{"id":1228,"date":"2024-09-16T22:06:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T02:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2024-09-16T22:06:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T02:06:53","slug":"voyeurism-as-inherently-gendered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/09\/16\/voyeurism-as-inherently-gendered\/","title":{"rendered":"Voyeurism as Inherently Gendered"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this blog post, I want to focus on a keyword that was central to Laura Mulvey\u2019s essay\u2014scopophilia. Once defined, it is easy to see why the concept comes up in an essay discussing women\u2019s role in film as a passive object to be viewed and the broader theme of voyeurism in <\/span>Rear Window<\/span><\/i>. Though Jeff\u2019s tendency to be a Peeping Tom doesn\u2019t seem to derive from any sense of sexual pleasure, his voyeurism does open up conversations about the roles that men and women play in film and how they\u2019re tied to sexual and gender-based binaries, even if there\u2019s no sex involved. Mulvey discusses the image of women in cinema as an icon, but a passive one, to be looked at by their male love interest. But, she contends, once the leading lady becomes committed to the leading man, she \u201cbecomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexuality\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When I read this, it was impossible not to immediately think of Lisa and her wardrobe. Throughout the film, Lisa dons a variety of stunning outfits which are both expensive and highly fashionable. It\u2019s a part of who she is and how she presents herself. Jeff may not understand why she pays so much money for her clothes, but he certainly appreciates how beautiful she looks in them. But at the end of the film, we see Lisa in a blouse and jeans, a much more dressed down outfit compared to everything else she\u2019s worn (even her pajamas are glamorous). I initially considered it to be a sign of her showing she was willing to change in order to be with Jeff since he viewed their lifestyles as too different, but Mulvey\u2019s argument made me see differently, even though she wasn\u2019t writing specifically about <\/span>Rear Window<\/span><\/i>. Of women in film, she says, \u201cher eroticism is subjected to the male star alone.\u201d Lisa\u2019s casual attire can be attributed to her trying to show Jeff she can live in his world, but it can also be part of the larger trend that Mulvey discusses that forces female characters to make themselves smaller and less sexy once they\u2019re in a relationship. In reality, it\u2019s likely both. Part of what convinces Jeff that he cannot marry Lisa is how glamorous and refined she is. He enjoys her beauty and her fine outfits, but he cannot picture a life where she fits into his exactly as she is. Mulvey\u2019s argument would suggest that Jeff cannot handle the thought of other people perceiving Lisa the way he does and getting to see her in those same outfits. His scopophilia makes it so that he needs to know that no one else sees the version of Lisa that he does. She can only be sexy and desirable with him, hence her need to change her way of dressing. Lisa is the subject of Jeff\u2019s scopophilia, which is why she is the only one who makes any concessions in the relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this blog post, I want to focus on a keyword that was central to Laura Mulvey\u2019s essay\u2014scopophilia. Once defined, it is easy to see why the concept comes up in an essay discussing women\u2019s role in film as a passive object to be viewed and the broader theme of voyeurism in Rear Window. Though … Continue reading Voyeurism as Inherently Gendered<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}