Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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Aside from the case of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the slasher films of the
1980s retained the tendency of the eye/camera to be used as generic orientation.
Sorority House Massacre (1986; dir. Frank) for example, while revealing a striking
and rich approach to developing the intertwining perspectives of two characters to be
addressed in the discussion of the middle Friday the 13 th films, uses the eye/camera
in its most streamlined form.
While I have attempted to create a reading of the eye/camera that establishes
the device’s purpose apart from voyeurism, the films appearing in the late 1980s and
early 1990s seem to use the eye/camera in a knowingly voyeuristic manner. While
this shift is difficult to account for, themes of overt voyeurism in horror films and
thrillers like Peeping Tom and Rear Window, the previously discussed review of The
Burning, Udayan Gupta’s review of Eyes of Laura Mars and aesthetic awareness of
the filmmakers as evinced by the interview with Brian De Palma already quoted 5 are
all indicative of knowing aesthetic trends within the genre. Screenwriter Paul
Schrader writes of Peeping Tom, “Through the maze of Powell’s gamesmanship
emerges a true character: Mark Lewis, a secretive, lonely, passionate young man for
whom voyeurism, cinema, and violence are the same.” (1979; 62) Marcia Pally
states that “voyeurism has always been basic to cinema, but while directors have
assumed, milked, and satirized it, only recently have some made a point of
demonstrating the similarities between ostensibly ingenious observation and
traditional viewing of porn. And only recently have they used the gaze that ends in
sexual arousal as a symbol for the gaze that incites action.” (1985; 60) Later, Pally
directly addresses the eye/camera function in context with her argument: “No
wonder Hitchcock used first-person perspective so relentlessly. Leading us by the
5 Also see below Muir’s quote about Wes Craven.