Understanding voyeurism: a discursive process

“WRITE IT ON voyeurism,” Derek told me.

“Voyeurism?” I asked.

“Like how people rubberneck when they pass by a car accident.”

“I should say it’s a good thing,” I told him.

“Why?”

“Because, I write stuff like that.”

“Solid argument,” he responded.

“And what’s yours?” I asked him.

“It’s cold, it’s dehumanizing. It’s taking pleasure in someone else’s pain and suffering.”

And so I argued: “That’s a very specific aspect. It’s also rejoicing in their successes. It’s a part of us that reaches out to understand otherwise total strangers — which is a good thing.”

“Voyeurism in general? Or taking pain in the pleasure of others—“

“That’s sadism,” I interject.

“—because, the pain thing: I don’t think it’s attempting to understand strangers. The connection is superficial,” he explains.

“And that’s different than voyeurism.”

And so, he tells me: “‘Voyeur: a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity; a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others; an obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects,’” and “‘In photography, voyeurism refers to the image as spectacle used for the gratification of the spectator.’”

“That photography definition—“ I began, “it’s vague. ‘The image as a spectacle’ is vague. What image?”

“The sight, the idea,” he tells me.

“It has no inherent qualities. It’s without context — and we don’t use the word ‘voyeuristic’ to talk explicitly about its sexual manifestations. The first example you brought up was a car accident,” I reminded him.

We were beginning to agree. “Voyeurism isn’t necessarily good though and seeking to understand total strangers isn’t necessarily a part of it,” he said in response.

“What is it then?”

“It’s watching lives other than our own.”

“But why does that matter? Why do people do that, fundamentally?” I asked him.

“Interest, looking for something that isn’t in their lives, curiosity — people seek out things that they aren’t normally exposed to.”

“Why does that matter? Why do people need to look out side of their own lives? There’s no way to answer without speculating, so speculate.”

“It can be interest in other lives and wanting to understand them, but it also can be stuff — like rotten.com, where people’s deformities are not put up in hopes of getting people to understand them — for the shock factor alone.”

“But can’t there be something that binds both of those impulses? Why would somebody want to be shocked — and can somebody truly be shocked by something that trades explicitly in ‘shock value’?”

“The same reason people ride rollercoasters, except more sinister — excitement, a remedy for boredom.”

“Entertainment? So how do you judge somebody’s notion of entertainment as inappropriate, especially if it’s all just different manifestations of the same impulse?” I ask.

“Seeking sexual gratification is a different impulse — the impulse to reproduce. And what are the manifestations of that? Sex with a loved one? Rape?”

“Maybe — and how do you judge those as appropriate or inappropriate either?”

“Rape,” he reminds me, “violates somebody else’s rights and well-being. It’s violating a body. It’s dehumanizing, and hurts and wrongs people. I believe that we’ve gotten past existing at the hands of mere impulses. We’ve developed art, we have feelings, personalities, dreams, desires. We value life, we value uniqueness and individuality. We have love and we have sympathy.”

“And so where does rape fit into that?” I ask.

“Rape is the abandonment of sympathy and of respect. It is the abandonment of love.”

“But it’s still the impulse to reproduce — just a different manifestation. So you can’t judge the impulse?

Only how it manifests itself?”

“And you can’t say that voyeurism is good.”

I reassert my initial point: “Yes I can — well, I can say it’s voyeurism, and that the idea of looking specifically at people and trying to identify with them and finding pleasure in that is respectful.”

“And I argue that trying to identify with them isn’t part of it.”

“Of course it is. How else do you take pleasure in somebody else’s sexual exploits? It’s living vicariously — or, it’s saying ‘Man I’m glad I don’t have an arm growing out of my ass,’ which is still a means of identification — defining yourself by what you are not.”

“Do people really think that though? I’d think some would think, ‘Whoa, that guy has an arm growing out of his ass. Gross,’ and not necessarily make the connection to themselves.”

“By seeing it as ‘gross’ they necessarily see a connection to themselves, or at least their idea of normality. If voyeurism is an extension of entertainment, and entertainment is defined as something different, then voyeurism must be different, which can only be understood in the context of an individual’s sense of self and whatever ‘sameness’ comes along with it.”

“I’m just saying that identification with someone implies something more than comparison, something more than noticing differences, and in that, I don’t find anything remarkably respectable.”

“Do you look to something different to see how different it really is? Or to say ‘Here’s something that’s ostensibly different, and here’s why it’s worth my time.’ If entertainment were just looking for something different, then serialized atonal music would’ve caught on with the public. It’s not that, though, because things that are too different alienate us — we ultimately relate it back to what we know and understand, otherwise it’s alienating. At the most basic level, identification is seeing something in a way that makes sense to you — to identify is to accept understanding, and to not is to reject understanding.”

That’s about where the conversation ended. I still don’t know if we got anywhere — besides here, what I’d wanted initially being just a topic for my next article — or if our answers are ultimately and irrevocably lost in the remote corners of that dark catechism.

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