PLEASURE OF A GAZE

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM ON REAR WINDOW (ALFRED HITCHCOCK, 1954)

Cinema creates an atmosphere that leaves the audience dive into a world were anything can be possible, even their deepest desires can become a reality as they project them on the screen. But the history of film has been selectively patriarchal: the only gaze that matter on the screen has always been the male one, while female are left to be the passive object of desire of that active man. Following Laura Mulvey’s work on psychoanalysis and how “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (1975:198) we will analyse the “Caught in the Act” scene of Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) in order to see how is the female figure treated on the Classical Hollywood Cinema and if it has changed over time.

On “Visual pleasure in narrative cinema”, Mulvey explains that “the presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (1975:750). Jeff observes Linda through the tele objective like an object of desire that has helped him accomplishing his phantasy. She crosses, in some way, the fourth wall by breaking into the murderer’s apartment, entering the world that holds Jeff’s desires and catching his attention again. This scene is a spectacle in which every movement tends to sensualism, a scene full of danger, fear and excitement that provokes a response in Jeff. Even though Linda has taken action, it is Jeff who drives the narration as a look that desires and not her as an object to be desired. In this scene, she is a perfect example of Mulvey’s concept of “to-be-looked-at-ness” (1975).

In voyeurism, “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness” (1975: 753). We could define Hitchcock as a sadist if we analyse his films with psychoanalysis approaches. His work always follows the male gaze in order to objectify that pretty woman’s image. He uses that figure of voyeur in multiple of his male characters. He investigates voyeurism combining it with the fetishistic scopophilia. Jeff’s figure represents in Rear Window (1954) this pleasure of looking that the author has always had. Jeff feels in control of everyone under his look, he feels like some sort of director orchestrating the narration but with taking no part of the events. He takes the roll of spectator by looking through his binoculars, and that makes us feel represented with him on screen: he, as the male-hero, sees what the audience sees (Figure 1). He takes the attraction of the images before him through a scopophilic eroticism, changing the shot’s aperture, making close ups of the object, the audience sees through Jeff’s tele objective (Figure 2), always making clear with the circular frame that we’re looking through his eyes. That’s why the figure of the voyeur is what we want as spectators, we want to be accomplices of his crime because looking and knowing what is going on is our repressed desire projected in Jeff, as in Baudry’s explanation of “mirror-stage” (1974). Mulvey says that Hitchcock uses in a very skilful way the point of view to let the audience identify with him in order to “draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis which parodies his own in the cinema” (1975: 755). Jeff can’t stop watching and creates some short of game in his head, attached to his “law and order” profile, as Mulvey said, to justify his actions. He introduces everyone inside his phantasy and tries to solve the mystery in order to wash away his shame and guilt (Figure 1,3). He always finds a rewarding pleasure of that look trough the window: a sexy dancer neighbour doing her stretches, a piano player who celebrates multiple parties, a woman that pretends to have dates, a mysterious man who has murdered his wife, and even Linda, his girlfriend. In the scene that concerns us, she leaves in the middle of the night to break into the murderer’s apartment to find proves while he remains in his viewer position.

That scene shows us how Linda has become important for the narrative just by getting involved in Jeff’s voyeurism phantasy and jumping into action, being part of Jeff’s spectacle (Figure 4). Now he can observe her through the lens and recover their lost sexual desire by taking her back into the object of desire she was before the disruption of the film. “The device of the show-girl allows the two looks (erotic object for the characters and for the spectator) to be unified technically without any apparent break in the diegesis” (1975:751). Linda has passed from a complementary figure in Jeff’s life to be, by entering in that rear world, a part of his fetish.

Even through Stella has been part of the plot and she stands by Jeff during the whole scene, the camera always prefers to see Jeff’s reaction in a close up, because by being the spectator representation, it is his pleasure what we want to confirm: that male gaze that has been driving us all the way (Figure 5). Stella is not an object of desire for Jeff nor the spectator, she is just a complement of the narration that ensures by her look, the woman’s gaze and desires also into Linda’s image as an object of pleasure.

Trough Jeff, Hitchcock was already working on his most psycho character of all. Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) represents the perfect figure of the patriarchal voyeurism as he gets his pleasure from verifying the guilt of the castration on Marion and in Norma, his mother, putting himself in control and subjecting the guilty woman trough punishment. Here, the guilt and the punishment is very clear, as Marion has been pointed as guilty the entire film. Norman feels powerful enough over her to murder her, obtaining his pleasure, just like he did with his mother. Even though we might see here that she’s the one driving the narration, Marion’s image is only used for the real protagonist to create his narrative. She’s only, again, an object of desire.

Just as White explains in The Woman’s Film (see 2003:121-123), psychoanalysis starts contemplating woman’s part of the plot on the cinema addressed for the female spectatorship. This female cinema is based on the early film melodrama and shows us a romantic comedy in which the plot tells the story of a girlfriend, wife or mother. Anyway, her image will always be subjected to someone else, she is an object to observe but here she also has a narrative conductive duty. In Hollywood Cinema, women could identify themselves with the hero-male, because unconsciously, they refuse to be reduced to a simply image, and in Rear Window (1954) we can easily identify ourselves, as I’ve said before, with Jeff, no matter what your gender is, instead than in Linda.

Woman’s reification and their to-be-looked-at-ness, as Mulvey says, was not just a Classical Hollywood Cinema thing, otherwise this format has transcended further in cinema’s history. We can find this domination relationship before an object of desire and the male gaze in more contemporary titles such as Pretty Woman (1990) or Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). In both films, we find that female are part of a man’s fetish obsession as a result of that castration. Even though women have their own story, they only exist as an answer to the male desire. Laura Mulvey brings Budd Boetticher saying that “what counts is what the heroine provokes rather than what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance” (1975:750). Besides, we can also emphasise during the Classical Hollywood period figures like Dorothy Arzner with films such as Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) where she lays on the table the spectacularisation of feminine figure and reverts the hero’s concept into her two main female characters. They are the ones who bring meaning to the narration and all the masculine figures are just complementary. Anyway, they don’t avoid being a physical beauty, an object for a male’s gaze or even their own. Just like Mulvey says, “it has been women’s film production, rather tan reception that has been the most prominent model of resistance and opposition of the status quo” (2003: 125).

As we can see, the feminist theory of cinema finds voyeurism as an escape of that castration of the female object by the male gaze. But evolving towards a feminist cinema is possible as we could see with Dorothy Arzner’s works. The problem is that while the intrinsic patriarchal gaze surrounds our way of filmmaking and film viewing, accomplishing that feminist cinema is a difficult path yet unachieved. Every film, even if it has female leads with an active position like on My Summer of Love (2004) where there’s no male gaze inside the narration to see the female as an object, there will always be a gaze to objectify it as a fetish. In this case, that would be Tamsin objectifying Mona, having her as a desire, as a bandage to forget her problems, as well as the spectator, who will project their own desires into the characters relationship. This is because when the director is a male, the objectifying patriarchal gaze can’t disappear even though the story doesn’t have it. Mulvey identifies women’s film production as the only way of achieving, finally, a feminist filmmaking, because as a spectator, even if we want that object of desire, we can’t help identifying ourselves in her as an object as well.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baudry, Jean-Louis (1974): “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”

in “Film Quarterly”, 28 (reprinted in Movies & Methods, ed. By Bill Nichols, 2 vol. in Berkley; Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) II, pp. 532-542

Mulvey, Laura (1975): “Visual pleasure in narrative cinema” in “Film: Psychology, society

and ideology” “Screen Vol. 16” (University of Glasgow), pp. 746-759 pdf.

Silverman, Kaja (1988): “The acoustic mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and

Cinema” in “Theories of Representation and Difference” (Indiana University Press) pp. 72- 79

White, Patricia (2003): “13 Feminism and Film” in “Critical Approaches” pp. 117-131

FILMOGRAPHY

Arzner, Dorothy (1940): Dance, Girl, Dance (RKO Pictures)

Hitchcock, Alfred (1954): Rear Window (Patron Inc.) Caught in the Act scene (found in

Scene Screen via YouTube: https://youtu.be/UiAaEh16kQs )

Hitchcock, Alfred (1960): Psycho (Shamley Productions)

Marshall, Garry (1990): Pretty Woman (Touchstone Pictures)

Pawlikowski, Paweł (2004): My Summer of Love

Taylor-Johnson, Sam (2015): Fifty Shades of Grey (Focus Features)