REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

In Alfred Hithcock's Rear Window (1954), the viewer quickly becomes aware of their position as viewer, as voyeur, identifying with the stationary L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart). As the plot unfolds, however, we soon realize in Jeffries' voyeurism an obsession perhaps even beyond what we bring to the screen, and it is in these instances when the structural aspects of voyeurism mix with fetishism.

One crucial means by which this is revealed is through the story of Miss Lonelyheart (Judith Evelyn) throughout. Henry Krips writes of Lacan's notion of the fetish that "This conception of the fetish, as a special sort of objet a that attracts the attention normally reserved for the object of desire, fits well with recent work suggesting that fetishism is no less a feature of women's psychic than men's" (29). In the first scene Miss Lonelyheart is introduced, we find her setting a table, a normal enough act. However, soon she sits to the table, eats alone, and even converses with the blank space. This is the structure of the fetish at work, we later realize. When, in fact, Miss Lonelyheart brings home a real man, she quickly rejects him from her enclosed world. In many ways, the fetish for Miss Lonelyheart is the lack of the actual object, a blank space that symbolizes the objet a of a lover, but not the lover himself.

Similarly, as Jeffries watches this scene, we notice Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelley) setting the table behind him looking out. Jeffries' voyeurism is here nearly a perfect match for the structure of Lacan's fetish. While the actual dinner/bride/lover is right behind him, he is more interested in viewing this scene from the outside, in the signifier of the promise of this scene somewhere else. Miss Loneyheart's apartment, as well as all the apartments, come to act as the chaperone, the object in place of the object of desire, eventually replacing that object on the symbolic level.

Miss Lonelyheart thus exists as a fetishist and the fetish, and here we see the allusion to Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts, a man writing a help column from a female perspective, where his desire to do good ultimately becomes the fetish, versus the intended object of helping someone else, just as it does with Jeffries.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window stands as a lasting tribute to, and example of, the psychological concept of voyeurism. Trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is left with little to do but stare out his apartment windows and into the windows of his surrounding neighbors. In the Freudian sense, Jeffries is a classic voyeur--he maintains a strong desire to stare out and spy on his neighbors without being seen. Yet his interaction with his surroundings illustrates that his voyeurism is, when viewed in Lacanian terms, just another example of "perversion"; it is structurally formulated like other perversions such as fetishism. Just as in Lacan's structuring of fetishism, where the fetishist becomes caught up with the facilitator/obstruction to his real desire--the objet a--and thus does not complete the cycle of sexual pleasure, so too does a voyeur fail to complete a cycle of pleasure--that of the scopic pleasure/drive. Lacan notes how scopic drive is set up as a pair of needs--to both see and be seen--and it is only completed/satisfied when both occur. The voyeur, however, does not allow completion of the second half--he strives not to be seen, thus frustrating the drive by focusing on something else: the objet a. In the case of Jeffries in Rear Window, this setup can be seen with Jeffries viewing of the drawn shade of the newlywed couple's apartment.

In the film, Jeffries sees the arrival of the newlyweds at their apartment and notes their status as a new couple. This setup thus informs his (and viewers') reaction to their window throughout the rest of the film. Thus, when they draw the shade to their apartment, it is a clear signal that they are engaging in sex. For a typical voyeur, the shade perhaps would function as a frustration--something prohibiting his drive to see the couple and their sexual activities. For Jeffries, however, the shade instead functions as an objet a. Jeffries has already satisfied his drive "to see" since, for him, what he has seen is the potential pleasure in/of marriage. As a voyeur, however, and as a man struggling with commitment and the issue of marriage with his own love interest, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), Jeffries desires not to be seen. If his scopic drive is completed, then Jeffries would be forced to consider his relationship with Lisa head on--he would be confronted with a look at himself and the question of why he has not yet married Lisa. However, by only seeing the drawn shade, Jeffries can continually revel only in his own voyeurism and the pleasure he gets from knowing what is going on behind it. In a sense, he can see through the shade (since he knows what the couple is doing), but they cannot turn his gaze back upon him. Jeffries prefers this frustrated interaction with the shade rather than any resulting consequences a look back upon himself would provide (ultimately, marriage with Lisa probably would be pleasurable, but he does not yet want to face that). His voyeuristic preference for the objet a of the shade is revealed when Lisa, seeing it drawn, comments on it, saying "Something much more sinister could be going on behind those shades," to which Jeffries replies, "No comment." Lisa thus unknowingly tries to push Jeffries to complete his scopic desire by being seen (and thus looking back upon himself), but he refuses, preferring the safety and pleasure of his voyeurism just like the fetishist prefers his fetish object.

At a first gaze, the Lacanian plot of Rear Window appears simple and transparent. When Lars Thorwald asks Jeffries the Lacanian question "Che vuoi?" he puts into perspective Jeffries' lack and quest for the phallus. Longing for Thorwald's phallus, namely freedom from a nagging wife, Jeffries admires Thorwald's cruel murder and uncovers his desire to kill Lisa, his potential wife. Nevertheless, at the end of the film Jeffries is pleased to find himself back to where he started--in a wheelchair with two broken legs--next to a more masculine, assertive, and adventurous Lisa. Instead of attaining Thorwald's short independent life, he is more open to the idea of marriage now that Lisa is brave and active. If fetishism is a "paradoxical refusal to follow up on one's desire" (Krips 29), the suitor (Jeffries) represses and delays his desire for the beloved (the too perfect Lisa) to maintain his desire through the chaperone (his own voyeuristic gaze). In other words, Jeffries' voyeuristic gaze at Thorwald feeds his desire for Lisa and facilitates his fetishistic delay of his potential marriage. While during this voyeuristic and fetishistic process Jeffries reveals his homoerotic desires, at the end of it he obtains a masculine woman: Lisa Carol Fremont.

The voyeur, whose gaze turns back upon himself, "is looking for … a shadow, a shadow behind the curtain" (Krips 27). Jeffries chooses to frame the negative photo of a woman, the reverse image of the beautiful blond woman on the cover of a magazine. When Lisa appears for the first time, Jeffries is more attracted to her shadow than she is to her perfect figure and face. Bored with her perfection even when Lisa sits in his arms and kisses him, Jeffries looks away from her at his neighbors. He is still interested in marriage because he looks jealously at the newlyweds and imagines what happens behind their curtains. Not only does Jeffries maintain his desire for Lisa by putting off their marriage, but he also revises his definition of desire and marriage. Stella scolds Jeffries for his hormone deficiency despite the appealing looks of the women he had been watching. Jeffries' use of a large phallic telephoto lens to gaze at the killer and not at the women from different apartments reveals his growing interest and homoerotic desire for Thorwald, a desire that Jeffries will project onto Lisa as well.

Jeffries' desire for Lisa increases only when she takes a more masculine role in his own fascination with the killer. The first change in her appearance marks her preference for suits instead of large fancy dresses and for less extravagant coiffures. Her clothes at the end of the film, pants and a shirt, suggest her conversion to masculinity. In addition, Lisa's active participation in the crime resolution redirects Jeffries' gaze from Thorwald to her. After she delivers the letter to Thorwald's apartment, Jeffries admires her courage and looks at her appreciatively. When Lisa points Anna's wedding ring to Jeffries from Thorwald's apartment, she shows him that she solved the case and reminds him of his own commitment to her. Jeffries gazes at masculine Lisa, finds her adventurous enough, and transfers his desire for Thorwald to her.
Jeffries eventually cures his fetishism by pursuing his beloved instead of gazing at the objet a. And because most of the couples from the apartments are married or will get married (Miss Torso and the soldier, Miss Lonelyheart and the songwriter, the newlyweds, and the couple with the new dog), Jeffries and masculine Lisa may follow their examples.

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Last update: 8/27/2004