Rear Window

A detailed Summary of Rear Window

Rear Window (1954) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) have very different plots but still have many striking similarities, such as the manipulation of the spectator's gaze. Gaze is the transaction between the screen and a spectator. Two examples of the types of gazes used in these films are voyeuristic and fetishistic. The use of voyeuristic and fetishistic gazes reinforce movie viewing and gender roles during the 1950's by featuring manipulative and frivolous women as sex objects.

Rear Window is a film about obsession and human curiosity. The film further reinforces this point in its plot and through its voyeuristic gaze. The film is about a man named Jeff, a wheelchair-bound photographer, who out of boredom and curiosity spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced that one of them has committed murder. The movie also draws ties between movie viewing and voyeurism. Voyeurism is when someone likes to watch an unsuspecting person. And this is what Jeff does; in fact he even has a voyeuristic job as a photographer. While watching this suspenseful movie, you can't help but like you are in the movie, which is ironic because it shows that we are doing the same thing as Jeff--we are voyeurs sitting in a dar

The other female character is Dorothy. She is also a showgirl and very aware of the male gaze. She is sexual and is looking for "love," not marriage or money. However, Lorelei is sexual, too, but she comes off as innocent, because she is dumb and naive, which makes her non-threatening, despite her attempts at seducing men for money. These women are also shown as very manipulative, by wanting to control men. In the end however, they are shown as being somewhat controlled because they become married women. This shows the end of their free sexuality. Also, Lorelei isn't able to get her man until she at least admits that she loves him. She doesn't say without his money, but here the audience can at least feel a little better about the situation, thinking she does care for him. The plot could not end without this, because narratively the plot needed to control the threat women make to male's castration.

Since the male character controls the gaze, we are shown a representation of the female characters through this gaze. This is where Lisa comes in--a beautiful fashion-model who is a spectacle. Mulvey argues that women in film are only shown as spectacle. Lisa is established as a spectacle by her early obsessive use of fashion. She enters Jeff's apartment in expensive ball gowns, looking perfect. We first see her controlling the gaze by turning on lights in the room and spotlighting herself. And whenever we see her in a new scene, she is posed. Her skirts are always billowing out around her, or else she is standing like a sculpture, not a human. Like Mulvey says, she is the typical female character of the time--"She holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire." She is shown as a sexual object for the characters in the film and for the spectators as well. She is a sex object for women spectators, too, because we see her as an ideal of the way a woman should look. Through a Narcissistic viewpoint, we wish we looked/acted like she does and, in turn, could control the gaze like she.

k movie house engrossed in this film. This voyeuristic gaze is shown mainly through Jeff's eyes. Hitchcock forces us to only see the movie through the ey

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Approximate Word count = 1449
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Movies