How does the portrayal of peoples lives in film and media affect the way the audience value their own?
Between 1920 and 1970 British VOGUEs archive editor Laird Borrelli noted a decline of fashion illustrated covers of the magazine; their popularity was in decline due to photography becoming a much more accessible form of media. Vogue began to replace their celebrated illustrative covers with photographic images. As you can see from the chart above, voyeurism began to increase drastically when photography first became more widely accessible, the word was getting their first glimpses of famous actresses, artists, musicians up close and they couldn’t get enough. I believe there is a direct correlation between the beginning of wide spread photography and film and the beginning of peoples obsession, addiction with the lives of others.
In 1933 Czech film Ecstasy was released into cinemas, the film contained the first ever documented sex scene showing actress Heddy Lamarr ‘writhing in ecstasy’ as she reached orgasm, again this relates back to the graph above in an steady increase during the 1930’s of the act of voyeurism, the definition of which is ‘the practice of gaining sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity.’
It’s 2011 and designer lingerie brand Agent Provocateur released their spring summer ad campaign, starring french singer and wife of radio DJ Mark Ronson, Josephine de la baume. The short film starring the singer was directed by swede Johan Renck a director known for his cutting edge ideas and talent when working with the female form. The ad is called ‘Watching Josephine’ The film is made from the perspective of someone (I take it a man) filming Josephine getting undressed, doing exercises and reading a news paper all in her designer underwear after forgetting to close the curtains of her hotel room…
The film is made to look hand held, the camera wobbles throughout and nearly gets dropped when the phone in the mans room starts ringing, we can
hear the voyeur breathing throughout and see his hands move in and out of the frame. Although this is a very creative concept of selling underwear I find it also rather disturbing. Its seems to be making light out of what could be a very serious situation for the victim whom is being stalked. She is extremely vulnerable although the Brands infamous creative director Sarah Shotton always stresses in interviews the importance of only purchasing underwear for yourself and to make you feel better, which seems quite a mixed message after watching the ad, and later to quote director Johan Renck in the behind the scenes cut ‘the world revolves around tits and knickers, knickers and tits’ a rather degrading comment for someone who claims to be all for the ‘empowerment of women’. Sarah Shotten argues the celebrity singer is extremely relatable for all women calling the size 8 ‘curvy’ and telling the camera ‘she’s doing those Jane Fonda moves that we’ve all tried alone in our bedroom at some point’ which may well be the case, there quite possibly is a large percent of the population that has exercised in the privacy of their own homes… Shotton has conveniently forgotten however that most of the population is not a successful actress, singer, model and business women, not only is this sort of generalist language damaging it encourages young girls that to be filmed by a stalker and have the video posted to the world wide web is empowering for them, a complement even
My argument is that through the constant release of magazines, books and films containing sex scenes and intimate situations, people of the recent generations have grown up becoming accustomed and desensitised to this new surface level voyeurism. That’s not to say that I feel anyone who watches a film, reads a book or magazine is a sexually frustrated voyeur. However our inherent and manufactured intrigue of others lives is something to be wary of. youngminds.org.uk reported that the number of young people aged 15 to 16 with depression nearly doubled between the 1980s and the 2000s and that 4.4% of young people have an anxiety disorder. It is my belief that the increase on these mental illnesses and disorders are in direct relation to the media and the way it portrays the lives of others; making young people feel dissatisfied with their own lives, we are tricked into this by being told women such as Beyonce, Rihanna and more are ‘goals’ ‘empowering’ us through referring to them as ‘Queens’
instead this symbolises that these women are better than us all, we can never be as good as them, they are merely a distant dream in comparison to their supporters. Girls and Boys follow in formation the sexualised way they dance, the revealing photos they post on instagram and in general the sheer amount we see of these people has transferred onto our own social media accounts. People photographing and filming themselves going about their daily routine, what they’ve eaten for dinner, what they bought on a day out shopping. People have begun a movement which I am calling ‘the paparazzi persona’. The