The Hitchcock films discussed in this paper offer potentially subversive readings: At first glance, they appear to support patriarchal power structures and can therefore be considered as conservative however, a closer analysis reveals an underlying feminist challenge – in Rear Window and Psycho even an empowerment of women – which threatens to upset the classic split between active/male and passive/female. The female viewing experience and its relation to visual manipulation techniques are illustrated in three of Hitchcock’s most famous and most influential films: Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho. Thus, as a director, Hitchcock is like a criminal who makes the audience his accomplice in a crime that is about to unfold in front of their eyes.Īlthough traditionally, Hitchcock’s film are considered to be directed at a male audience – due to the strong objectification and even mistreatment of female characters – this Bachelor thesis argues that female viewers can also experience visual pleasure, albeit in a different way. By means of simultaneously zooming in and tracking out, combined with point-of-view shots and extreme close-ups, the audience assumes the protagonist’s perspective along with a sense of vertigo, guilt and pleasure. Through his way of directing the camera – and with the camera also the gaze of the spectator – his audience not only appreciates the narrative itself but also, and especially, Hitchcock’s technique of storytelling. Thus, cinema’s visual manipulation techniques enable viewers to experience visual pleasure as they enter the world on screen and become involved in the lives of their screen surrogates.Īmong the many talented directors in the history of film making, Alfred Hitchcock is known for being one of cinema’s most productive auteurs and a pioneer in the field of visual manipulation.
As a rule, the film’s artifice is hidden so well that it remains unnoticed by the audience, conveying the impression that the narrative is “spontaneously creating itself in the presence of the spectators for their immediate consumption and pleasure” (ibid.). Cinema is often regarded as a ‘narrative machine’ because “the narrative is delivered so effortlessly and efficiently to the audience that it appears to have no source” (Belton, American Cinema 22).
In classical Hollywood cinema, this visual pleasure is the result of successful audience manipulation. Despite the fact that Mulvey herself has revised some of her ideas in “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946)” (1981), theorists are still struggling to understand if and how visual pleasure manifests itself for female viewers. Woman stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning (Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure” 15).Įver since Laura Mulvey published her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975, feminist film theorists have challenged her assertion that films are directed at an exclusively male spectatorship. Empathy and Masquerade as a Source of Visual Pleasure The Men: Sam Loomis, Milt Arbogast and othersģ.3.4. Autonomy, Nostalgia and Empathy enable Visual Pleasureģ.3.2. The Women: Midge and Madeleine Elster/Judy Bartonģ.2.3. Visual Pleasure through Masquerade and Female Empowermentģ.2.2. Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)ģ.1.3.
The Gaze and Spectatorship in Feminist Film TheoryĢ.1.
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