Re: Peeping Tom
Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 12:26 pm
Thoughts after watching Peeping Tom:
- The movie is shot at familiar angles so that you as the viewer feel like you are participating within the ‘cinematic perversion’/ male gaze. You feel ‘pulled in’ to Mark’s impulses and emotions even when his behavior is uncomfortable to watch. Especially since in contrast he mostly comes across as seeming nervous and almost* endearing, but not truly. Though he mostly just seems like he’s waiting for something/ someone as you watch him interact with unsuspecting characters). Helen’s mother is the one character so far to really see him as not simply nervous, but ‘stealthy’.
- It’s also a look at what happens when we choose curiosity about the idea of someone over their consent (especially in these times where everything can be recorded and posted). Whether this be Mark’s perversion over women’s’ fear or his father’s ‘research’ on Mark’s and other children’s fears.
- There’s also the sense that Mark gains a feeling of control by being able to control the emotion (fear) and moment of someone’s final moments. He may specifically choose women, instead of, children, like he was for example, or men, like his father, because he wants to gain back the separation that he had from his mother due to her early passing (and he’s only known being able to ‘connect’ to his family through a camera lens). Similarly, to how Sarah mentioned facilitating ‘closeness’ with his victims. Mark gets to both take their final moments through his own invasiveness while also maintaining a wall behind the camera for himself. I think he also takes control by ‘reliving;’ his own childhood by only being able to take his victims lives when he sees them afraid.
- The dynamic between him and Helen’s mother is specifically interesting as well. He captures her fear despite her blindness but can’t follow through on the kill. Pity has never been a motive to stop before, so I don’t think it’s that, possibly pity for Helen, but even then, he seems way too self-absorbed for that. I think she (the mother) is the only one to truly see something ‘off’ with him, and he’s not used to that level of invasiveness being turned on him, and that both terrifies him and stuns him from reliving his usual patterns through her.
- The final moment of control/ satisfaction for Mark is when he turns his voyeurism/ invasiveness literally _into_ himself by spearing himself like he did his victims.
- The movie is shot at familiar angles so that you as the viewer feel like you are participating within the ‘cinematic perversion’/ male gaze. You feel ‘pulled in’ to Mark’s impulses and emotions even when his behavior is uncomfortable to watch. Especially since in contrast he mostly comes across as seeming nervous and almost* endearing, but not truly. Though he mostly just seems like he’s waiting for something/ someone as you watch him interact with unsuspecting characters). Helen’s mother is the one character so far to really see him as not simply nervous, but ‘stealthy’.
- It’s also a look at what happens when we choose curiosity about the idea of someone over their consent (especially in these times where everything can be recorded and posted). Whether this be Mark’s perversion over women’s’ fear or his father’s ‘research’ on Mark’s and other children’s fears.
- There’s also the sense that Mark gains a feeling of control by being able to control the emotion (fear) and moment of someone’s final moments. He may specifically choose women, instead of, children, like he was for example, or men, like his father, because he wants to gain back the separation that he had from his mother due to her early passing (and he’s only known being able to ‘connect’ to his family through a camera lens). Similarly, to how Sarah mentioned facilitating ‘closeness’ with his victims. Mark gets to both take their final moments through his own invasiveness while also maintaining a wall behind the camera for himself. I think he also takes control by ‘reliving;’ his own childhood by only being able to take his victims lives when he sees them afraid.
- The dynamic between him and Helen’s mother is specifically interesting as well. He captures her fear despite her blindness but can’t follow through on the kill. Pity has never been a motive to stop before, so I don’t think it’s that, possibly pity for Helen, but even then, he seems way too self-absorbed for that. I think she (the mother) is the only one to truly see something ‘off’ with him, and he’s not used to that level of invasiveness being turned on him, and that both terrifies him and stuns him from reliving his usual patterns through her.
- The final moment of control/ satisfaction for Mark is when he turns his voyeurism/ invasiveness literally _into_ himself by spearing himself like he did his victims.