Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 4

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Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rear Window: Cold War, Spatiality, and the Paranoid Subject / Beatrice Kohler

Abstract

This article investigates the notion of 'Cold War culture' by discussing Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic Rear Window with a particular focus on spatiality and paranoia. The cinematic screen is seen as a site where socio-cultural conflict is negotiated and political reality is transcoded into fictional narratives. Over and beyond the body of criticism that discusses the movie as a prime example of scopophilia and cinematic self-reflexivity, this paper attempts to combine extradiegetic politics with intradiegetic aesthetics: emerging from a culture of McCarthyite furor, post-war anxieties regarding the millions of soldiers returning from WWII and governmental infringement on privacy, Rear Window investigates the politics of suspicion, surveillance and individual agency by displacing these issues unto multiple imaginary screens that are subject to a paranoid misreading symptomatic of the American 1950s.

Keywords

Culture Studies; Television & Film; Visual Culture

<1> "That's a secret, private world you're looking into out there", Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey) warns the protagonist of the movie, L.B. 'Jeff' Jefferies (James Stewart). Handicapped after a severe accident in a car race, Jeff has been wheelchair-bound for weeks and left to observe his neighbors across an almost enclosed Greenwich Village courtyard. He ignores his friend's objections and, together with his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), continues spying on one of his neighbors: Ms. Lonelyhearts, who is returning home with a young man. The promising scene is soon interrupted as he forces himself onto her and she subsequently throws him out. Ashamed by their witnessing this private episode, Lisa closes the blinds and announces that the "Show's over for tonight" and presents a "Preview of coming attractions" in the form of an elegant nightgown. As she returns to the room in her new garment, a woman's cry pierces through the night. Lisa hastily opens one of the blinds and for the first time in the movie - after more than eighty minutes have elapsed - the camera is located outside of Jeff's apartment and frames the two in the window.

<2> The description of this short scene points to two decisive issues at stake in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954): spectatorship and surveillance. Indeed, the spatial givens as well as the close alignment of the camera to the protagonist create a world that narrates and visualizes that of a voyeur observing his neighbors in excess. As has been suggested by a large body of research on Hitchcock and this particular film, the audience is heavily implicated in the protagonist's illicit spying. The complicity in the voyeuristic peeping, however, goes far beyond a self-reflexive gesture that equates the spectator with Jeff and the cinematic screen with the neighbor's windows. For many critics fail to take into account the significance of the very moment in which the camera, for the first time in the movie, is positioned in a location markedly outside the visual field of the protagonist. On the diegetic level, a neighbor's dog has been murdered, which is why the entire neighborhood has been brought to their balconies - with the exception of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), Jeff's nemesis and propeller of the main narrative, the murder plot. On a meta-level, however, the protagonist has lost his privileged position and the issue of spectatorship to be discussed is rendered considerably more complicated.

<3> This paper ventures to discuss the issues of spectatorship and surveillance in the context of the Cold War and its cultural implications. First, the question of invading and observing private spheres is highly contemporary in that the film takes place at a historical moment where American-Soviet tensions have fostered a climate of intense suspicion and anxiety about individuals' and the nation's identity. Furthermore, the figure of Jeff will be read as a wounded veteran that serves as a vivid reminder of the millions of soldiers who returned to the United States after World War II and the nervousness about their reintegration this homecoming entailed. Jeff's intense occupation with his neighbors seems to be a substituting act for something that he remains unaware of but that the narrative - both in terms of story and images - declares as a traumatic memory of the war. By trying to solve an alleged murder case, the protagonist attempts to reinstate his agency, which he fears to lose. His anxiety is closely connected to his girlfriend Lisa; her mobility and autonomy contrast starkly with his stasis and incapacity. Both narrative strands, the murder and the love plot, are governed by the theoretical token of paranoia. A means to render highly complex relations coherent as well as to affirm a subject's autonomy in the face of great danger, paranoia is a fruitful tool to theorize the issues outlined above in the context of post-war America.

<4> The analysis of Rear Window that is proposed here largely rests on the notion of Cold War culture. As the humanities took a 'cultural turn' in the mid-1980s to take a closer look at the Cold War, more and more critics became interested in how propaganda and psychological warfare affected the home fronts both in America and the Soviet Union and how cultural output influenced the perception of ideology and national characteristics (Johnston, 291). Robert Corber was one of the earliest cultural analysts to draw an extensive connection between post-war American politics - "liberal intellectualism", to use his phrase (127) - and the cultural production of ideology. He argues that the hegemony of the social welfare state, that is to say the legacy of the New Deal, could not easily be upheld after the economic recuperation from the depression following World War II, which is why the influence of the ruling liberal elite had to be applied not only in defense against conservatives and the more radical Left but also in fields other than politics. As a consequence, he continues, "they [liberal intellectuals] also had to gain control over the way in which Americans thought and lived their relations to the world. The postwar settlement needed to occur on a cultural, as well as a political, level to win the free and spontaneous consent of the American people" (127).

<5> Building on this analysis, Gordon Johnston presents a useful study describing the mechanisms that posed a broader set of questions about patterns of behavior, attitudes and structures of thought and meaning associated with the Cold War - what he describes as Cold War culture (294). This theoretical token signals a shift from a predominantly instrumental understanding of culture to an active one, focusing on culture as a sphere that both produces and negotiates meaning. Therefore, instead of conceiving of the Cold War as a mere given that intrudes on the cinematic screen it is more productive to conceive of it as a cultural site that provides a space for the imaginary resolution of conflicts. This site displaces the principal conflict by transcoding socio-political reality into narratives that play out this conflict as the tension and resolution between fictional characters. Rather than providing a direct, mimetic representation of given conflicts, fictions rework and refigure them. Therefore, the premise of this article is that Rear Window is a prime example of a cultural product that negotiates socio-political concerns of the 1950s by means of displacing the actual conflict onto the cinematic screen which in turn features a narrative that repeatedly redeploys thematic issues to substitute sites.

<6> The elements of observation/spectatorship belong to the most well researched aspects of Rear Window. As early as 1960, Jean Douchet proposes in "Hitch et son public" to conceive of Jeff as a projector producing its own cinema onto the opposite wall by observing his neighbors (cited from Stam/Pearson, 236). Ocular vocabulary and cinematic analogies run through the history of critical analysis. Robert Stam and Roberta Pearson note: "The title 'Rear Window,' apart from the literalness of its denotation, evokes the diverse 'windows' of the cinema: the cinema/lens of camera and projector, the window in the projection booth, the eye as window, and film as 'window on the world'" (238). Milan Bozovic equates Jeff's darkened living room with a " camera obscura" (162). As for Jeff's function in this highly cinematic diegesis, critics note with a fair amount of consistency that he is closely aligned with and thus implicates the "traditional film spectator" with his illicit peeping on others (Belton, 82). Moreover, since he is so active in constructing various narratives underlying his neighbors' doings, for Stam/Pearson he "clearly functions as substitute director/auteur" (239). Bozovic's image of a camera obscura is particularly useful to describe one of the central mechanisms in the movie that connect the various subsidiary strands with Jeff's primal occupation. As he points out: "What unfolds in the room on this side of the window is precisely the inverted image of what unfolds beyond the window of the flat on the opposite side of the courtyard - the Thorwalds' flat" (162).

<7> The insistence on Rear Window as a prime example of scopophilia and cinema's self-reflexivity thereof is certainly valid, as the movie abounds in visual metaphors and symbols. However, much criticism has failed to interpret these givens in a context other than the perpetuation of cinematic self-referentiality. I want to argue that, given the intense culture of suspicion and nervousness out of which Rear Window emerges, the visual and narrative strategies of the movies must be interpreted in political terms.

<8> The film's preoccupation with surveillance is only befitting for a period in which anxieties about foreign infiltration and subversion abounded. On the political level, 'McCarthyism' constitutes the key term illustrating the nervousness about the rise of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1950s and the repercussions at home. As chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Senator Joseph R. McCarthy became the figurehead of the anti-communist movement proclaiming infiltration and treason almost indiscriminately. His fiery witch-hunt culminated in a mediatized appearance where he promulgated unsubstantiated accusations against alleged Communists in the US State Department (Carruthers, 82). What the events surrounding the Wisconsin senator illustrated is that the war against an outward enemy also had an impact on domestic affairs. As the committee was entitled to call any citizen to testify in matters concerning alleged un-American activities, a climate of suspicion and betrayal was fostered. Moreover, the surveillance and interrogation techniques constituted a massive infringement of private rights. Thus, ironically, the Cold War conflict produced a climate at home that was said to be threatening the nation from outside.

<9> It is important to remember that much as private individuals were subject to attack by McCarthyite hysteria, so too were public figures in Hollywood. Indeed, in the late 40s and early 50s, the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) invested enormous resources to trace and unveil alleged Communist infiltration in the motion pictures industry. Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, testified before the HUAC on March 26, 1947:

The Communists have developed one of the greatest propaganda machines the world has ever known. They have been able to penetrate and infiltrate many respectable and reputable public opinion mediums […] Communist activity in Hollywood is effective and is furthered by Communists and sympathizers using the prestige of prominent persons to serve, often unwittingly, the Communist cause […] What can we do? And what should be our course of action? The best antidote to Communism is vigorous, intelligent, old-fashioned Americanism with eternal vigilance. (Quoted in Tony Shaw, 42)

When Hoover asserted the imminent threat of foreign infiltration, cinema was still at the peak of its drawing power in the United States with over 80 million tickets sold per week. As a consequence, as Shaw notes, "those working in the film industry in the United States in the late 1940s were put under unprecedented political pressure to act in 'the national interest'" (45). Before the commercial advent of television in the early 50s, the number of moviegoers was still exceptionally high, thus governmental bodies went to great lengths to ensure Hollywood's output was in line with official Washington policies. The role of the FBI was particularly extensive at the time. It installed a broad surveillance network aimed at unveiling communist subversion in the industry and identifying movies that were subverting American ideals. Furthermore, together with the HUAC, the Bureau pressurized the industry into establishing a blacklist and thus purging 'devious' members from Hollywood (Shaw, 53).

<10> Rear Window does not explicitly discuss this issue; however, the movie does engage with the political implications of the interference on the part of the intelligence agencies insofar as a member of this constitutional body obstructs a "filmmaker's" efforts to produce a movie. In concrete terms, Detective Doyle (who, admittedly is not a member of the CIA or FBI, but as a detective is semantically connected to activities of information gathering) actively tries to dissuade Jeff from pursuing the alleged murder across the yard by presenting - or citing, that is - evidence against Jeff's observations and conclusions thereof. Indeed, taking into account the plurality of criticism that describes him as a director or cinematographer as well as his ostensible use of visual aids to create narrative coherence of the discrete episodes he witnesses, Jeff is a filmmaker. As a consequence, the constellation of intelligence agent obstructing a filmmaker is established, at least in symbolic terms.

<11> The detective's position, however, is ambivalent. On the one hand, he appears as one of the voices of reason that does not want to jump to conclusions merely because of his friend's fragmented and subjective observations. When Jeff demands that he uses his authority to search Thorwald's apartment, Doyle reminds him that it is forbidden to walk into an apartment and simply search it. Jeff, however, retorts that the end in this case must justify the means. 'At the risk of sounding stuffy', Doyle responds, 'I'd like to remind you of the constitution and the phrase 'a search warrant issued by a judge' who knows his Bill of Rights verbatim. He must ask for evidence'. Here, Doyle functions as a defender of civil rights, dismissing calls for private infringement on the basis of speculations. On the other hand, his reluctance to investigate in the alleged case raises some suspicion. When Jeff insists that Thorwald left his apartment in the middle of the night with a woman other than his wife, Doyle counters with two witnesses' accounts. When the former insists that the couple's appearance at a railway station was a mere deception manoeuver, the detective is quick to cite a wire by Mrs. Thorwald stating that she had arrived at a resort. Doyle seems to have a rebutting counter argument for every observation of Jeff's fairly quickly. However, within the diegesis, it never becomes apparent how he obtains his evidence. In terms of the spatial strategy of the movie, it is only consistent that the camera never follows the detective into the outside world. Nevertheless, Doyle's appearance is not beyond doubt, an intuition that is poignantly fuelled by a curious moment towards the end of the movie.

<12> Doyle arrives at the apartment and receives a phone call on Jeff's phone. An anonymous man asks for him and, when Doyle picks up the receiver, he hears a voice ask "Lieutenant Doyle, sir?" and answers, "Yeah, speaking." The conversation continues; however, on the soundtrack, the caller's voice is muted while we hear Doyle giving short answers and comments. This peculiar incident renders his position even more ambivalent than before. Indeed, it seems as if a member of the intelligence agency is entitled to secrecy while everyone else is not. As the contents of the conversation are never revealed, it also becomes apparent that the intelligence body operates on levels that elude the other players within the diegesis. Uncannily, this short scene reminds the extradiegetic audience that it moves in a sphere in which the private is subject to heavy surveillance, often in the name of national security - a catchword that subsumed a variety of highly delicate measures to fend off or counter threats which were often based on latent fears and exaggerated political propaganda.

<13> What is most interesting about Hitchcock's movie is that it presents a suggestive combination of extradiegetic politics and intradiegetic aesthetics. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the spatial givens of the movie and how they implicate the narrative construction of both the film's protagonists as well as the audience. In the credit scene vivid jazz music sets in while the Paramount Studio logo fades away. The credits start to fade in and out. A tripartite, open window fills the screen. While the first two names appear and disappear on the screen, one of the three blinds starts to roll upward without a visible operator, thereby revealing a backyard between four brick houses. The camera remains immobile while the rest of the credits appear on the screen and the remaining blinds reveal more of the aforementioned yard. A few select movements can be discerned in the background - a car, a pedestrian on the street and one of the neighbors in an open window. With the final credits fading out of the screen, the camera immediately starts to track towards the window. It halts for a brief moment when it reaches the sill.

<14> Then, the first cut. What follows is a high angle shot and slight tilt. The camera pursues a cat in counter-clockwise order and subsequently pans through the yard, exhibiting various neighbors on their balcony and opposite windows. As the camera returns to the sill of the open window, it shows the forehead of our protagonist bathed in perspiration as he sleeps in a wheelchair. The camera cuts again and shows a thermometer at 95° F only to start a second tour through the yard back to Jeff's leg. Subsequently, the camera roams around again, this time through his apartment. The two cyclical movements of the camera raise two important issues: firstly, the camera is outstandingly mobile and is capable of moving through space without narrative motivation. As it starts its tours after the credits, it is not attributed to a character's gaze, and, as the quick framing of the protagonist reiterates, it is also not done so retrospectively. Therefore, the very first scene already puts emphasis on the importance of the spatial arrangement of this fictional world. Though limited in terms of spatial complexity, the narrative space stands in opposition and thus contrasts Jeff's immobility. Secondly, the tour through the living room hints at the temporal dimension of the narrative. What is foregrounded, on the one hand, is Jeff's profession and his equipment - metonymic references of his function within the diegesis. On the other hand, his military past is unequivocally stressed through the images on the walls that bear military affiliation.

<15> There are three photographs on the wall showing firemen fleeing from a fire, a man with a rifle presumably in a war zone and three soldiers in front of a large smoke column that is reminiscent of a mushroom cloud, respectively. The images make it clear that he is not only willing to remember this time but that he actively wants to linger on his memories. Though Jeff's service in the army is never explicitly addressed except for a brief comment of his to Doyle, the images constitute the visual preface to the main narrative and thus provide a significant backdrop for the story that also bears extradiegetic connotation. Furthermore, the military frame is also reinforced by the other two items that are of particular importance: there is a shattered camera that precedes the images on the wall, which, thus the obvious conclusion, has been damaged during the race that Jeff photographed and that caused his injury. Together with the war images the broken camera and the image of the race imply that Jeff has chosen a hazardous profession in order to retain the military way of life - continuous reassignment, danger and self-reliance.

<16> These tokens also function as a reminder that the early fifties, and many of the prevalent discourses, were heavily influenced by the domestic aftermath of World War II. The visual reminders of the war also immediately indicate that Jeff functions as a latent memento of a wounded veteran. As Colleen Glenn notes, the connection between Jimmy Stewart's post-war roles and the heightened anxieties regarding soldiers' homecoming after the war has been discussed astonishingly rarely. Her interest lies in the "considerable number of roles after WWII in which he [Stewart] portrayed men who were increasingly disturbed or neurotic"; she claims that in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), Stewart's personification of a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder finds its culmination (28). Glenn's deliberations take a distinctly autobiographical turn, because she draws parallels between Stewart's service as Army Air Corps pilot and his alleged traumatization and the actor's role as Scottie in Vertigo (32). However, in light of the prominence of military material in the movie, I would argue that the figure of Jeff stands in for a broader phenomenon of the post-war era, namely the reintegration of the millions of war veterans into society.

<17> Although Jeff perceives his forced absence from his profession as a break from his ordinary daily routine, it is justified, with the focus on his status as a veteran in mind, to argue that the injury constitutes the opposite. His photojournalism with its adrenalin-oriented tasks and the obvious threat for life and limb bears resemblance to Jeff's position taking aerial reconnaissance photos during the war. The six-weeks rehabilitation phase, therefore, is the beginning of his reintegration into society. Despite the tranquil, urban setting he finds himself in now, the beginning of the movie still recalls his former occupation. As the camera pans through the courtyard for the first time, it captures a hovering helicopter over the yard, dangerously close to two young women. Other critics have described it as a "perfect 'vehicle' for the spectatorial desire to enjoy a fantasy omniscience, to go everywhere and see everything […]. The helicopter evokes the technological resources available to the cinema and enlistable in the service of the scopic drive" (Stam/Paerson, 241). The aspect of visual pleasure is valid in this episode, but it ignores the decidedly military slant. In fact, as Michel Chion shrewdly points out, when the camera returns from its first pan, Jeff's back is turned to the courtyard while he is asleep; therefore it seems as if the yard were "a sort of extension of his dream-filled cranium" (156). The image of the helicopter floating above the yard can thus be read as a spatial and contextual conflation of Jeff's military past with his civilian presence.

<18> The diegetic world is thus marked as a heterogeneous site where different levels of signification coincide. The notion of multiple meanings of the surface images also holds for what various critics describe as the reciprocal relationship between the primary narrative that Jeff belongs to and the sub-narratives played out in the windows. As Glenn correctly points out, one of the traits of trauma - a condition that Jeff might well suffer from - is its displacement from the original event (34). Jeff's troubled memory of the war and his remaining aggressive potential are displaced into the other windows. As John Fawell notes, "Perhaps no Hitchcock film is so packed with doubles as Rear Window with its dozen or so miniature reflections of Jeff and Lisa. Hitchcock was at his cleverest in the games he played in these apartments, which represent a colorful play filled of hidden parallels and symbols" (12). In fact, Fawell devotes two chapters of his book to deciphering the significance of every window in relation to the main narrative (72-109). For him, and a majority of critics alike, the most significant connections are to be drawn between the 'love plot' of Jeff and Lisa and the 'murder plot' of the Thorwalds.

<19> The first connection of the two plots is produced by interchanging images of the Thorwalds quarrelling with reverse shots of Jeff as well as a dialogue between the protagonist and his editor on the audio level. The editor wants to assign Jeff to a job in Kashmir because he mistakenly believes that his photographer has already rid himself of the cast. 'The place is about the get up in smoke', he says and Jeff retorts: 'What did I tell you? Didn't I tell you that was the next place to watch?' Disappointed at the missed opportunity to go on a new mission, Jeff implores his editor: 'If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom I'm gonna do something drastic'. Quite comically, the drastic gesture for Jeff would be to marry his girlfriend. During the conversation, he observes his neighbors as they confront each other in disapproval and emotional coldness. The overlapping of the visual impression and the auditory announcement of the 'drastic' act of getting married already foreshadows what the events to follow will make abundantly clear: marriage - as is often the case in Hitchcock's films - is a type of war zone.

<20> There is, however, an additional implication in the window narratives that goes beyond their self-reflexive function as mise-en-abime of Jeff's cinematic screen. As discussed earlier, his status as spy always also carries an extradiegetic connotation referring to the intelligence services. For the audience that participates in the ambivalent observation of others in their private sphere, then, the windows also recall the hundreds of thousands of television sets that enabled Americans to follow the HUAC's televised investigations and hearings. The issue of spectatorship is thus far more complicated than a simple equation between the audience watching a movie and Jeff watching his neighbors. The viewer is complicit in peeping in on the cinematic dwellers and the concomitant enjoyment along with the protagonist; at the same time, however, the audience is not passively identifying with everything the protagonist undertakes (though the film makes sure that parts of our sympathy always remain with the character, who, after all, is Jimmy Stewart) but is capable of formulating its own criticism towards the actions of the diegetic figures. To add a third layer of complexity, the visual allusion to television sets lends a decidedly political dimension to the film because it reminds the audience of current happenings and its participation in this cultural sphere.

<21> To return to the main plot and its military undercurrent: apart from a visual memento of the war, the hovering helicopter also prefigures the new battlefield opened in the courtyard, that is to say the struggle between Jeff and Lisa. On a basic level, their fight revolves around the questions of matrimony and domesticity - interestingly, two consequences that the female protagonist tries to force upon the male lead. Here, too, however, an additional level of meaning connected to the extradiegetic world feeds into the cinematic text. If Jeff is an example of the wounded veteran having returned from the war then Lisa is a specimen of a woman at the home front having exited the war as an entrepreneurial subject.

<22> It is essential to recall the fact that America's involvement in World War II entailed unprecedented changes in demographics and economics. In order to be able to sustain the enormous need of material and labor, women had entered the workforce in vast numbers. After the end of the war, and in spite of propagandistic efforts to persuade women to return to their domestic spheres, many had proven unwilling to relinquish their newly won freedom (Grant, 324f.). Though there is no direct or implicit allusion to Lisa's position during the war, she is a successful entrepreneur in the fashion industry and, despite her resolution to convince Jeff of settling down with her, markedly opposed to vacating her profession. On the contrary, she assures her lover that she possesses the relevant network to support him in opening a studio in the city in order to work in a steadier surrounding. Jeff, however, responds with spite. 'Can't you just see me', he asks 'driving down to the fashion salon in a jeep wearing combat boots and a three-day beard?' His dismissal is expressed with military language because obviously he still adheres to a perception of himself as soldier.

<23> Jeff's inability to adapt to his new situation points to the broader issue of individual agency that is at stake for him. Physically confined to his living room, he tries to substitute his inability to act with the mental potency to solve a crime. There are no boundaries to his fantasy, which he proves, for example, when he dwells on the details of how the alleged dismemberment of Thorwald's wife must have taken place. While paranoid narratives in American cinema only reach their peak fifteen years later, I would argue that the figure of Jeff constitutes the precursor of the paranoid subject populating the screen. Although Richard Hofstadter only writes in 1965 on the paranoid style in American politics, his observations seem quite befitting of Jeff's behavior. He speaks of a 'paranoid style' "simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind" (3). Indeed, Jeff's severe accusations against Thorwald, his unyielding insistence on finding proof of the murder in the neighbor's apartment and his accusations that Doyle's passiveness in the case seem particularly suspicious fit Hofstadter's pattern. The combination of Jeff's anxiety regarding his incapacitation as well as his heated insistence on the murder case confirms the notion of paranoia.

<24> Paranoia in this cultural context serves as a metaphor to denote a form of misguided perception of the world, its machinations and an individual's relation to the former. It is - to use Timothy Melley's allusion to the term's origin in clinical psychology - an "interpretive disorder" (16). Indeed, Jeff is intensely invested in trying to read the various pieces of the murder puzzle, as it were. Ironically, however, Jeff misinterprets two seminal aspects of the story. First, he is at fault as to his position to the world, i.e. the diegetic world. Due to his narcissistic disposition he fails to notice the surveillance he himself is under. Second, and most importantly, while he busies himself with solving the alleged crime he fails to notice the real conspiracy in the story - namely the fact that Lisa deviously tries to attempt to trap him by using his own weapons.

<25> Jeff's inability to depart from his fixed position becomes manifest both in narrative as well as spatial terms. Despite the discouraging evidence that Doyle presents to him, he retains his conviction that something 'is the matter' with Thorwald. Although he receives support from Lisa and his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) in his investigations, the alleged case remains a deeply personal enterprise for him. As both Hofstadter and Melley note, the paranoid mind functions in a deeply egocentric way, either predicated on the assumption that a conspiracy is directed at the paranoid himself or unable to see oneself in the bigger picture, as it were. Indeed, although his magnifying lens and visual aids allow Jeff to penetrate others' private spheres, he remains unable to see himself either as a voyeur or in a function other than the principal viewer/director of the events. It is true that Jeff, at one point, muses about the fact that he could become the victim of the same visual attacks that he brings to bear on his neighbors. 'Of course, they can do the same thing to me, watch me like a bug under a glass, if they want to', he says to Lisa. On the visual level, however, he does not appear to sustain any suspicion as to whether he himself is observed until his adversary directly looks at him (and the audience) towards the end of the film, which clearly emphasizes that he can be seen.

<26> Though the protagonist remains largely ignorant of the fact that he, too, is the object of a gaze, the film is more nuanced on the subject. The scene described in the opening paragraph when the camera frames Jeff for the first time from outside his apartment is not merely an instance where the spatial strategy of the film is broken. Various critics list this episode as one of two moments (together with Jeff's defenestration) where Jeff's subjectivity is overtly undercut. The significance of this shot, however, goes far beyond the visual rendition of a character's subjective position. When the neighborhood, except for Thorwald, gathers on their windows and balconies because of the dog's death, Jeff and Lisa are briefly framed from outside the yard twice. As the lamenting owner of the dog finishes her speech about the dwellers' indifference towards everyone, the two discuss the fact that only Thorwald has not appeared at this window, again framed from outside. As the camera cuts back to the window of the missing Thorwald, he himself is not discernible though the flickering of a cigarette discloses his presence. The camera is for the last time positioned in the yard as it cuts back to the couple. At this very moment, the focalization of the narrative shifts subtly. Although the focus in narrative terms lies on the investigating couple, visually, their looking at the dark window with the smoldering cigarette can be interpreted as a reverse-shot. The first framing of the two, then, equals the initial shot from Thorwald's point of view (the frontal framing on the same eye level underline this notion), though interestingly, the visual motivation, that is to say Thorwald emitting a gaze, is missing.

<27> The lack of subjective motivation to the initial shot, however, indicates that the issue of spectatorship is much more ambivalent and indeed more uncanny than usually recognized by critics. In structural terms, this short episode ties in with one of the core traits of paranoid narratives, namely that the principal subject is observed (and often controlled) by invisible yet powerful sources. Because on the diegetic level the protagonist remains unaware of the possibility of being observed, however, the paranoid gesture, I would argue, is directed at the audience. It is a reminder of the sobering fact that surveillance is by nature a mechanism operating in and from the dark.

<28> The second threat that Jeff overlooks is his girlfriend. Certainly, the entire love plot revolves around his attempts to hold her at a distance. As Stam/Pearson note "His involvement with people exists in inverse proportion to their distance from him; such is his code of perspective" (241). In a passive-aggressive way he lets her know that to settle down and marry would mean to lose his autonomy. Lisa's initial overbearingness finds its visual parallel in her first appearance, which is in the form of a shadow. The camera stays on the sleeping Jeff in a close-up, as a shadow creeps up his upper body until his mouth is covered - a first hint at Lisa suffocating him metaphorically. The intersecting frame shows Lisa with a glowing face; next, her shadow eclipses Jeff entirely. The image is symptomatic for their entire relationship. Jeff's argument is that Lisa is far too sophisticated and frail to accompany him on his journalistic tours. Given her career and appearance in high fashion this might be valid. However, it is more likely that Jeff entertains fantasies of reentering his militaristic occupation alone again. Thus, Jeff initially succeeds in driving her off, but eventually he succumbs to her.

<29> Lisa's position does not discernably change in the course of the film. However, she adapts her strategy to reach her goal. Because she realizes that Jeff is entirely absorbed by the fiction he entertains, she decides to become his partner in crime, so to speak. Not only does she share his opinions against Detective Doyle's skepticism, she actively supports him in solving the case. In order to satisfy Jeff, she functions as his extension at times. While he is immobilized in his apartment, reduced to an observational function, she enters the relevant space in order to find evidence for Thorwald's crime. It is only through her adventurous intervention that she can compete for Jeff's attention. "Though still object of spectacle for Jeff, Lisa has inserted herself, as spectacle, within the space of the murder plot, i.e., Thorwald's apartment, where she herself is in danger" as Belton concedes (79). Indeed, his increased interest in Lisa after she has been attacked by Thorwald only confirms his narcissism. Because she, as a type of proxy, has performed for him what he can no longer do, she has kept alive his fantasy of an adventurous, dangerous life.

<30> The impression that Jeff is no longer in power is reinforced in the film's climactic scene as he and his adversary finally meet in person. Lisa has been arrested for her intrusion in Thorwald's apartment and Stella has left to deliver the bail money. Thorwald enters Jeff's apartment, remains for a moment in the dark - only his eyes are temporarily illuminated by an unknown source - and inquires as to why Jeff has observed him. With the back to the courtyard, Jeff too remains in the dark without moving. In his hand he holds a flashlight and various bulbs, with which he wanted to warn Lisa earlier should Thorwald return to his apartment. As his neighbor approaches Jeff, he fires three flashes in order to blind Thorwald. After every flash, the camera takes the subjective position of Thorwald and illustrates his impaired vision with a red-orange ring exploding from the center of the image towards the frame to evaporate again. The implied point of view shot described earlier has now reached completion in that Thorwald's point of view is directly associated with his eyes.

<31> Jeff, on the other hand, has to avert his gaze from his opponent for the first time, on the diegetic level because he has to protect his eyes from the flash, on the metaphorical level because he has lost the ability to use his chief weapon - the camera - in the face of a threat that presents itself in flesh and blood. He is no longer the director of images but finds himself powerless. His greatly diminished agency is most strikingly illustrated when recomparing the image of the car accident with his position in this seminal scene. One of the two crashing cars, which is considerably more in focus, carries the number 87; the driver is shaken uncontrollably and his right arm, out of control due to the forces at work, covers his face. This is that last image the Jeff must have seen before the diegetic narrative sets in. As has been illustrated, the mechanism of inversion is crucial to Rear Window, and it has been argued that the plots (both murder and love) function as displaced substitutes for Jeff's traumatic war experience. Therefore, what follows from these observations is that the inverted car image reveals the number 87 to be the letters LB - that is to say Jeff's initials as exhibited on his cast - and that the car driver covers his face with his left arm, a gesture that Jeff repeats when he shields his eyes from the flashes attacking Thorwald. Along the lines of our argumentation that Jeff wishes to reenter the war, the image that documents his hazardous encounter on the racetrack is inverted so as to express the fact that his fantasies have become dangerously real in the face of Thorwald as an actual attacker.

<32> Lisa and Doyle arrive right in time to overwhelm Thorwald as he attempts to murder Jeff. He does, however, succeed in pushing Jeff out of the window. This is the final act in disrupting Jeff's fantasy setting by removing him from the previously secure space of his living room. His privileged position as unobstructed voyeur does not exist anymore and consequently he loses control of the fantasy narrative. When he hits the bottom, Lisa readily receives him. Their relationship has markedly changed as he beams at her radiantly. 'If anything had happened to you … Gee, I'm proud of you', he says as she caresses his face. The choice of Lisa's dress - which surrounds Jeff's head and fills the entire frame - is very suggestive. For a great part of the story, Jeff, Lisa and Stella have entertained the thought that Thorwald might have buried his wife's head in the flowerbed in the courtyard. Though no evidence was found of this, Jeff's head encompassed by an array of flowers implies that the fantasy has now been inverted and that he is trapped and, at least figuratively, dead.

<33> On the narrative level, the film has found a solution in the classical sense: a specific problem has presented itself, various destabilizing positions have been played out in order to solve the problem, a changed but conventional state of order has been reestablished. On the visual level, however, the ending is not only ambivalent but also critical of the idyll that many commentators see as the successful reintegration of Jeff into society by entering a heterosexual, conservative bond. If we take the analogy between the main plot and the murder plot seriously, then we must notice that Thorwald is arrested by the police and faces possible incarceration. Consequently, Jeff's double injury and the absolute incapacitation that results of it is a symbolic incarceration brought about by Lisa. Ironically - and also symptomatic for paranoid narratives - Jeff was too invested in solving the principal mystery of his neighbor's murder, so devoted to convincing his immediate entourage and himself of his capability to solve a problem that he retained a blind spot on the real conspiracy: Lisa's attempt to entrap him.

<34> In a circular closure the final sequence shows the courtyard once again in a counterclockwise pan. On the surface, the images seem to support the newly established peace between Jeff and Lisa: Ms. Lonelyhears flirts with the composer (another neighbor), the Thorwald apartment is repainted, a new dog has been bought by the childless couple and Ms. Torso welcomes her soldier boyfriend back home after a long absence. Only the newlyweds are bickering. Jeff lies asleep with his two legs in casts. The last shot is of Lisa reading a book entitled Beyond the High Himalayas as the camera pans over her entire body starting from the feet to her head. "The temperature has dropped about twenty degrees and so, we assume, has the corresponding tension between Jeff and Lisa" (Fawell, 50). However, glancing over to Jeff controllingly, she switches the book for a copy of Harper's Bazaar. The final image of her asserts her autonomy and power and once again contrasts her agency with his stasis. As if to underline her control in a double sense, the front cover shows a fashionable young model - the cover that Lisa used as well to blind Jeff on her ulterior motives - while the back cover, slightly blurred, shows a car driving through rough, rocky terrain, signaling that she is willing to go this detour in order get her way. All the while, on the soundtrack a song has been playing which ends with a male bass singing 'but dream forever in your arms, Lisa' - which is what Jeff will probably keep on doing.

<35> To return to the initial claim, the cinematic screen has functioned as a site of cultural construction of a given conflict without explicitly referring to it. Though the Cold War is primarily remembered as a political conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, the impact on the cultural sphere, in particular in terms of domestic discord, is not to be underestimated. The issues of surveillance and infringement on civil rights permeated a large part of public discourse and private action. As has been suggested, the figure of Jeff as a veteran returned from the war doubles the film's emphasis on domestic repercussions of the Cold War. Rear Window continuously cycles around his repressed discontent of having lost his battlefield, which he tries to substitute with, and the movie subsequently displaces unto, a proxy conflict. In a paranoid attempt to defend his agency, however, Jeff falls victim to an opponent that he did not discern as one. The paranoia he embodies is a means for him to render coherent what he cannot understand anymore. After the war, the idiosyncracies of civil life present an illegible text for him, which he tries to render legible by entertaining a fantasy of his intact agency. Because Jeff stands in for a type of the American subject, then, the movie's paranoia comes to represent a mechanism that combines extradiegetic politics with intradiegetic aesthetics, two parameters that mutually exchanged energies within a highly complex Cold War culture.

Primary Source

Rear Window [1954]. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr. Universal Pictures, 2006. DVD.

Works Cited

Belton, John. "The Space of Rear Window". In: Raubicheck, Walter and Walter Srebnick. Hitchcock's Rereleased Films. From Rope to Vertigo. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991: 76-94.

Carruthers, Susan L. "'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962) and the Cold War Brainwashing Scare". In: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 18/01, (1998): 75-94.

Chion, Michel. "The Fourth Side". In: Žižek, Slavoj. (ed.) [1992]. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (but were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). London and New York: Verso, 2002: 155-160.

Corber, Robert J. "Resisting History: Rear Window and the Limits of the Postwar Settlement". In: Boundary 2, Vol. 19 (1992): 121-148.

Fawell, John. Hitchcock's Rear Window: The Well-made Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001.

Grant, Susan-Mary. A Concise History of the United States of America. New York: Cambridge UP, 2012.

Hofstadter, Richard [1965]. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. New York: Random House, 2008.

Johnston, Gordon. "Revisiting the Cultural Cold War". In: Social History, Vol. 35 (2010): 290-307.

Melley, Timothy. "Agency Panic and the Culture of Conspiracy". In: Knight, Peter (ed.). Conspiracy Nation: the Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. London: Routledge, 2000: 57-81.

Shaw, Tony. Hollywood's Cold War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007.

Stam, Robert and Roberta Pearson [1983]. "Hitchcock's Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism". In: Alfred Hitchcock. Critical Evaluations of Leading Film-makers. Volume I. London: Routledge, 2014: 236-250.

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