The article based on three movies discusses voyeurism in modern society and the problems behind this phenomenon, including alienation of urban life, surveillance on people’s privacy and gender inequality.
Among these social issues, the existence of widespread cameras and systems of surveillance has been highly controversial. On the one hand, surveillance is efficient in finding criminals as well as recording the real situations when dangers happen. This function of cameras lead to a decrease in crime rate to some degree. For example, in Sliver, through video-surveillance system installed by Zeke, he have the chance to find out a girl being sexually abused by her stepfather. Then Zeke successfully helps this poor girl by threatening her stepfather. Without the surveillance system, Zeke will probably never know what happened to this girl. In that case, the girl might be abused for a much longer period. Besides, in Real Window, it is by voyeuring neighbor’s lives that the murderer is able to be discovered and caught by the police. It is undeniable that surveillance system have positive effects on the society. On the other hand, it seems ridiculous and unethical to voyeur other people’s privacy. It is extremely creepy to imagine the situation in which some unknown people are constantly observing you. Besides, whether violence can be truly ended by observing inhabitants’s daily lives still requires further discussions.
Apart from the surveillance system, the alienation of urban life mentioned in this article also impressed me. Different kinds of people in Rear Window all feel entirely lonely, from Miss Torso who has been waiting for her lover, to married couples who replace children by a dog. In fact, nearly every person in this modern society feels lonely from time to time, even though they might be surrounded by a large number of people, such as friends and families. From my perspective, perhaps the only way to overcome loneliness is to be the loneliness itself.
Lin Ruqi UID:3035951739
A good summary and I appreciate your point on alienation. Loneliness is visible in all three films introduced in the reading. How do you link voyeurism to loneliness?