The Male Gaze and the Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock - Movie Review Example

The Male Gaze and the “Rear Window” by Alfred Hitchcock Before getting into a discussing about the male gaze in films it is imperative to know what the term means. The two words are retrieved from other words such as the gaze. The gaze is a concept used by most writers as a way of describing how films or books make a visual analysis of characters in the film. According to Werckmeister, the term came up in the 1970s, ten years before the conducting of the film studies that focused on spectatorship (5). It was a feminist philosopher, Laura Mulvey that published her paper focusing on the topic of the male gaze in the 1970s triggering the topic and its impact on the male and female spectatorship and characters (Werckmeister 5). On page 834 of Laura Mulvey’s paper, the concept behind the male gaze is that it is a controlling, viewing position, where the woman in the image gets perceived as an object that is passive object for the male gazer who is active. On page 834, Mulvey continues by saying the male gaze applies both to the characters in the film or books and the assumed male audience. Hence, the female image in the films or books functions solely for the function of bearing the male gaze while the men look. The female appearance gets coded in a way that it provides a strong visual impact because she is there to give the male figure the visual satisfaction. The problem is that it not only portrays women as objects, but such objectification results in filmic illusion of an unreal female icon (Fol 26). Like so many other Hollywood films produced in the 1970s, the “Rear window” directed by one of the famous directors during the time corresponds to the ideas presented by Mulvey on too much male voyeurism in the film. According to Mulvey, the film focuses on the male gaze in a way which is anti-feminine, particularly through one of the characters in the film called L.B Jeff Jeffries (841). One of the main characters, Jeffries has a broken leg after getting an accident while on a photography assignment and has to spend all his time in his apartment (Hitchcock). To relieve his boredom he gets a new hobby, where he watches his neighbors through one of windows in his apartment (Hitchcock). The neighbors are generally not aware of his gaze and though there is a man, Mr. Thorwald, most of the neighbors who are closely watched are women. These are women such as Miss Torso, Stella, Lisa when she moves out of his apartment and Miss Lonelyhearts among other women. Based on the character of Jeffries, it is evident that women are not the characters that possess the ability to gaze. Moreover, the cameras are under the control of the male characters which is evidently documented by Hitchcock’s character, Jeffries with his camera. A closer look at the characters in the film shows that the key assumption is that the targeted viewers are the heterosexual men. This case is unquestionably true, because when Hitchcock’s film got released, most of the main characters were mainly men and it was easier to depict what most of them desired to see in a film. Nonetheless, it is a concept that still applies today in the films despite most films now showing more female protagonists. In Hitchcock’s film, some of the neighbors watched by Jeffries do not have what the audience would consider as a life full of interesting events. However, there are neighbors that Jeffries seems to watch closely and frequently are the ones with dramatic events. The film starts with viewers seeing a window which later directs them to an apartment. Hitchcock allowed the viewers to familiarize themselves with the private lives of the people in other apartments. It is only after introducing Jeffries in the scene that viewers understand the limitations that come with the male gaze since Jeffries is confined to a wheelchair. Nonetheless, the visual pleasure obtained from the male gaze cannot be in a discussion without mentioning how power, sexuality and knowledge relate to it. (Werckmeister 3). Most of the viewers are likely to note that they learn a lot from Jeffries gazing at Lisa Carol Fremont. Lisa, one of the positively portrayed female characters in the film is an independent career woman, who does not have to marry because of money as it was often the case of women in the 1970s. She is introduced to the audience as female who is also gazing like Jeffries in his apartment. The audience gets to see what happens when there is a male and female gaze in contrast proving Werckmeister’s argument that the gaze is not only applied to heterosexual viewers only, but women also play a role (4). It also becomes apparent that Jeffries is interested in watching his neighbors, but Lisa becomes interested only when female counterpart under her watchful eye is in danger. These are some of the scenes that attracted Mulvey’s criticism because it promotes a harsh gender divide between women and men. Moreover, Jeffries does not seem interested in Lisa, while they are watching their neighbors, but after she moves from the spectator side and goes to the side where there are what Hitchcock sees as objects to be watched. Jeffries only finds her attractive and worth of his gaze when the film is ending. What do such scenes in the film say about the male gaze? As mentioned earlier, it only proves Mulvey’s theory, that the people who watch have the power over those who are not watching (842). Therefore, because of such shots made in the film, the viewer positioned in to have a similar subjective perception, such as the one that Jeffries exhibits. Such prejudiced views allow the viewers to see women in the film such as Lisa, the way that Jeffries sees her. Of course, this does not send the right message. Hitchcock uses such as Jeffries to portray the ideas presented in Mulvey’s paper on gaze. Though some of the strongest ideas are presented through subjective camerawork, the audience gets to have the viewing power. Moreover, Hitchcock not only allows the viewers to see a woman like Lisa through subjective lenses, but to see other women such as Miss Torso and Miss Lonelyhearts. As their names suggest they provide the audience with very different interpretations about a single woman’s life. For example, Miss Torso seems to have many suitors and Miss Lonely hearts only has a single suitor in the course of the story. Based on the experiences that these two women go through in the film, it is evident that Hitchcock’s idea was to show the viewer that being single and a woman is not right. Hence, Hitchcock creates such beliefs in the minds of viewers when he uses Jeffries to watch them from the window of his apartment. Jeffries happens to see the two women looking for ways to fight off all the sexual advances that they get, but he does not help them. Hence, such scenes prompt feminists such as Mulvey to question directors such as Hitchcock, why he suggests that all women, whether they happen to be promiscuous or not are subject to the male gaze even if they are hurt in the process. In addition, when Jeffries does not bother himself to help the women, portrays a negative image to the viewers. It is clear that Jeffries expects that the women who are suffering should expect that they are suffering and live with it. How does such a male gaze impact on the audience? For heterosexual men who as mentioned earlier are the intended viewers, they develop the same attitude and teat women the same way. For viewers who are women, the impact is also negative because it teaches them that the society needs them to suffer when they do not conform to its set standards. The only time in the film, that Jeffries acts is when Miss Lonelyhearts wants to commit suicide. On page 837, it is evident that Mulvey views such scenes in the film as the ultimate objectification of women, but even when the film seems to address the ideas given by her, it still manages to dismiss that it is wrong. Hence, she writes that films are the tools used so commonly and in the wrong way to increase the patriarchal ideologies which only serve to evoke the anxieties in men (Mulvey 838). Such anxieties, as discussed by Mulvey are mostly sadistic and fetishistic because they only serve to promote the ideologies of suppression for women. She adds that it is for such reasons that men who are not comfortable with female sexuality and women in general tend to use their powerful gaze as a way of punishing female characters that seem strong and will-powered (Fol 75). As the film continues to play, it is apparent that Jeffries is not the only one who contributes to male gazing. There are other characters such as Lieutenant Thomas Doyle. For example, Doyle who acts like the usual reasoning male tries to provide rational excuses for the suspicious activity that he witnesses from one of Jeffries’ neighbors Lars Thorwold (Hitchcock). When he sees a woman dancing from a window he quickly goes into a trance while staring at her. He only gets back to the reality uncomfortably when Jeffries asks him about his wife. This shows that the male gaze is meant to be enjoyed, by men despite their commitments to other women. In another scene, viewers are shown Lisa who hums while in Jeffries’ kitchen and this makes Officer Doyles extremely uncomfortable. Perhaps it portrays a man who is not comfortable when talking to other men in the presence of a woman. This may show that officer Doyles expected that he would have a conversation for men-only. Moreover, he makes an attempt to belittle Lisa when she starts presenting her views of an attempted murder. For example, he tells her that feminine intuition is only used when selling magazines, but it rarely works in life situations (Hitchcock). Nonetheless, this statement shows that Hitchcock wants characters such as Officer Doyle and Thorwold to be the viewers’ characters of criticism. Surprisingly, unlike most of the scenes that portray characters like Jeffries as the perpetrators of the male gaze, other scenes offer the viewers with a different opinion. Officer Doyle’s male gaze is not used in the film as a source of objectification enough but as a way for Hitchcock to show the audience that he does not support the idea of the male gaze. Mulvey does not seem to mention that Hitchcock attempts to show that he does not support the male gaze. According to her the male film star’s gaze in a film are usually not those that are of erotic object of gaze like women (Mulvey 842). For most film makers, the idea is to present a character figure that has a powerful ideal ego where the viewers get a chance to see any faults in the powerful male figure (Mulvey 838). According to Fol, the desires and owing to the unconscious fears to see the women in a suppressed mode depicted in male characters is played out in most film, thus portraying stereotypes that women put on dresses to please men among other activities (60). Nonetheless to the viewers, it is apparent that in certain scenes and as the film comes to an end, there is criticism directed at those who engage in the male gaze. As noted in the film, when the characters who are aware of the problem decide that they will go to check what is happening in Thorwold’s apartment, Jeffries is forced to stay in his apartment because of his broken leg (Hitchcock). The women that were earlier portrayed as helpless characters in the eyes of viewers soon become the heroines when they are required to go to the apartment and take action. However, viewers soon realize that it is in Jeffries apartment where there is action, when Thorwold goes to his apartment to confront him. Jeffries is only able to make Thorwold blind using his camera, but this is only a move that allows him to yell for Lisa to come and save him (Hitchcock). As noted in this scene, Hitchcock no longer uses the male character to portray power, but rather a figure that needs help from the female colleagues. This is the scene where the male gaze in the film is metaphorically blinded giving the female characters the chance to prove that they are as capable as men. In conclusion, it is my view that the film “Rear Window” does not only provide commentaries only that support the idea of the male gaze, but it also criticizes the voyeuristic tendencies exhibited by most men and some women in the society. The blinding of the male gaze literally and metaphorically shows that Hitchcok realizes this problem soon before the film comes to an end and uses characters such as Doyle and Thorwold to show the negative effects of male chauvinistic tendencies. Mulvey’s discussion and Hitchcock’s film ultimately reveal the many layers of perception that plague most societies. For the audience with women in it, such a film is likely to send the wrong message, that a man punishes a woman because she is one in the first place. As with the women who show that they are strong in character and have self-assertion, the characters show that it is an aspect of life that comes with a considerable risk and that it is up to the woman to know how to deal with such risks. This is why it is not surprising to see teenagers adopting similar notions of boy’s bodies as normal and those of the girls in their schools as objects they can stare at without feeling ashamed. Works Cited Fol, Isabella. The dominance of the male gaze in Hollywood Films: Patriarchal Hollywood Images of women at the turn of the Millennium. Berlin: diplom.de Verlag, 2006. Hitchcock, Alfred, Dir. Rear Window. Paramount Pictures, 1954. Film. . Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford UP, 1975. 833-44. Werckmeister, Anke. The female/male gaze and its cultural consumption. Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2012. Read More