After the in-depth class discussions about voyeurism and suturing, the choice to watch Hitchcock's classic films Rear Window, and Vertigo made perfect sense. They both play with the audience's role as a spectator, and therefore voyeur, by having the main characters themselves be voyeurs. L.B. Jeffries, the lead character in Rear Window, is confined to a wheelchair due to a broken leg, with nothing to do but look out of his window and observe his neighbor's lives. Meanwhile, John Ferguson of Vertigo is hired by an old college friend to spy on his wife due to some very strange behavior she has been displaying. In both these cases, the audience is sutured into the role of a voyeur, perhaps making the voyeuristic experience of watching a film easier to handle. In Rear Window, the majority of the plot is made up of what L.B. Jeffries sees through his binoculars or photo lenses. In Vertigo, it isn't quite as pronounced, but the first third or so of the movie revolves around Johnnie stalking and watching Madeline.
This aspect of these movies is of particular interest to Laura Mulvey, who theorizes that in film, the camera's gaze to which the audience is sutured to, is in fact a male gaze. It cuts apart and objectifies the females in the movies purely for the pleasure of the male spectator. While I have difficulties swallowing all of Mulvey's thoughts on this matter, it seems undeniable that strong examples of her image of a “patriarchal” Hollywood can be found in these two Hitchcock films.
Mulvey's contention that the camera looks with a masculine, voyeuristic gaze is especially difficult to dispute in Vertigo. Vertigo takes place almost entirely from John Ferguson's perspective. The beginning of the film is John literally stalking and spying on Madeline. The audience is permitted only to see what John sees, and know only what he knows. Along the way, he begins to fall in love with Madeline. This especially speaks to the voyeurism because Madeline is such a one dimensional character. She is beautiful, but receives no character development at all. She simply responds to questions, and acts mysteriously. In fact, the majority of the time John is watching her, he believes her to be possessed by a dead woman's spirit. During these episodes, she is generally not particularly verbal, but also acts more or less insane. And yet John still falls in love with her. One can only conclude that his romantic interest in her was built entirely on her aesthetic qualities. And it gets worse. After her “death”, he becomes insanely depressed. He mopes around and haunts those few places he can link to her. But then he sees Judy, the girl who pretended to be Madeline. Stricken by how much she looks like Madeline, John becomes romantically involved with her. But he still appears distant and depressed. He then slowly begins to modify her appearance until she looks exactly like Madeline did. Only when her appearance exactly matches Madeline's does he appear to truly warm up to her and break out of his funk. This shows just how much emphasis he put on her appearance rather than personality. He did not care at all for her personality, just her beauty, and didn't feel right about the relationship until Judy perfectly matched Madeline visually. The fact that he forcibly changed her image despite her many protests, and her eventually consenting due to her blind love for him nicely exemplifies the male perspective that Mulvey talks about.
Rear Window blurs this line much more. The perspective is again entirely male. The audience sees everything from L.B. Jeffries' perspective. But while there is a similarly one sided relationship, there is one key difference. Jeff more or less ignores Lisa for most of the film, as she dotes on him. However, Jeff is confined to his wheelchair, and therefore incapable of taking any action. Lisa is not, and ends up leaving the apartment to go dig up the flowers in front of the Thorwald's apartment to try to solve the mystery. And then, in an act of independent thinking that completely flies in the face of Mulvey's characterization of women in films, Lisa decides on her own to break into Thorwald's apartment and look around herself. While the initial action of digging up the flowers was part of a plan decided on with Jeff, Lisa's decision to search Thorwald's apartment not only took place without any guiding male influence, it is what broke the plot open and led to the thrilling conclusion.
It is a third Hitchcock movie, Suspicion, that I find most contrary to Mulvey's theories. Mulvey does not comment on Suspicion in her essay, which is unfortunate. I would have been interested to hear her thoughts on it, because it appears that Suspicion's camera is decidedly female. Suspicion takes place from the perspective of Lina, the female lead. It follows her growing suspicion of her new husband, John Aysgarth. Initially, he seemed ideal, but as their marriage progressed, Lina learned that he gambled, could not hold a job, and eventually that he stole $2,000 from his employee and was trying to make that money back to avoid being arrested. The viewer, trapped in Lina's perspective, is slowly forced into seeing John as a murder, and then to suspect that he plans on murdering Lina as well. Her perspective clouds ours, and we view all of his actions negatively. In what seems to be another role reversal, John seems like the character that is fetishized and spied upon. Lina was initially seen as kind of frumpy and undesirable. Her father specifically stated that he did not think she would ever get married. It turns out she was beautiful, but she was far from the idealistic beauties of Vertigo and Rear Window. Meanwhile, John was an attractive playboy. He was clearly desired by many women. Interestingly enough, it also seems like his character was given less development than Lina. We don't see much more from him other than his prideful, playboy gambler aspect. Lina is intelligent, rebellious, and the mover of the narrative, while John seems one dimensional. The attractive playboy archetype seems like the male reflection of the naïve and beautiful woman.
Mulvey mentions in her article that Hitchcock is a prime example of male voyeurism. The fact that one of his own films seems exactly the opposite of what she describes hurts her argument. I can't stomach her Freudian psychoanalysis arguments, but her argument regarding the male camera does seem valid. What I feel is a stretch, though, is when she applies it to all movies. I think it is safe to say that some movies act exactly as she describes. In fact, maybe even the majority of movies act this way. But it would take a very convincing argument for me to see Suspicion in this light.
