The Cinematic Society

The Voyeur's Gaze

"His discussions of the films are always interesting. . . . Denzin's book is in the forefront of the movement that, following the pioneering work of the feminists, takes cinema studies increasingly toward the political. --W. A. Vincent in Choice "Cinema not only created the spectator in its own eye; it created what the eye of the spectator would see. . . . That is really the starting point of Professor Denzin's enthralling examination of the evolution of the aesthetic of the voyeur's gaze in cinema, which began with the Peeping Tom films of the 1900s. . . and presently washes through the minds of western audiences. [Focusing on Foucault] Norman K. Denzin's scholarly book puts together an account of the voyeur's career through the history of cinema, explicating it film by film and genre by genre." --Sociology Written by one of America's leading commentators in the sociology of culture, this assured and timely volume contends that the cinema has increased the tendency toward voyeurism in society. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Norman K. Denzin asserts that the cinematic gaze reflects the machinery of surveillance and power that regulates social behavior in contemporary society. The cinema makes its key players voyeurs who spy on the lives of others, but it also turns the audience into voyeurs who eagerly follow the lives of screen characters as if they were real. The effect of the cinema in the social construction of everyday life has rarely been explored with such penetration and clarity. Surveying an extraordinary array of material from film and film literature, Denzin's work is both methodologically sophisticated and theoretically provocative. A perfect resource for students of social theory and film and cultural studies; this ingenious book offers provocative reading for a vast interdisciplinary audience.