“No silent films were shot in colour but the pictures through a window are that. Everything moves in curious clockwork animation. Why is that man throwing up his arms? The girl’s hands move soundlessly over the piano. Only half an inch of glass separates me from the silent world where I do not exist. They don’t know I’m here but I have begun to be as intimate with them as any member of the family. More so, since their lips move with goldfish bowl pouts, I am the scriptwriter and I can put words in their mouths.” (59)
This passage comments on numerous important aspects of the narrator’s story and identity. First, this passage poses the narrator as a voyeur, peering into other people’s lives without their knowledge. Much like the film Rear Window, the narrator imposes their own perspective and assumptions onto the subjects they have cast in their window movie, invading their privacy as they have imposed themself into a world where they “do not” –should not– “exist”. Furthermore, the narrator is “putting words in their mouths”, implying that they are unable to accurately depict the stories which they are observing, but still imposing judgment on them. In this instance, it would be impossible to articulate the lives of the window people as they are meant to be unheard, within the privacy of their homes; however, this offers a commentary on the unreliableness of the narrator that is blatantly displayed in the narration of their own story. It also displays a dynamic shift in the conventions of “normalcy”.
The identity of a voyeur is one that falls within the “unsavory” area of the diagram of sexual/romantic preferences; although this voyeurism is not sexual in nature, its broader concept still applies, further alienating the narrator to the right side of the wall diagram. This bolsters the narrator’s separation from the “normal”. However, it is the subjects, not the narrator, who are “hidden” –limited to the confines of their box– even though they seemingly comply with all aspects of the “normal” (a man and woman inside a home, one can assume that they are in some form of relationship that either qualifies as, or is moving toward, marriage). This has, therefore, reversed the expected dynamic between the narrator and those inside the house: the “normal” has become the hidden, and the hidden has become the judger of the concealed “normal”.
This shift also reveals the narrator’s desires. The use of a “window”, in addition to making the narrator a voyeur, displays their longing for what the figures on the other side of the window have. This is because we often desire that which we cannot –or should not– have (what is relegated to confined areas of society). This generally references “normal” people having suppressed desires to partake in “abnormal” behaviors; however, in this case, it demonstrates the “abnormal” narrator’s desire to have what the “normal” have.
Notes:
Post title is adapted from “Rear Window’s Glasshole”, which views the voyeurism in Rear Window through a queer lens: “Suppose, however, one came at the question of vision from what a binary system construes as the “other” side.” (Lee Edelman)
Megamind, this is a fascinating post! In this passage, Winterson may indeed be commenting upon the voyeuristic nature of film. After all, the narrator becomes a “scriptwriter” as they watch people perform through a screen of “glass” (59). What does Winterson mean to say about the nature of film in general? To me, it seems she suggests that “movies are a terrible sham” (59). The idyllic, normative lives that films promote rarely, if ever, exist in real life. Our pleasure as viewers, then, does not derive from feeling represented. Rather, we love watching films as voyeurs—disconnected, yet entirely engrossed.