Part of what makes Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" so great, and something that is often discussed in critical reflections, is the way the movie implicates the audience in the voyeurism that is movie watching. James Stewart is every one of us, sitting in a darkened room, staring at a human drama playing out before our eyes. Some find condemnation in Hitchcock's movie, but I find a sort of world-weary acceptance of human nature.
Fragments, snippets of real life are gathered by the crippled photographer watching from his rear window out at the windows across the courtyard. Out of context, these fragments coalesce into a number of different stories, most of which are in various states of incorrectness. One story, in particular, the door-to-door jewelry salesman across the way with the "nagging wife who suddenly isn't there" proves too interesting to resist. Onto a bare framework of observation wild and outrageous suspicion is laid.
He was packing saws in his apartment - he must have chopped up his wife. When the photographer explains this theory to his police officer friend, the police officer responds, "How many knives have you owed? How many saws? Did you ever kill anyone?" The photographer is momentarily chastised, but quickly resumes his vigil. A small dog turns up dead and everyone rushes to their windows except the salesman - he is obviously capable of taking a life.
The photographer's suspicions, paranoia, and hyper-voyeurism are, in the end, justified in every way. That's a tidy way for the story of the movie to end. Real life is seldom as tidy. Anyone who has ever sat and "people watched" knows how easy it is to invent stories to lay on the shoulders of the strangers passing by.
One night when I was 9 or 10 I was spending the night with some cousins at our Grandma's house. Her neighbor was coming and going all night long, and we heard yelling in her house, although we couldn't make out what was being said. Like a spider web, our speculative story quickly grew into a massive murder mystery. We were thrilled and amped, but terrified. Something about the thrill of witnessing what is not meant to be witnessed. The danger of it.
I knew I was a voyeur even then, although I didn't know the word for it. I was not familiar with the concept of exhibitionism until later. The idea that some people wanted to be watched and got a similar thrill from it that I got from watching. I have some of that in me, too, but mostly I am a "watcher from the shadows."
Everything has its limits, though. I recall a particularly disturbing dream I had during a time in my early 20's I was house-sitting for a friend in town. I found it fascinating to observe the comings and goings of the neighbors. Slowly, steadily, I began to sink into a swamp of paranoia. I kept all the blinds closed at night. Eventually I refused to turn the lights on at all. Finally, one night I had a very vivid dream that I was in the house with the lights off and blinds pulled as normal, getting ready to peek out, when I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. I went to a window and pulled up the blind only to see myself peering back. I screamed, and ran to another window on the far side of the house, and it was the same. I was hovering in the shadows peering back. That was my tipping point. I woke the next morning and resumed a more normal way of life, lights on, curtains open.
We have all become our own versions of the door-to-door salesmen of "Rear Window." Of course, we are not all murderers, and he had the benefit of not realizing he was being watched. We are not so lucky. And I've heard people say, "Well, if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't worry about it." But that's not the point. I mean, I guess that's true. But why even bother to watch unless you think you will catch somebody at something? And doesn't thinking that way mean you don't trust anyone? And how are the untrusted supposed to deal with that?
When I was a kid I would, from time to time, get the feeling that certain people - teachers, etc - expected me to fail at certain things. Or, if something would turn up missing in a classroom, they would assume I had taken it. And it was never true. Not even once. But I couldn't shake the perception. That's a hell of a thing to have to carry around - that knowledge. It made me intrinsically, deeply angry and resentful. I couldn't shake it - and I still carry it around with me to a certain extent even now.
So this nightmare Orwellian scenario is now real life. Government is watching us. They say it's not true, but trust is gone, so nobody really believes them. Paranoia digs in again, little by little, sliding in slowly like a knife between the ribs. It gives reason to pause and reconsider even the most benign things (this very blog post, for example), as you always have to wonder how it will look to another person. The pimply shadow-dwellers I imagine sitting in a dark control room somewhere in the desert in a room full of screens - staring out their own rear windows, given free reign to piece together whatever scenarios they want from the fragments they are collecting.
Of course, it would likely make even the most robust of us go mad eventually. But that urge to watch is an inescapable part of human nature. Hitchcock knew it, and I wonder what he would make of the sheer scope of what is happening today. It goes far beyond national security. It's all about power. It was about a group of people at some high level of bureaucracy being told how far they could take it - how far the technology would allow them to go, and those bureaucrats following the electric spark they felt in their genitals and saying, "Oh, well, yes, let's do that." And sitting back to watch the show.
Eventually, though, you reach the point where the fantasy becomes a nightmare and you have to lift the shades and turn on the lights and try to get back to normalcy. Maybe that's what the end result of this ongoing "whistle blowing" will be. In any event, I'm sure there will be more people in suits on tv telling us we have nothing to fear. And we will try to believe them, but in the end we will know that the erotic urge to watch will simply be too much to resist. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So how does a person exist in this sort of toxic digital environment? The urge to drop "off the grid" is certainly palpable - to revert to a circa 1989 existence of snail-mail letters, no cell phones, and cash/check for every purchase. Even today, it would still be possible, but it would be a huge pain in the ass. Shouldn't a digital life be our right and privilege?
In the end, I suppose we are all made to be exhibitionists. The question becomes, "Do we continue to hide behind our flimsy curtains, or do we boldly throw them open, turn on the lights, and parade around the house in our tighty-whiteys and granny panties?" Of course, this decision is fueled by the knowledge that we are helpless to protect the sanctity of our privacy. I suppose you could always sell your house in the city and move into a wigwam in the mountains, but doesn't that just mean they have won?
There's something liberating about knowing you no longer have the capacity for keeping secrets. That wonderful, horrible moment of release when the thing you have been trying to keep hidden for so long is finally laid bare. When you have been caught at 2am pissing in the park fountain and you realize you have two options - run, or finish your business. When your back is against the wall and you realize you are being watched, you may as well stand there and face the music.
You may as well put on a show.
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