From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: voyeurism
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 10:32:30 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


> >What role does voyeurism play in the cinematic expereience?

Two things could be distinguished:

1. Voyeurism as gaze (love object).
2. Voyeurism as a fetish.
3. Voyeurism as perversion.

1. The gaze is that which 'determines' the I in the visible, it is 'the 
instrument through which the I is photo[light]graphed[desire]. The gaze, in the 
Lacanian sense, is located behind the (screen) image, as that which fails to 
appear in the screen (ie. recognition), rendering all meanings suspect 
(misrecognized). The subject, instead of coinciding with or identifying with 
the gaze (mirrored identification), is cut off from it (alientation). Under the 
gaze of the Other, which is what gaze always is, one is perspectivally blind: 
the gaze does not see you. This is 'normal' in the sense that the ego is the 
cite of a paranoid knowledge about itself (do I exist for the Other? How do I 
know?). This is to be differentiated from the idea that "I see myself in the 
movies" which is contrary to this point. The traumatic aspect of the screen is 
precisely that the picture does not see us.

2. Since "I" see something, but that "something" (the Other) does not see me, 
this is prime territory for the compuslive obsessive who does not want to know 
anything about their desire. Here, two psychical structures can be 
differentiated: the pervert and the obsessional. The 'eclipse' of the I in gaze 
is related, I would imagine, more to the obsessional, the fetishistic voyeur 
affixed their interests to the object that does not see them, and avoids any 
confrontation with their desire by situating themselves in the position of the 
Other. Here, the voyeur identifies with the camera, and not the image, which is 
an impossible position.

3. As perversion, voyeurism is related to the attempt to excite or traumatize 
the Other. The voyeuristic pervert watches in order to invoke a response, the 
greater the response, the greater the success (obviously, a double edged 
sword!). By looking alone, the perverted voyeur seeks to 'expose' a greater 
truth, the truth about the Other via sleuth. Very creeping. I'm tempted to 
remark that the Hollywood obsession with "the makings of" XYZ (or, the magic 
behind the scenes) is a kind of inverted perversion.

guesswork,
ken



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