Peeping Tom: “If an Urban Myth Merges with the Themes of Alice Miller’s Book ‘The Drama of the Gifted Child’”
by Burcu Demirer
The camera is a tool for voyeurism from the beginning. Of course, the camera was expensive, and everybody who wished could not afford it. Therefore, the voyeurs were less. With the cameras becoming mainstream, everybody started to be able to use them and watch everything as the fancy takes it. If people could notice their voyeuristic function and power, this situation could annoy them. However, we have gotten used to the cameras and accepted them as they are, similar to how we have taken on our eyes as they are. The relationship between the eyes and cameras reminded an old urban myth. According to this myth, a strong sovereign forced a noblewoman, Lady Godiva, to cross the city on horseback completely naked. While she was carrying out this mission, everybody locked themselves in the house, and nobody peeped at her except one. Because the strong sovereign announced that if someone peeps her, he beheads this person, nobody encourages them to look at her from the window. The exceptional person to look at her is Tom, so voyeurism is associated with the “peeping tom” myth nowadays. This average citizen only had his eyes. Although we have had the camera for the last two hundred years, one of the movies by Michael Powell, Peeping Tom, discussed this theme in 1960. It benefits from this myth and expands its themes to relationships with parents, the psychological origins of fear, and the nature of voyeurism.
When the audience starts to watch Peeping Tom, they will see a big blue eye on the screen. After the eye blinks, a man walks on a street, and the camera becomes closer to another camera in his topcoat. At this point, the recording camera changes, and the audience sees a woman from inside of his clothes for a while. He gets closer to her with this camera, and it concentrates on her butt. (This should remind us that the camera always relates to the male gaze.) She is near the shop window, turns back, and recognizes him. Her first sentence reveals that she is a sex worker, and they agree about money for a sexual relationship. He follows her with the camera, and they enter a house. While she is undressing her clothes as expected before the sexual relationship, this male gaze watches her movements. Although the reason why his recording is different from the implicated meaning, the Cambridge Dictionary explains the meaning of peeping tom as “a man who tries to secretly watch women when they are wearing no clothes.” The audience does not suspect that she notices the camera he records, so we cannot say that the recording is a secret for her. Then, he gets closer to her with the camera, and the audience hears her scream. The inference that they will have sex in the previous scene is the first impression, and that is misleading as most first impressions. Self-same, the belief that the protagonist should be a terrible creature.
To understand what happened in the first scene and to break down the perception he is a terrible creature, let’s meet with Mark Lewis. He and his camera are the main characters. He is a photographer, works at a movie set, and shoots some photos of naked women after work. At the same time, he is the landlord of a big house and rents the rooms for somebody else. Helen Stephans and her mother are the other significant characters in this movie. One day, Mark returns home and watches a party from the outside. Helen recognizes and invites him to her birthday party. He pretends that he is busy with work and goes upstairs. Thus, the audience can observe him during a conversation with the strangers, and Mark seems shy and uncomfortable. After a few minutes, Helen comes knocking at his door and gives a slice of her birthday cake. When she enters his room, he mentions his job, and we learn something about his abused childhood through a film cassette for the first time. His father is a well-known scientist and behaved Mark as a lab rat for his science-based research and recorded everything with a camera while experimenting with the reactions he feared. Therefore, Mark is an adult his father has observed for many years and has given him a camera as a birthday gift. From this day, he needs to keep everyone with his camera. This point is good to remember Alice Miller’s book The Drama of the Gifted Child. She was a psychologist and psychoanalyst, and her books focus on parental child abuse. However, she rejected her child, Martin Miller, and treated them uncordially. Mrs. Miller is an inspiring theorist for the parents, but she was an onlooker to the beaten and humiliated child that her husband made. Therefore, the stories of Mark Lewis and Martin Miller seem to parallel each other. While searching Martin Miller’s background, we can see that he overcame this traumatic childhood despite all the difficulties. Mark unconditionally got involved in the experimentations of his father, became conditioned to fear before, and needed to see scared faces around him.
At first sight, Mrs. Stephans, contrary to Mark and his camera, has a deficiency: She is blind. After Helen and Mark spend much time together, Mrs. Stephans feels disturbed and warns her daughter about him. Helen does not understand why her mother warns her and asks. Mrs. Stephans explains that she is afraid of someone so quiet when taking a step. However, her room is directly downstairs from his room, and all the voices his camera recordings caused reach her room. She is aware of his obsession with the camera and has an instinct that this obsession is dangerous for their lives. While the movie progressively continues, Mrs. Stephans mentions how she lost her seeing ability, blames herself for not paying attention to her instincts, and utters this sentence: “Instinct is a wonderful thing, isn’t it, Mark? A pity it cannot be photographed.” She tries to reawake his instincts and spiritual side, but he is under the influence of his nervous system and fear-conditioned side. The camera already has been at the center of his life and is a measurement tool. Here is proof that Mrs. Stephans touches his face, and Mark asks this question: “Taking my pictures?” She tries to awaken him by saying you need to speak up about inside. This moment is the home stretch for himself before the inevitable end.
Peeping Tom opens lots of things up for discussion, for example, what the cinema is used for, what science serves, and why parents abuse their children. Michael Powell does not promise the answers in this movie. To explain all the details of this movie is an injustice for the most magnificent and powerful movies in cinema history. Even if someone wonders about the answers, they should watch this movie. In addition, we can say that the director’s main issues are repressed feelings, memories, and thoughts. To look at his cinematography is enough to find hints. For example, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) asks, “What if we fall in love when death knocks on our doors; what will happen to us?” Another movie, Black Narcissus (1947), should be a convenient option to watch from our YouTube channel. This movie focuses on a group of sisters who live in a strange town far from their homeland for a mission, and the audience can trace their repressed feelings. At the same time, the possibility of facing yourself is difficult for you while watching the movies of Michael Powell. Yet, he has a spectacular filmography and mirrors us.
Black Narcissus - Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | 1947