Voyeurism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Voyeurism is a practice in which an individual derives sexual pleasure from observing other people. Such people may be engaged in sexual acts, or be nude or in underwear, or dressed in whatever other way the "voyeur" finds appealing. The word derives from French verb voir (to see) with the -eur suffix that translates as -er in English. A literal translation would then be “seer” or "observer", with pejorative connotations.
Also, the word voyeur can define someone who receives enjoyment from witnessing other people's suffering or misfortune; see schadenfreude.
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Popular culture
Films
- Voyeurism is a main theme in films such as The Secret Cinema (1968), Peepers (2010), and Sliver (1993), based on a book of the same name by Ira Levin.
- Voyeurism is a common plot device in both:
- Serious films, e.g., Rear Window (1954), Klute (1971), Blue Velvet (1986), and Disturbia (2007) and
- Humorous films, e.g., Animal House (1978), Gregory's Girl (1981), Porky's (1981), American Pie (1999), and Semi-Pro (2008)
- Voyeuristic photography has been a central element of the mis-en-scene of films such as:
- Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), and
- Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966)
- Pedro Almodovar's Kika (1993) deals with both sexual and media voyeurism.
- The television movie Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story (2002) is based on a true story about a woman who was secretly videotaped and subsequently helped to get laws against voyeurism passed in parts of the United States.
- Voyeurism is a key plot device in the Japanese movie "Love Exposure (Ai no Mukidashi)". The main Character Yu Honda takes upskirt photos to find his 'Maria' to become a man and get his first taste of sexual stimulation.
Literature
- In the light novel series Baka to Test to Shōkanjū, Kōta Tsuchiya is subject to voyeurism, explaining why he is referred to as "Voyeur".
Manga
- The manga Colorful and Nozoki Ana are both devoted almost entirely to voyeurism.
Voyeurism in fiction
- Voyeurism is something of a clichéd plot device in cinematic fiction, for instance in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Other examples include Fame and Porky's. Voyeurism is also shown for a brief period in other films, such as Amélie.
- Voyeurism was the main subject of the 1991 book (and its 1993 film adaptation) Sliver, where the owner of an apartment tower used a video surveillance system to spy on his tenants, often (but not always) for sexual gratification.
- The book Hell by Henri Barbusse focuses entirely on the story of a voyeur.
- A serious psychological treatment of the topic in cinema was done in Peeping Tom.
- The anime Colorful is devoted almost entirely to the paraphilia.
- The novel The Voyeur by Alberto Moravia deals with voyeurism in literature.
- The novel Le Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Examples in art
- Artist and Model in the Studio by Albrecht Dürer
- Venus (or a Nymph) Spied On by Satyrs (c. 1627) by Nicolas Poussin
- Jupiter and Antiope (c. 1715) by Antoine Watteau
See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Voyeurism" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.