Terra Incognita

Fuck it. I'll write more and expand further once I have the energy to do so. There's a LOT...a LOT, to say about this movie, but to provide a starting point for discussion, here are some of the more general notes and discussion points I wrote down for my class:

• Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) is a psychologically dense, self-conscious meditation on sight—in this film, the relationship between a traumatized and sadistic voyeur-subject and the exhibitionistic objects of his fixation. We see Mark Lewis, our scopophiliac protagonist, use a blade hidden in his tripod leg to murder his victims, capturing their terror on camera and later watching it within the safety of his womblike projection room. Powell seems to suggest that Mark's obsessions developed as a defensive response against his father's voyeuristic investigation into his nervous system (fear). Then, it seems clear that Mark's camera would serve as his own perpetual "fourth wall" [and also his armor, his weapon, his petri dish, and his dick], mediating the relationship between himself and his victims [and the world], and helping him master the process that turned him into an object of scientific spectacle as a child.

• ("Briefly talk about the mise-en-scene...") Mark's apartment seems completely innocuous upon entry (17:43), containing a bookshelf, fireplace, some small souveneir-like items, and some basic furniture. Within that, however, is his workspace (19:42): a dark and enormous projection room, initially a laboratory, with a lab coat, chemicals, camera equipment, and a projection set. Clearly, Mark is very deliberate in his control over what remains observed and unobserved, engaging with life as though from behind a one-way mirror.

• ("Briefly talk about how psychoanalysis works in this film. Repression? Oedipal complex?) Throughout the majority of the film, Mark demonstrates an insanely high control over his emotions. Even his predatory and voyeuristic impulses, though not withheld, are realized smoothly and methodically. Given Mark's private obsessions, it seems obvious that his general attitude and appearance can only be the result of severe psychological repression; he distances himself from his own trauma and terror, but it's still continually studied and relived through his victims. However, this dynamic can also be conceptualized as a manifestation of Mark's unconscious desire to kill off his torturous father; by identifying with his father's destructive voyeurism while predating on women ("mothers"), he unconsciously resolves his conflict with his father and regains 'contact' with his deceased mother.

As implied above, I have more to say about this movie that I haven't yet written and I will add more later.

#Michael Powell #'Peeping Tom' #film #psychoanalysis#voyeurism

The timing of this thread is interesting, given the recent emergence of this...weirdly popular shitstorm:










#Gabby Petito

Well...the film foreshadows the psyche of panopticon couture in general. Do you see 'Dirty Laundrie' as the Mark character Anthony?









#panopticon

Roshan wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:08 pm Well...the film foreshadows the psyche of panopticon couture in general. Do you see 'Dirty Laundrie' as the Mark character Anthony?

No, I don't. I see him as strangely insipid, but that's about it. I was hinting exactly at that^. The Petito case, just seems...like there wasn't anything truly remarkable nor interesting enough for it to be as popular as it is(?). There are way more interesting cases, with way more interesting spectacle elements, that are only featured maybe in crime mini-series clips or something. The mass media observation tower must've sensed that we, the 'collective psyche,' all in our little cells in the panopticon, were about to start rattling our cages out of boredom and so we got a murder mystery pacifier with an 'angelic-looking girl' we can call the nation's daughter or whatever—it's just another "Tiger King"

Anthony wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:41 pm The Petito case, just seems...like there wasn't anything truly remarkable nor interesting enough for it to be as popular as it is(?). There are way more interesting cases, with way more interesting spectacle elements, that are only featured maybe in crime mini-series clips or something.

I think you're assuming that people are interested in this case for the spectacle elements, and I think this assumption is wrong Anthony.

I watched a couple of interviews of Powell and he really seems SiFe, and pretty Walter Mitty on the e-type (so sx last 9 with 5w6 in 6 and 3). The SiFe and fivish 9 would explain the similarities with David Lynch in terms of the lush evocative surfaces that don't really hide anything. But Powell had worked for two decades in "The Archers" with Pressburger, who judging from his manifesto (section "Birth of the Archers"), I assumed was a gamma extravert-which would make them either contraries or conflictors. They could never work on a script together at the same time in the same room but Powell also said in one interview I have to find again something like they knew what the other was thinking and such a relationship is very rare so idk. But I just found this, which has footage of Pressburger too, and may solve the mystery, and I'm watching it now. In any case when Powell made Peeping Tom, the Archers had recently been amicably dissolved and Pressburger had left his indelible mark on him, but the real 'partner' in 'Peeping Tom', Powell's 'better half', would have been the screenwriter. That was Leo Marks.

I found one interview with Leo Marks on YouTube and he explains why he wrote Peeping Tom. It's quite surprising and I'll say something about it anon.




#SiFe #Emeric Pressburger #Leo Marks

Sight and seeing is one of the main themes of Peeping Tom. In one scene, a psychologist tells Mark that the killer who’s at large is a scoptophiliac which colloquially we call a voyeur. Mark’s camera and scoptophilia are obviously intertwined, with the camera framing the way the scoptophiliac observes and filters his perception. The camera entails that he has a very specific and narrow focus which aids his killings and his focus on filming his victims’ fear, which makes scoptophilia an interesting inversion of exhibitionism. Like Mark’s camera filming, the scoptophiliac’s gaze is focused, narrow while the exhibitionist wants to be seen by everyone. The scoptophiliac’s activities are regulated into the shadows with the thrill of possibly being caught while the exhibitionist operates out in the open, desiring to be consumed by the gaze of others while the soctophiliac’s gaze is consuming. There’s something narcissistic about both these ‘fetishes’. The scoptophiliac primarily privileges his own gaze and point of view regardless of how the subject of his gaze feels while the exhibitionist wants to seize the attention of all who are around.

Mark’s camera both distances himself from and facilitates a closeness with his victims. It provides a physical and psychological barrier as it obscures his face and physically distances him from his victim. Meanwhile, it allows him to transgress his victims’ boundaries by breaking their psychological boundaries as he induces their fear and then of course kills them. By experiencing and witnessing his victims’ fear, Mark is able to project his own fears and trauma onto them: his fears and trauma are now transposed onto them and they die with them as he does this from a safe distance. But the cycle repeats repeats itself. Roshan and Anthony mentioned how the film prefigured the pantoptical nature of our modern collective gaze, and I agree with that. Mark’s focused and narrow gaze is analogous to the ways the internet can cater to our specific desires. But with the advent of smartphones and more advanced cameras, the dimensions and scope of our gaze, both literally and metaphorically, is wider, more “realistic” (or hyper-realistic), and more panoramic than ones provided by previous technologies. This makes us complacent into thinking that we’re experiencing and capturing the same verisimilitude as seeing and experiencing the same scene without the camera. Similar to how Mark’s camera simultaneously distances from and closes in on his subjects, our panoptical gaze both detachedly objectifies and fetishizes while still having us make intimate connections with more people from different parts of the world. We can also anonymously lurk around and observe while that same anonymity makes us more intrusive in ways that weren’t possible before. Even when we’re not anonymous, aspects of the panopticon promote both the narcissism of the privileged gaze of the scoptophiliac and the attention-seeking of the exhibitionist.

#gaze #exhibitionism

I've found this extensive audio essay by Laura Mulvey from the Criterion Collection DVD online that should be quite compelling for those of us so compelled.









#Laura Mulvey

I've only heard the opening of the audio essay and not read -Sarah-'s post yet. Atm I wish to return to Marks.

It was while grappling with his knowledge that, as a code writer for the allies, he was sending operatives like Violette Szabo, 1921-1944, (video ^^ @3'19") to their deaths in Nazi Germany that the plot for Peeping Tom took root in Leo Marks' mind.



So the original communications medium that inspired the film was code, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, not film. Not even image. It was words, but words that represented different words, ones that were absolutely critical and functional. And the words he used as codes were poems. Then these codes would be transmitted, and intercepted. Marks seems to be grappling painfully with the double-edged sword of 'technics', and life-giving, life-destroying sword.. In his mind, Marks converted code as weapon to film as weapon to exorcise these demons through the film's main character, Mark.

It's also not insignificant that he was mourning the death of his girlfriend in a plane crash while writing said code. It's all media and transportation, which is all technics and civilization.

Also, to really understand Peeping Tom (1960), we have to see it as a post-war British, and also European, film. The photos in this article on Violette Szabo better evoke the eras that led to the film: the pre-war and the war.

Michael Powell was the only really European British director at the time but having the vision to choose Peeping Tom,after his collaboration with Pressburger ended was also a double-edged sword that both killed his career for years and ultimately granted him a place in the film pantheon that the work of the Archers alone would not have.

The reason it killed his career for years was that at the time it was considered incredibly obscenely violent. But the insanely accelerating double-edged growth of technics, a growth that is also cancerous, spirals on.

#Violette Szabo #World War II

btw Violette Szabò was executed in Ravensbrück with two other female operatives, Denise Bloch and Cecily Lefort, the account of which was later given by the camp commander, who was executed in turn. Lilian Rolfe was executed separately earlier that day. Marks knew that he did not have the courage those women had and never would.

Violette Szabò was not known for her intellect. Bloch and Marks were both Jewish.