A Voyeuristic Love Life

“Men, are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel tired and run down? Do you have that listless feeling?”—Rear Window (playing on a radio)

            After the radio announcement, the camera returns to the apartment where it slowly reveals that the man, a photojournalist, L.B. Jefferies, is immobilized. He is alone and confined in a wheelchair. His “castrated” left leg is in a cast - inscribes:

Here lie the broken bones of L. B. Jefferies

On the wall are enlarged photos, smashed camera equipment, other various photographs, a negative of a woman’s face, and then the positive photo of the same woman on a magazine. This is a man whose perspective of life is through a camera lens…a voyeur. This voyeur is bored and confined to his wheelchair and can emerge from his “plaster cocoon” till the following Wednesday. So what does he do? Well, look at his neighbors of course! But he is bored! He begs his editor to get him back on the job:

Jeff: You've got to get me out of here. Six weeks sitting in a two-room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors. ..If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic...like what? I'm gonna get married and then I'll never be able to go anywhere.

Editor: It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome, bitter old man.

Jeff: Yeah, can't you just see me, rushin' home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal, the nagging wife.

Editor: Jeff, wives don't nag, they discuss.

Jeff: Is that so, that so? Maybe in the high rent district they discuss, in my neighborhood they still nag.

Editor: Well, um, you know best.

Jeff’s confinement to his wheelchair (being castrated and all metaphorically speaking) and not being able to be a powerful when it comes to his job, and possibly marriage…Jeff becomes bitter about love and marriage. Especially when he is peeping on the neighbors: Thorwald and his nagging wife, Miss Torso, the newlyweds, Miss Lonelyheart, the music composer, etc. Elizabeth Cowie describes these series of vignettes in Rear Window form “a kind of filmic essay on love, desire, and marriage that is alternately humorous, sardonic, and tragic, while acting as a counterpoint to the central conflict of Jeff’s own relation to love, desire, and marriage” (Cowie). He uses a back-scratcher to alleviate an aggravating feeling inside his cast, his nurse, Stella, notes his sexual impotence and notes that he has a “hormone deficiency”, and he is having lukewarm feelings and attitude towards his girlfriend (who is a fashion model) Lisa. SHE IS FREAKIN’ GRACE KELLY! This man has problems!

Hitchcock based part of Rear Window on exploring “the dilemma of a man who cannot desire a desirable woman who desires him” (Cowie). Desirous Lisa wakes Jeff up with a fairy-tale kiss, she passionately kisses and hugs him, dresses in a silky pajamas, basically…she loves him! However, his voyeurism and impotence are inherently linked. They are on totally different wavelengths: he is more attentive in his theories of Thorwald’s suspected murder and in telling her about what he witnessed the previous night. Jeff views marriage “as a form of disempowerment—castration—of the male” (Cowie). And Jeff does not need to be castrated again. The only empowerment for Jeff is his camera with a long telephoto lens, and only through that he can feel powerful and masculine.

Eventually Lisa realizes that through the lens of the camera she can receive love and be desirous in Jeff’s eyes. Significantly and expectantly, their relationship is suddenly sparked into life and transfigured, and she joins him in his charade. Lisa concludes that his insane and imaginative conclusions may actually be accurate: “Let's start from the beginning again, Jeff. Tell me everything you saw...and what...you think it means.” Throughout the film, Lisa is being transformed, “her desire for marriage no longer threatens him with loss” (Cowie).

In a thrilling scene, Lisa makes a bold and reckless decision to enter and search Lars' apartment while he is gone. Her goal is to find the incriminating evidence, the wedding ring (the MacGuffin), that will prove Jeff's theory. This moment, Lisa has entered the field of Jeff’s fantasy world/desire “by stepping into the space of his gaze not as an image but as a subject who acts, and desires” (Cowie). She eventually finds out Mrs. Thorwald’s ring, places it on her finger, and signals/points to the ring to Jeff. Pointing to the wedding ring on her finger, she daringly reveals that she has discovered the vital evidence, and it is also “a symbol of Lisa’s own desire” (Cowie). Her risk-taking escapade caused Jeff masochistic excitement, which inspires Jeff toward love, commitment, concern, and marriage in multiple ways, as he watches her through his long telephoto lens. Later after Thorwald’s discovery of Jeff’s peeping and then pushing Jeff being out of a window, Lisa cradles Jeff's head in her lap as he tells her: “I'm proud of you.” Finally, Jeff loves Lisa.

In the final scene, a doubly castrated Jeff is smiling while he rests in his wheelchair. Nearby him is Lisa, dressed in blue jeans/pants and shirt…she is the one “wearing the trousers”! After noticing that he is asleep and not watching her, she casts off her male image by putting down the “boring” and “masculine” book and assertively substitutes her own preferred reading material—Harper’s Bazaar. Lisa is giving “the last laugh” (Cowie).