Rear Window Voyeurism

People seem naturally curious of others, Hitchcock discusses the idea of privacy and a human’s natural interest in others’ private lives. Rear Window becomes a classic film not just as a Hitchcock film but an introspective idea about human nature. Hitchcock uses the medium to show a part of him and the curiosities he wants to delve into with the concept of voyeurism. Using film techniques, such as the placement of the camera to the music, Hitchcock becomes transcendent with the genre of thriller and suspense. Jeff, Jimmy Stewart, becomes a pinnacle character in film history, not because of the plot, but because the camera is not only telling the story but simultaneously acting as the audience’s eyes, Jeff’s eyes and Hitchcock’s artistic eye.

Voyeurism defines the practice of spying on others during intimate and private experiences. Hitchcock gives people the opportunity as an audience to notice that Jeff and the audience do the same thing; intrude on someone’s private life. Jeff is a photographer who became handicapped with a broken leg as he spies on his neighbors from his rear window. Bamboo curtains are shown rising up slowly at the beginning of the film alluding to a theatric style film and shows the audience that Jeff and the audience are watching people like people watch plays. Jeff’s window looks down at a small courtyard and multiple apartments into which Jeff peer, Jeff’s work as a photographer, causes him to notice human behavior. Hitchcock shows through Rear Window people’s perversion to look into someone’s personal life. Hitchcock shows that people like to gossip and intrude into other people’s lives as observers with movie techniques and Jeff’s character

The setting involves the idea of voyeurism because Jeff’s observant nature of the complex makes the audience absorb more and more information such as the location being in New York City and his eyesight reaches just slightly past an alleyway. The protagonist is not a typical character because he is stuck in his room; wheelchair bound and wears the same outfit. Hitchcock uses the costume and his confinement in his apartment as a way to see that Jeff is trapped, as is the audience, inside his point of view. Jeff wears the pajama like material emphasizing the fact Jeff is homebound in the same place for six weeks. The isolation Jeff creates for himself makes the audience understand his curiosity to look into other windows because of the lack of stimulation in his own home. Inside his lack of freedom Jeff uses his women friend, Lisa, and his nurse, Stella, as his legs in his search for Ms. Thornwald. They are his connection to the outside world. The restricted narration is constant because of his wheelchair and confinement, Hitchcock uses Stella and Lisa, as answers to unsolvable questions Jeff cannot decipher. Props that solidify the idea of Jeff as a voyeur comes though the binoculars he uses to zoom in on the stories critical moments and the telephoto lenses lying around his apartment. The lenses are a part of his