Men have lived on obsession

Running head: ENGLISH
Cinema Arts
Name of the Student:
Name of University:
Author Note

2
ENGLISH
Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist who is very popular for her seminal essay “Visual
Pleasure in the Narrative of Cinema”. The essay presents the very idea of male gaze which is
deployed while looking at female bodies passively (Penley 2013). Woman has been a signifier in
the patriarchal culture, which has been bound by a series of symbolic order. The thesis of this
paper is to discuss Rear Window with respect to Voyeurism and Scopophilia as has been
discussed by Laura Mulvey in her essay.
Men have lived on obsession and fantasies through linguistic commands. These meanings
are not created but imposed on the silent image of a woman. Rear Window is a mystery thriller
written by John Michael and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which was based on a short story
written by Cornell Woolrich, named ‘It had to be Murder’.
The opening of the movie is from a view which is set from at a window, of which the
shades are pulled to reveal the apartment. The audience can easily observe the private lives of the
people living within. The use of the camera, is subconsciously powerful enough to offer control
over the perspectives. The movie presents that a photojournalist named Jefferies is bound to his
wheelchair because of a leg injury, while the only thing he can do is to spy on other people’s
lives through the window.
The very act of spying on the private lives of his neighbors he gets led to a murder
mystery (Theus 2013). However, the movie is more about the voyeuristic actions rather than just
solving a murder mystery. Jefferies begin drawing pleasure from watching others in their most
personal moments and drawing pleasure without their consent or even knowledge. There is a
constant act of dismantling of Mulvey’s claims by presenting the act of spying, without
involving sexual pleasure.