Review of Peeping Tom (1960) by Veronique K — 27 Mar 2011

"peeping tom" is a story dedicated to a man who has a knack to shot women with portable camera then kills them just to capture their twisted facial expressions in the paramount of their fear. then you watch along, you've found this pervert has a sadistic dad who likes to frighten his son just to obtain samples for his experiements for the study of children's psychology, and this father is also deviant enough to give his son a portable camera as birthday gift after ruining his childhood. (so he has to wreck the sanity of his adultlife by transforming him into a worse pervert than himself?).

Frankly, "peeping tom" is not so hitchcockian as people tend to associate it with psycho or rear wndow. if you wish to roughly categorize it that way by its obvious appliance of voyeurism and phallic violence against women, you may just get yourself a blunt and vague blueprint. just remember, hitchcock didn't invent voyeurism or phallic violence on women in cinema, he's just the master who applies the best ways to render them. instead, peeping tom is more like a forefather of 80s "sex, lies and videotape" which is also about voyeurism despite it doesn't have any reference about violence against women (at least not physically, more like visceral violence to ravish your mind, and have intercourse with your brain mediated by camera).

Then why I relate peeping tom to sex, lies and videotape? they seem to be in completely different genres? (even farther than hitchcockian thrillers..),..here's how I view peeping tom: just imagine the camera is a mediated form of lovemaking, and he needs to shoot those women just to record their scared look before death. thus he's raping them with his camera, and he uses a sharp hidden object to kill them off (penetration, surrogate phallis?) after trifling with them, he cannot help it because it's how he acquires his orgasm. (plainly, it's just like a guy just has to come during an intercourse..) he avoids shooting his neighbor girl who's so warm and friendly with him because he doesn't wish to ruin this spot of innocence in his life. (in other words, he doesn't wish her to be the price of his orgasm) it's the only form of lovemaking this dude learns from the father who has been practically ravishing the boy throughout the childhood, and our protagonist is basically castrated. to compensate the boy, the dad gives him a camera as a surrogate phallis to console him. (it's like dad saying to you, sorry I took away your manhood, now I give you a brandnew dick as a token of my fatherly love for you..leastly you could feel how it's like to be man again with your camera). in the end, he has to penetrate himself into death because in one way or another, he has to experience the course of self-pleasure once to feel complete in his life. (coming to himself, I guess)...lol.

As for why it has parallels with sex, lies and videotape...because the men in both movies are all impotent by deliberate self-choices (childhood abuse from father; post-relationship trauma)..the only way these two men choose to satisfy their libido is through their camera, and both of them transcend the experience of filmmaking into a substitute way of intercourse, but the only difference is peeping tom prefers to release (come); james spader favors to withdraw before consummation. (not to come). therefore, the former feels an exhilaration to do more but the later senses a feel of overwhelming burden without relief. but somehow, it's different from hitchcock's rear window or psycho, rear window is about voyeurism for sure, but james stewart watches those neighbors with telescope because he uses their circumstances to distract himself from his own condition or they reflect a certain truth of his life which he wants to keep silent from his depressingly perfect girlfriend (grace kelly).also, rear window is a metaphor of cinema, aren't we all sitting in front of television or theater to have fun in others' private affairs?..and in psycho, there's indeed a scene of norman bates peeping marion and he trembles in a suspicious gesture of self-pleasure. but the voyeurism here is a way to entince onanistic sex rather than a substitute form of lovemaking. so peeping tom is NOT HITCHCOKIAN even it's indeed about voyeurism, but it creates a new form of turning voyeurism into an absolute replacement of real sex, and somehow 80s sex, lies and videotape has inherited this line.

Pardon if my analysis reads like a dirty joke (it may be, ha)..it's just my way to view it with my "telescope" (rear window pun).

(ps) if peeping tom was made in 1930s..peter lorre would be the actor who plays it, now fritz lang's m just comes into my mind. Don't you think it would be a fine choice to cast peter lorre as the peeping tom? Huh?