Voyeurism – a subject so familial to cinema, yet the portrayal of the act itself in film is so often disappointing, without depth and usually simplified into a form of primitive sexual obsession. Peeping Tom is arguably the first true filmic study into the psychology of the voyeur and relates a bleakly disturbing and at the same time, sympathetic portrait of a ‘nurtured’ psychopath, that is, a dysfunctional person who is more of a product of his environment and upbringing than a case of innate violence or evil. ... In his essay, Roger Ebert points out that the subject matter of Psycho was arguably more depraved and released in the same year to critical acclaim whereas Peeping Tom served only to ‘disgust’ even some of the most objective critics.
The fundamental difference between the two films which may go some way to explaining this ‘double standard’ is that in Peeping Tom we have the first psychopathic serial killer who actually commands more sympathy than fear. ... Martin Scorcese is a known admirer of Peeping Tom and one couldn’t help but wonder whether some of the inspiration for Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) came from Mark Lewis. ... Norman Bates killed more savagely choosing relatively savoury people as victims, yet Psycho was never deemed a ‘nasty’ in the way Peeping Tom was, could it be that the moral outrage was actually a form of subconscious guilt? ... The original reaction to Peeping Tom gives an interesting snapshot of the double standards of the day. Consider that most critically acclaimed and socially-acceptable ‘voyeur’ movie; Rear Window (1954) – while fundamentally different in its narrative, its central theme of voyeurism deserves comparison - the spying, executed by a seemingly well-balanced, mentally healthy individual is triggered through boredom and natural inquisitiveness, while in Peeping Tom our violator acts out of an intense pathology of fear, effected by a disturbed, abusive, miserable childhood, how interesting then, that as a society we are more sympathetic to the former - a voyeur without motive – than we are to Mark , a genuine victim.
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