I. Introduction
A movie called "Peeping Tom" (Michael Powell, 1960) was screened at the 2021 Shanghai British Film Masters Exhibition. "Peeping Tom" is a slang term in English that means voyeurism. Also as a masterpiece of a peeping theme movie, Hitchcock's "Rear Window" also expresses Freud's proposition that "everyone has a voyeuristic desire" to the extreme. [1] The rear window serves as the stage in the Hitchcock movie and also serves as the screen. This is not difficult to cause us to think-as movie viewers, are we also "spying" on the lives of the characters on the screen?
2. The peep and the background of the times in the movie "Rear Window"
Human beings are born with a curiosity to peep into the secrets of others. In the movie "Rear Window", the protagonist Jeffrey is recuperating from a leg injury at home. By chance, this "amateur detective" who stayed at home unexpectedly solved a murder case under his nose. In the movie, Jeffrey sitting in a wheelchair is equivalent to an audience sitting in a theater seat. The wheelchair symbolizes the top spot among film directors. Jeffrey's experience of the scene outside the window is similar to the experience of a movie audience. At the same time, there are two different perspectives of film narration-objective perspective and subjective perspective. The objective angle of view is an outsider's onlooker type, and the degree of participation is relatively shallow. The subjective angle of view is a realistic simulation of the viewpoint and feelings of the subject of the picture, and it is easier to mobilize the audience's attention and participation. In "Rear Window", the director used a lot of subjective perspective to present the audience from Jeffrey's perspective. In the case of limited perspective, Jeffrey also used a telescope or even a telephoto lens to give the audience more immersion. empathy. [2]
"Rear Window" was released in the United States in 1954. It achieved great commercial success that year and was one of the most popular movies at the time. Hitchcock revealed in the interview that Americans’ keenness to watch movies reflects the tendency of Americans to be voyeuristic. It is difficult to say whether Hitchcock's judgment is correct, but from the box office point of view, Americans do favor this voyeuristic film. So, are there other more reasonable explanations for this?
Considering that Hitchcock is a director who has been deeply influenced by Freud, we can first try to analyze why people are so keen on "peeping" from the perspective of his "panness theory". Freud's "Pan-Sex Theory" believes that many human subconscious behaviors can be understood as an instinctive need from a sexual perspective, and it also considers that viewing another person as a pornographic object is the main content of voyeurism. (The main representative of the voyeurism theory, Laurie Malvey, believes that voyeurism is divided into active male voyeuristic subjects and passive female voyeuristic objects. Therefore, women have to endure the male gaze, as the object of male gaze, the image of female Distorted, and then regarded as desire itself [3] ), so it can be considered to some extent that "voyeurism" satisfies people's inner subconscious needs. Moreover, in the era when movies were released (the United States in the 1950s), people had just experienced the material and spiritual impact of World War II, and people's inner desires were strongly suppressed (as can be seen from the American sexual liberation in the 60 years). Therefore, in the United States at that time, people's long-backlogged deep subconscious desires urgently needed to be dispelled, and the large number of lens language on peeping in "Rear Window" fits people's subconscious needs at that time.
3. Peeping outside the movie and analysis of the underlying causes
The rear window serves as the stage in the Hitchcock movie and also serves as the screen. This is not difficult to cause us to think-as movie viewers, are we also "spying" on the lives of the characters on the screen?
The famous author and director Bernardo Bertolucci once borrowed a role in The Dreamers (2004) to quote a point in the "Cinema Manual": "A filmmaker is a voyeur, and the camera It’s like you can see the keyholes of your parents’ room, you watch them, you feel disgusted and guilty, but you won’t take your face away.” Here, the director thinks that all filmmakers (not limited to voyeuristic movies) ) Have a certain tendency to peep. With the help of a certain psychoanalytic theory, we can also infer that the audience can reap the satisfaction of subconscious needs when watching all types of movies.
Freud’s film theory regards the screen of the film as a mirror, and believes that the audience recognizes the image in the process of watching the mirror in the "mirror". This understanding of the film comes from French psychology. Lacan’s structuralist psychoanalysis. Lacan believes that the baby enters the "mirror phase" when he is 6 to 18 months old, during which he transitions from a previous "non-subject" existence to a subjective "self", which he sees in the mirror I recognize my own image, recognize myself and feel happy for my complete self, and thus identify with myself. At this stage, the baby opens up the world of imagination. [4] Extending Lacan’s "mirror theory" to the film industry, we can think that film is like a mirror, which can objectively reflect everything being projected (but it is fundamentally different from a real mirror, that is, it cannot Projecting the audience's own body), and the audience is in a state of low motivation and high perception like a child. The dark screening room and immobile audiences can only watch the stories happening on the screen all the time. In such an environment, the audience's awareness of themselves will be lowered, and it will be easier for the audience to identify with the images in the film. In the sense of, we can think that the audience has obtained the pleasure of "first self-recognition" in the process of watching the movie.
4. The unity of "peeps" inside and outside the movie "Rear Window"
In the words of Canadian film theorist Bill Nichols, "Rear Window" is a reflective film that reminds the audience to reflect on the film through a certain suggestion and alienation effect. At the beginning of the movie, the shutters were automatically lifted up one by one, just like the movie theater opened the screen. The movie opened with a song. At first, the audience thought it was a soundtrack, and the camera moved over to see the musicians upstairs composing. The process of creating this song is also the process of creating the film, which is another layer of reflection. At the same time, each window in the opposite building represents a genre. The window of "Miss Lonely" is a "social melodrama", the window of a wife murderer is a "murder melodrama", and the window of a couple with a dog is a "family". Comedy"... And Jeffrey is a stand-in for Hitchcock and a stand-in for the audience at the same time. He replaces the audience to observe. The audience sees not just entertainment, but entertainment creation. [5]
Perhaps Nichols’s theory is a bit far-fetched, but he provides a new way of thinking for the interpretation of "Rear Window"-Jeffrey simulates the audience in a cinema, and the "Rear Window" provides him with In addition to the frame structure of the screen, then the scenes to the window are of course connected with the movie itself. Jeffrey was troubled in a wheelchair due to injury. He could only observe, but could not act. This was exactly the same as the audience in the movie theater was in a state of "high perception and low action". Jeffrey's experience was also the audience's experience. The audience is in a peeping position like Jeffrey, and peeping is afraid of being discovered, just like the audience in a movie theater, hiding themselves in the dim light. However, Thorval noticed Jeffrey's peeping and looked at him, that is, looking at the camera and looking at the audience. Here the actor broke the "fourth wall" and stared at the camera to stare at the audience, so he His gaze also frightened the audience. Soval even came to the door later and attacked Geoffrey as well as the audience. This is the most terrifying thing about a peeper. In the end, Jeffrey was pushed down from the window by his opponent, only to break a leg. Jeffrey fell into the backyard, that is, he entered the real world, and was no longer just an observer. Just as the audience is watching the movie, leaving the theater, and returning to the society, they need to "hide" their subconscious mind and be a citizen that conforms to the general social moral rules.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that there is a high degree of unity in the "peeps" in and out of the movie "Rear Window". Jeffrey is the audience, and the audience is Jeffrey. They are both on and off the screen. "Peeper".
Five, summary
In the film "Rear Window", the director explored the human nature-the pleasure of voyeurism with a very unique perspective and artistic technique. This is a good practice of Freud's psychoanalytic film theory. At the same time, it also proves that one of the most important reasons why movie audiences enter the cinema and identify with the images on the screen is the audience's identification with the act of "seeing" itself. The audience is like Jeff, watching and peeping. Got pleasure in. One of the essence of movies is to create the illusion of false movement for the audience, just like a daydream. The reality simulated by the movie is only the reality of the self. Our subconsciousness guides us to "peek", but as social individuals, we are subject to morality. The constraints on the “self” and “superego” control prevent us from doing such behavior, and the scenes created by the movie happen to satisfy this subconscious desire of the audience.
[1] Yue Meijuan. Taking "Rear Window" as an example to analyze the satisfaction of the movie's peeping psychology to the main body of the movie[J]. Audiovisual, 2018, (5):97-98.
[2] Li Yizhong. Appreciation of Chinese and foreign film and television products. Print. General textbook for humanistic quality education in ordinary colleges and universities.
[3] Zhao Mi. Pleasure of Peeping and Male Eyes in Movies——Analysis of the female images in "Rear Window" and "Blue Velvet" by using voyeurism and mirror image theory[J]. Literary Life·Late Magazine, 2017, (8) ): 115.
[4] Lu Lili. From Freud to Lacan: A Brief Discussion on the Theoretical Sources of Western Psycho-Film Analysis[J]. Beauty and Times (Part 2), 2010(09): 100-102.
[5] Li Yizhong. A Collection of 100-year Film Masterpieces: American Film Volume. Print.
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