Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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cinema, such as in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999; dir. Minghella), where, on a
yacht, Tom Ripley watches through a small hatch, the feet of Marge and Dickie as
they make love. These sequences are part of an aesthetic tradition seen in the
“Through the Keyhole” shorts of primitive cinema, and take on this tradition’s
notions of voyeurism, which I will come to later in this chapter.
Another significant element of eye/camera composition is that of relatable or
understandable height. The camera typically shoots the action from a height of about
six feet with a variation of approximately six inches. This height variant is meant to
reflect the standard height of an adult human, which becomes instantly recognizable
to the viewer, as the average viewer usually sees the world from this perspective. In
all, these basic elements are used to reflect standard human experiential vision.
While variations on these elements occur, the variants tend to be exceptions that
prove the rule. Examples of this will be discussed where relevant.
The critical stance of the eye/camera is varied, but consistently returns to an
acceptance of the device as a form of voyeurism. Laura Mulvey’s significant essay
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1999; 833-844) argues that voyeurism and
scopophilia are central to the pleasures of watching films. Mulvey discusses the firstperson
camera within the explication of her analysis of the cinematic gaze. The
“cinematic gaze” is the theory that what the camera shows, or looks at, reveals
personality and identificatory traits, which can reveal what sort of person the viewer
is meant to be seeing through. Mulvey argues that, in most cases, the cinematic gaze
is overwhelmingly heterosexual and masculine, which can frequently be revealed
through the use of lingering and voyeuristic shots of desirable female subjects. This
essay is emblematic of, and in many cases the basis for, the analysis of the
eye/camera.