I watched The Opening Scene – ‘Rear Window’ | Hitchcock Presents.  This scene is “an abusive version of masculine heterosexuality” (Parker 176) in both content and filming. The viewers are initially presented with a man and woman asleep on a balcony. Although outwardly innocent, the scene implies an intimate, sexual relationship between the man and woman. They do not lie next to each other as equals but instead with their feet together and heads apart. The camera then pans to a topless woman who is getting dressed, stretching, and preparing her coffee. The woman faces away from the camera, proactively unclipping her garments and bending over. This is extreme sexualization of a woman’s day-to-day life (reminder she is waking up and making coffee) and has no basis in reality. This abusive fantasy of women is the result of strong objectification. The men in this movie are filmed in real moments, such as sleeping while being covered in sweat. It is entirely different from the unrealistic expectations for perfectly groomed women to stretch in minimal clothing when they first wake up. Even more disturbingly, the woman in this introduction is being filmed from outside her window, as if the viewer is peeking in on her (later in the scene, we see a man actually peeking in on her). This invasion of privacy is another example of abusive male power. Furthermore, other women in this introduction are filmed on magazine covers, in framed photos, and (as mentioned) through windows. This 2D framing of these silent women is a further step into objectification. In contrast, men are filmed in 3D moments while speaking or acting in some way. It is clear that the people who wrote, directed, and filmed this piece was appealing to a male perspective through the sexualization and objectification of women, which is “an abusive version of masculine heterosexuality.”

QCQ#5

While watching Visual Pleasure at 40: Laura Mulvey in discussion, one quote that stood out to me was: “I still refused to use the first person singular, partly out of a kind of shudder at self-expressiveness, but also out of the ideology of feminism, which emphasized the WE and the US over the individual” (3:59-4:21). Personally, I agree that writing in the first person singular makes me uncomfortable; including myself in my writing has always made me feel self-conscious about my own opinions. Hiding behind a passive voice has always made me feel more empowered than openly associating my views with myself. In some ways, this results from our society’s impact on women. We feel as though we are not individuals; instead, we are either the representation of all women or a gender-neutral voice. Presenting my opinions in the singular makes me feel like a possible target. Therefore, it is safer for women to write ideas from the standing of a collective. Would a singular, first-person feminist essay be less persuasive than a plural, first-person feminist essay? Why or why not?