A Window into voyeurism

In reading Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” several of the things she said in regards to Freudian ideas within classic Hollywood films struck me as slightly off the mark. She does a good job of analyzing films within that psychological discipline, however, in doing so she has completely ignored both the female spectator and the male protagonist as anything other than the active/looker.
With regards to Rear Window she argues, “Hitchcock’s skilful use of identification processes and liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male protagonist draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis which parodies his own in the cinema” (719). I don’t take issue with that reading of the film; the audience is drawn in to view the film mostly through Jefferies’ eyes, and his view out the window mimics the view the audience has of the screen (despite the fact that Jefferies can control what he is looking at), however, I would take issue with her argument in that the audience isn’t only male, nor do I think Hitchcock meant it to be (he did cast Jimmy Stewart, who despite what Mulvey might say, is attractive to women and not just men). Her use of the masculine pronoun in describing the audience is insulting to any woman who might have identified with Jefferies or even enjoyed the movie. Mulvey seems to think that no woman could enjoy the movie, we aren’t men, therefore couldn’t possibly identify with Jefferies, and why on earth would we want to identify with Lisa? After all, she is beautiful, has great clothes, and about as much power and prestige as any woman in her time could possibly have. Now, I won’t argue that the time-period wasn’t the best for women, however, Lisa has managed to be very successful within society’s constraints, which is admirable.
Mulvey spends quite a bit of time worried about the active/looking in other parts of her article, however, with Rear Window she doesn’t mention it, probably because there is nothing active about Jefferies, he is confined to a wheelchair with a cast completely covering one of his legs. He barely moves the entire film, confined with the ability to do nothing but look. This becomes a problem when Lisa is being attacked by Thorwold and Jefferies has to just watch. That seems to me the most emasculating part of the movie, he wants to help her, but is unable to physically, much like the audience in the theatre. Jefferies is a voyeur, both in his professional life as a photo-journalist, and in his private life, but Lisa also becomes one as well. She willingly steps up to the window to watch with Jefferies, not because she wants to be like him (a man), but because she is compelled by what he thinks he’s seeing. A good story will turn anyone into a voyeur; otherwise most movies would have no audience.
I think Rear Window is much more of a commentary on the audience’s relationship with film than a commentary on the male gaze as directed towards the female. We are all voyeurs, males and females alike, when we walk into the cinema. I can guarantee that when this movie first came out the audience wasn’t only men, and that women weren’t going only because the men were. I believe there is a much stronger argument that can be made criticize an audience for going to see a film to be voyeurs, after all, Hitchcock didn’t cast two unknown actors in the film; Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart were quite famous and able to bring in audiences, and not necessarily for their acting ability.