Synthesis on Rear Window - Essay Example

Synthesis Essay on “Rear Window” The film Rear Window focuses on L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, a professional photographer who injured his leg while photographing a racetrack event. Confined to his wheelchair in his apartment during a summer heat wave, he passes time by watching his neighbors from the rear window of his apartment. His neighbors keep their windows open to stay cool, providing him with a constant view of the activities in their apartments. Among the tenants that Jeff can see are Lars Thorwald, a jewelry salesman, and his bedridden wife. Jeff witnesses an argument between Thorwald and his wife, after which the wife disappears and Thorwald makes several late-night trips carrying an unidentifiable load. Thorwald then has moving men haul away a large packing crate from his apartment. Jeff narrates his observations to his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, and his home-care nurse, Stella, who share his suspicion that Thorwald murdered his wife. Obsessed with this theory, Jeff mentions his suspicions to his detective friend, Tom Doyle, who conducts an investigation and finds nothing suspicious. Jeff becomes convinced that Thorwald is guilty when a neighbor finds her dog killed and the resulting hysterics that she makes attracts all the neighbors except Thorwald, whom Jeff sees alone in his room smoking a cigar. Jeff begins to suspect that Thorwald buried something in the flower patch within the courtyard and then killed the neighbor’s dog to prevent it from digging it up. In order to confirm this theory, Jeff telephones Thorwald and asks him to meet him at a bar, providing Lisa and Stella with the opportunity to dig up the flower patch, but they find nothing. Lisa then climbs through the fire escape into Thorwald’s apartment, but unfortunately, he returns and catches her. Jeff witnesses this through the window and calls the police to save Lisa, who signals to him across the courtyard with Mrs. Thorwald’s ring, which she found in the apartment. Thorwald notices Lisa signaling to Jeff through the window and realizes that Jeff is behind the whole scheme to uncover him as the murderer of his wife. After the police, Lisa, and Stella leave for the police station, Thorwald makes his way to Jeff’s apartment to confront him. In the scuffle that follows Thorwald throws a yelling Jeffries through the window, but the police arrive in time to catch him before he hits the ground, and only suffers another broken leg. The police arrest Thorwald, who confesses to murdering his wife. In the final scene of the movie, Jeff has broken his other leg too as a result of the fall and is shown resting at peace in his wheelchair. Across the courtyard, the lonely woman has a new-found friendship with the songwriter, the lover of the dancer returns home from the military, the elderly couple has acquired a new dog, and the young couple is constantly arguing. Rear Window provides an insightful view of the social and psychological factors that give rise to difficulties experienced in relationships between men and women. Jeff’s relationship with Lisa, and the relationships of the other tenants across the courtyard, combines throughout the film to bring out this central theme. In The Women Who Knew Too Much, Tania Modleski interprets The Rear Window by using it as the basis for an analysis of the male and female spectators. Modleski asserts that the film stresses both male and female points of view, with both Jeff and Lisa being portrayed in the reverse shots observing the neighbors through the rear window. She stresses that the male character is not domineering over the female character, and that spectators get the opportunity to identify themselves with both Jeff and Lisa on different occasions. Lisa related to the characters through empathy and identification, whereas Jeff was more interested in spying on them and adopting a controlling relation to the happenings in their lives. Through these two perspectives, Modleski brings out the instances in the film that provided spectators with the opportunity to identify with both the female and the male characters. In Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, Robin Wood analyses “Rear Window” through the morality-based reactions that it stimulates in the spectator. In the first view, he analyzes it as a condemnation of prying and curiosity. In the second view, Wood analyzes Rear Window as a morally distasteful film since it shamelessly encourages and exploits prying, curiosity and voyeurism. However, Woods tends to lean more towards the second view, especially when he strongly supports the film’s role in exposing the plight of women in patriarchy. Both Tania Modleski’s and Robin Wood’s opinions regarding Rear Window touch on the standing of both men and women in modern society. Modleski feels that both male and female have been equally represented in the film with regard to social standing. However, Wood asserts exactly the opposite. He focuses on the film’s aspects of voyeurism and asserts that its portrayal of the female is highly degrading. According to my interpretation of the primary source, Rear Window is essentially about the social conflict between masculinity and femininity. The film has a strong radicalism which attempts to make a connection between the theme of castration and marriage. It portrays marriage as the castration of the male to some extent. Rear Window clearly brings out the notion that it is impossible to achieve successful human relations within a patriarchal system that imparts the male with dominance over the female through hopelessly incompatible roles. Rear Window is initially heavily skewed towards the male point of view. Jeff spends his time observing his neighbors as a means of diverting himself from his realities. He notably focuses on the limber Miss Torso and the scantily dressed sunbathers. His choice of names for some of the women, including Miss Lonelyhearts and Miss Torso, serves as testimony to his tendency to objectify females. According to Wood, although these names also play the role of giving the spectator an insight into the individualities of these women, they are based on Jefferies perception (Wood, 67). Therefore, viewers are forced to go along with interpretation of the situation from Jeff’s male-oriented point of view. Jeff has an intense feeling of masculine disability mostly because of his broken leg but also because of his impaired relations with women. His viewing of his neighbors offers a welcome distraction and momentarily substitutes the masculine lack that he feels (Deutelbaum and Leland, 42). His viewing comes more like channel surfing than film watching since each window he views across the courtyard provides a view to different events. The manner the shot is framed also contributes to solidifying the two-dimensional look that both viewers and Jeff see. His telephone conversation with Gunnison demonstrates that the events he viewed through the window were strongly influencing his perception of the world (Whatsupwill, n.p.). His thoughts on marriage, which he describes to Gunnison, have a strong basis on his perceptions regarding his neighbors. Woods asserts that viewers are left without the freedom to interpret events according to their own point of view (Wood, 93). The viewer can only assume that Jeff’s perception about the marriage of the newlyweds and the arguments of Lars Thorwald and his wife are a true portrayal of events. The viewer gets no opportunity to get the proximity that is necessary to observe the details of the events and make an accurate interpretation. Therefore, this connection makes Jeff feel like he possesses a kind of dominance over his neighbors and serves to substitute the lack that he feels as a result of his broken leg. Lisa plays a huge role in liberating Jeff from his fears of castration and his inability to successfully relate with women. His inactivity due to his broken leg made him feel a deficiency in his masculinity, and Lisa’s role in conducting the investigation of Thorwald on Jeff’s directions enabled her to fill the psychological void in Jeff’s masculinity. She symbolically represents Jeff’s phallus and this caused the fear of castration to renew in him, ultimately rekindling his desire for her. One method through which Jeff would have been able to escape his castration anxiety was to save the female in the film who served as an icon for viewing. However, Lisa does not merely serve this purpose, she also serves as the tool through which Jeff accomplishes actions he cannot carry out himself due to his incapacitation. Lisa’s refined manner of presenting herself and her sophisticated style further raises her stature above the level of a mere icon for viewing (Modleski, 70). Jeff’s intense interests in both the males and females outside his window, his initial lack of interest in Lisa, in addition to his connection with viewers, ensures that Lisa serves an active role rather than a passive female whose primary purpose is to satisfy masculine urges for visual pleasure (Pons, Bonet and Iglesias, 24). Works Cited Deutelbaum, Marshall and Poague, Leland. A Hitchcock Reader. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009. Modleski, Tania. The women who knew too much: Hitchcock and feminist theory. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pons Catalina, Bonet Eduard and Iglesias, Oriol. A study of hitchcock’s film the rear window on how we interpret social actions. Academia.edu, 2010. Retrieved 10 Apr 2013 from Whatsupwill. What film is: an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s rear window. Wordpress, 2012. Retrieved 10 Apr 2013 from Wood, Robin. Hitchcock’s films revisited. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Read More