Visual Studies Commons^™

Through The Window: The Subject And The Voyeur's Gaze Within Cinema And Video, James A. Doohan

Theses : Honours

The underlying theme of this thesis is that cinema and related media create sites in which the viewer becomes a kind of voyeur, and in doing so normalises the voyeuristic gaze. Relationships between those who possess the gaze and those who become the object of that gaze are structured both ideologically and through the apparatus of the camera itself. These ideologies are arguably driven by a patriarchal paradigm, particularly within mainstream cinema where men appear to control the gaze and women are positioned as the object of that gaze. Even within cinema however that appears to be explicitly misogynistic like …