Voyeurism and Surveillance: A Cinematic and Visual Affair

Abstract

As Rockwell notes in “Somebody’s watching me” (1984), he always feels like somebody’s watching him, and he has no privacy. “I always feel like somebody’s watching me,” he adds, “Tell me, is it just a dream?”¹ he wonders. Rockwell’s 1980s paranoid pop song seems to reflect the reality of today’s society. Living in a hyper-technological era, electronic eyes - among other things — surround us by encircling the private sphere an publicly exposing it. With the rise of high-tech devices, postmodern society has demonstrated a certain way of viewing through non-human devices, in some cases for surveillance purposes. New technologies keep “helping” us to see whatever, whoever, wherever and whenever we want, conferring an immense power on the viewer. Indeed, surveillance tools, specifically surveillance cameras, feed the voyeur’s desire: to watch (attentively observing) without being seen, offering a perfect device for any budding peeping torn! Moreover, these surveillance technologies reveal a new kind of self-exhibitionism by interrogating the act of look- ing at, of watching: “Surveillance metonymically encompasses looking and the complex and ambivalent nature of looking and being looked at, and these elements of human social life are currently undergoing radical transformation due to technological advancements spurring on a ‘culture of surveillance,’ or’ s urveillance culture’.”²