, speak to each other, care if somebody lives or dies!’. This strong line urges the audience into thinking about pushing past the ethical barrier of privacy and testing boundaries because, as shown by the film, a location in which people predominantly live in complete separation to one another isn’t quite the utopia one might set it out to be, and there very much are ill

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