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Lisa In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

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Hitchcock has treated Lisa as a remarkable portrait of American personality and Pomerance describes her thus: “There she is now, scampering up a fire escape, sliding onto a window ledge in her high heel, invading a presumed murderer’s cave, finding irrefutable evidence that something dark and unthinkable has undeniably been happening there, and transmitting that evidence back home” (Pomerance 161). Lisa by becoming a sleuth on behalf of Jeff wants to prove that she can be the sort of girl he needs and their marriage is possible. She now shows that women can also have power, agency, activity, and adventurous triumph within their grasp. No other character in Rear Window exhibits such derring-do, the prowess or the skill (Pomerance 161). Lisa proves that nothing is impossible …show more content…

In Vertigo (1958), the European beauty Carlotta Valdes, the subject of a portrait is withdrawn and refined, a cultivated look , an object for the dominating prerogative of the male gaze as Berger John notes. The woman in the portrait suffers reduction, subjected to appraisal in general, she is primped, tailored, adjusted, clipped, coloured and smoothed and bedecked all to make for beauty and is regarded central value of Old Europe. American culture does not regard beauty as principal value, for them beauty is related to function, practicality and to mobility. If an American can admire European beauty it is only with respect to the foreign. For an American beauty is superseded by “effort and accomplishment, the ability to make and do and the success that comes when objects and situations are put together, produced, effected, and charged with the power of function” (Pomerance 162). Hitchcock emphasises that a man is not required for such a triumph. Lisa can be equated to Lady Palmer the wife of Potter Palmer who brought richness to Chicago. Lisa Fremont, for her part is an all American girl not because she is good to look at, but in the tradition of Mrs. Palmer who is a d0-gooder and

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Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock depicts men and women in the 1950's and how they are different and the same when representing their gender roles. There are circumstances in the movie where the gender roles change and switch around. When jeff has a broken leg he needs two women to help him around the house. Nurse Stella and his girlfriend Lisa both take pride in taking care of jeff. There were many different roles depicted in the movie, there were happy couples, sad couples, happy singles, and sad singles.

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827 Words | 4 Pages

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window has several themes. One major theme is relationships. The lead character, Jeff Jeffries, a photographer and committed bachelor, is involved in a relationship with Lisa Fremont, a model, although the relationship has some tension due to Jeff’s lack of commitment. When Jeff is confined to his apartment recovering from a broken leg, he begins spying through his rear window on his neighbors in a nearby apartment. Through her frequent visits, Lisa is drawn into this spying as well.

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781 Words | 4 Pages

Intro: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional short story “The Birthmark” and The Twilight Zone’s darkly romantic episode “Eye of the Beholder” both use gothic elements and delve into the realm of science to explore concepts of beauty and perfection. Through their contrasting characterizations of the scientist and employments of irony and allusions, each work comes to its own conclusions about how to define and treat beauty. Body #1: The Birthmark From the very first paragraph, Hawthorne’s story revolves around Aylmer, a scientist who supposedly gives up his career to marry the beautiful woman of his dreams, Georgiana.

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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.

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1132 Words | 5 Pages

The idea of similarities among all people, an underlying connection, is expressed by Hitchcock when Lisa in Rear Window argues with Jefferies, saying, “There can't be that much difference between people and the way they live! We all eat, talk, drink, laugh, sleep, wear clothes --“. When she says this, Lisa has a lamp light shining from the upper right side of the screen to indicate the truth of her argument. There is also an instance in Rear Window where the ability to understand a person sprouts empathy. Jefferies is sitting in the dark, after Lisa leaves angry, when the piano man comes home.

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672 Words | 3 Pages

Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock is a fillm full of symbolism and motifs that provides viewers with a bigger meaning. It shows these rhetorical appeals through Hitchcok’s eyes that would not be recognized if not analyzed. Through these appeals I have recognized the window as being a symbol and marriage and binoculars as motifs. After understanding much more than what the eye anitially sees when viewing this film there is a fine line between understanding what is going on in the film and observing what the protagonist Jeff is viewing.

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1431 Words | 6 Pages

It also holds a message about ‘reality’. From time to time, we are all like Jeff, secretly intruding other people’s private lives, whether it be those of our neighbours or by watching a film. The Film also skilfully portrays the issue of male gaze. Lisa’s role in the film, though she is an independent and successful woman, still serves for the purposes of male gaze. Even though she was a willing active participant, Jeff’s interest in her sparked when she embraced his point of view, took part in his own “subjective narrative” and became an object of his

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547 Words | 3 Pages

In Gerald Early’s essay “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America pageant,” Early talks about his experience of watching Miss America pageants with his family. The issue explored in his essay is the way black culture in society is affected by America’s standard of beauty and the difficulties black women experiences when trying to find one’s identity because of this. Early believes that America’s standard of beauty is white, the look that is most praised in the beauty pageants. He uses rhetorical strategies such as allusion, ethical persuasion, and emotional persuasion to emphasize that America's standard of beauty has an effect on black women.

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Jane Martin’s play “Beauty” shows us two different versions of the problems women are facing current while living in today’s world and taking a walk in

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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.

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The film 's protagonist L.B Jefferies is characterised as a man who diverts himself from what is expected of him. His dislike for marriage and his desire to remain independent isolates him from the rest of society. When Stella is conversing with Jeff about his relationship with Lisa Freemont, Hitchcock exhibits the constraints of society 's expectations. The fact that Jefferies does 'not want to ' get married to Lisa is considered 'abnormal ' in Stella 's eyes, indicates the normalisation of marriage during 1954. Jefferies ' isolation from society 's view of marriage is utilised by Hitchcock in order to critique the way in which society pushes others to conform.

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590 Words | 3 Pages

The 1950’s was a very controversial time specially for woman, during that era they symbolized the traditional gender roles; housewife’s, submissive and conservative. Surprisingly, Marilyn Monroe, Barbie and beauty pageants became very popular even though they challenged the image of an ideal woman at the time by portraying more beauty and sexuality. These icons symbolized various messages while still upholding some of the traits that dominated that era. The beauty pageants portrayed various messages regarding woman’s beauty and sexuality a very dominant one was the qualifications to be considered a candidate for Miss America.

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975 Words | 4 Pages

What is the most pressing issue facing society today? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison argues that it is beauty standards, even calling physical beauty “the most destructive idea[] in the history of human thought” (122). While this may seem outrageous in a world of terrorism, global warming, homelessness, and hunger, beauty standards and the feelings of inferiority that stem from them affect everybody. In severe cases, these feelings can even manifest themselves deeply inside of a person and lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-hatred, and even suicide. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the insecurities of the female characters to demonstrate that beauty standards are a danger to society, as they perpetuate racism and self-hatred.

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One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

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986 Words | 4 Pages

Figure 2 and 3 exemplify women presented in a submissive and docile image. In figure 2, there is a direct eye contact to the camera which conveys a personal address to the reader. It allows the audience to be captivated in the seductive qualities of her body. However, the use of black around her eye helps to accentuate salacious look upon her face. Furthermore, white fur and jewelry in her costuming portrays this ideal of wealth and affluence that women should be aspiring for to attract the ‘right man’.

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