The Rhetoric Of Gaze : A Critical Study Of Hitchcock's Rear Window

Abstract

This paper endeavours to critically engage with  and examine the gazes cast by the photojournalist protagonist Mr. L. B. Jefferies (James Stewart)  in Alfred Hitchcock's iconic film Rear Window (1954). It attempts to analyze how Jefferies observes his neighbours' behaviours through the views offered by binocular and zoom lens. Acting like a Peeping Tom, he takes the voyeuristic pleasure of these male gazes. The purpose of the paper is to analyse voyeurism and its role in developing the plot of the movie . The paper situates Hitchock's Rear window within the theoretical framework of Laura Mulvey's influential essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It primarily explores the concept of 'scopophilia', pleasure derived from looking, as a crucial subject of cinematic spectatorship. This paper attempts to critically examine how, In this patriarchal society, women are turned into objects of gaze(s) rather than the possessors because of the controlling presence of camera coming from the assumptions of heterosexual men. John Berger, in his "Selected Essays", argues " you painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own purpose." (507) The plot of the movie , actually, centres round gazing, looking, and watching. The protagonist L. B. Jefferies is in the ethical dilemma of surveillance. Dilemmas, ethical concerns, and the practice of surveillance, therefore, have also been placed under the lens of scrutiny.The paper focuses on the justification of the practice of surveillance, eliciting the idea whether Hitchcock's treatment is sophisticated or not.