Introduction to voyeurism

Uncertainty and suspicion are the reactions you come across upon the very mentioning of voyeurism.

The term holds many implications and generates preconceived and stereotyped ideas as to what and who voyeurism and a voyeur actually is and does.

The most obvious and straightforward association people make is their vision of the "Peeping Tom", men who peer through their curtains with high-powered binoculars trying to get a glimpse into their neighbours bedrooms and bathrooms, nosy neighbours and dirty old men.

It is generally regarded as perverted, indecent and to a certain extent criminal. People see voyeurs as sexual deviants and voyeurism is classified in the same category as exhibitionism, sadomasochism and other sexual variants of a "non-standard" manner. The truth of the matter is however that voyeurism can take many different forms and guises. There is literally much more to it than meets the eye.

Voyeurism can be defined in many ways and if you were to extract the main principals out from it you would be left with a definition that states voyeurism is "To gain pleasure from looking, unbeknown to the subject".

This broadens voyeurism to a much wider scope.

Voyeurism, in the purely sexual sense, falls into two main categories, opportunistic and premeditated or accidental and pre-planed.

A voyeur watches without consent from his subject although pleasure is still gained from watching with consent, which is to say he/she has the permission to watch but still watches unbeknown to the subject, for example at a strip club or a cinema. A voyeur would usually like, and prefer, to watch alone but will also participate in socially acceptable mass voyeurism without realisation of what he/she is doing. A voyeur will look upon their subject as something to project thoughts and fantasies onto, the voyeur regards this process as the thrill and sensation that feeds the scopophilic drive. The voyeur knowing that he/she will gain satisfaction and pleasure from watching something he/she is not supposed to, or allowed to, have gained the compulsion to look and this compulsion can become habitual.

Voyeurism is the visual plucking of forbidden fruit.

It is the fascination of observation, the interest that compels you to look and want to see.

It is your compulsion to look at the scene of an accident your need to eavesdrop into a conversation on a bus or in a cafe. Voyeurism has much diversity, especially in the mass media and through modern society, from the eighteen hundreds to the present day, from pornography to soap opera; there are many categories to delve into and many questions to be raised. There are moral and legal issues present and a major issue of the role and perception of women in society. To look into the recurrent themes of voyeurism is primarily to look at the different roles of gender in society, and the commonly believed status of men as active and women as passive. I aim to investigate how this has been represented visually in the past century through film and photography.

Louis Daguerre unveiled his invention in 1839, a wondrous new process that would be the death of painting, the Daguerreotype, the first form of photograph. It would be used to record history, document the people, the places and events of the time. After the portraits in the 1840’s came the nudes, photographs of naked women and sexual acts, considering the amount of time needed for exposure you would not of thought it possible but it was and pornography as we still know it today was born.

The first daguerreotype process was not cheap, a positive image was developed onto a single plate which was unique. This was erotic imagery for the wealthy gentleman. The price for a portrait was between one and two guineas, which for ordinary working class people was the equivalent to one month’s pay. These first nude and erotic images were mainly produced for viewing through a stereoscope, which was a new craze at that time. Using a camera with two lenses side by side a simultaneous image could be taken from slightly different viewpoints, left eye and right eye, when viewed through the stereoscope both images would form a three dimensional view. This very method of viewing erotic imagery was the first step into the voyeuristic world of photography, the physical act of peeping through the stereoscope to enter a private world of visual pleasure was as new and appealing as the internet is today. The social acceptance of erotic imagery was, as it is in many respects today, hugely frowned upon but hugely popular.

The very invention of photography expanded the voyeur’s world, not only in a sexual sense either. In the privacy and safety of your own home you could feast your eyes on subjects not ever before available for consumption, such as battles, royalty, corpses, poverty, exotic places, wild animals and just simply other peoples lives. After a while it was taken for granted that you could have visual access to almost any sight in the world.

The process of viewing photographs is not unlike the very premise of voyeurism itself. The viewer is alone, or with like-minded others participating, taking in views of subjects that are unable to return the gaze, this process of looking without the subjects consent is now normal practice on a global scale. It is important to note however that with early Victorian photography, it was not the photographs that were voyeuristic, because they had all been set up and posed for, it was the viewers themselves that are the practitioners of voyeurism. To look into a stereoscope was like looking into a window that is always light, where the subject is always in and the curtains are never drawn.

The true medium that pornography and erotic imagery thrived upon came with the invention of film.

Film, like photography, offered the pleasure of seeing without the responsibility of looking. At this time men were watching women and women were watching themselves been watched, if watching at all.

The ability of the camera to act as an external ‘All Seeing Eye’ was matched by nothing else. It could give its viewer uninterrupted viewing without been seen.

The first real films to explore this forbidden fruit and secret visual pleasure were the early ‘Stag films’ at the turn of the century. These films, which are discussed at length by Linda Williams in her book ‘Hardcore’, all followed a voyeuristic style of eroticism.

Films such as ‘The Gay shoe clerk’, (Edison, 1903), features in its narrative a static long shot of a shoe shop and a young woman being fitted for a pair of shoes. This long shot is then replaced by a close up of the woman’s foot and ankle being fondled by the clerk, the shot continues, the woman’s skirt rises up and the clerk then kisses the woman. With the insertion of the close up of the woman’s leg the viewer has been allowed to gain a glance at what the shoe clerk is seeing, but however, the viewer is shown a close up from their own perspective and not that of the clerks. This particular film is an example of a particularly mild setting. Allot of the films of the same period contain hardcore sexual activity including close up penetration shots which would still be illegal by today’s standards.

This film and several more were part of a category of voyeur films, they all followed set structures and they all encouraged the viewer to identify with the male character by allowing you to see what he sees through different voyeuristic means. The use of such devices as a telescope, magnifying glass and keyholes are the motivation for the close up shots. These optical devises created the first ever truly narrative use of close up in cinema. They turn the viewer into a participant and spectator, they allow you to look at previously unseen and hidden details, but they do not let the viewer become totally a part of the action. They had problematic endings which just stopped therefor they gave the viewer the feeling they were watching a show rather than identifying with any of the characters. Other films of the time such as ‘Am Abend’ and ‘A free ride’ (1910-1915) employ the same use of voyeuristic tactics to arouse the viewer but nothing more.

It is again important to remember that although these films do exist they were highly illegal and not available for mass consumption. The audience intended for these films was again an upper-class clientele. The distribution and viewing of these films took place in brothels and at male only gatherings. They were intended, I believe, to arouse the viewer in preparation for their coupling with a prostitute. There was no private or individual viewing like you can get through the Internet and with video today. An audience of men would watch with unease and fear of being found out or recognised.

Stag films represented a male only social ritual; this would explain why the role of the women used in these films is purely for male pleasure, pure objectification.

In mainstream cinema however there was a different story.

Film is a medium that moves it is easy to identify with and to relate to. So lifelike it appeared to the general public that when the Lumiere brothers showed their film of an oncoming train the audience literally jumped out of their seats to escape. Films can make you cry they can scare you, arouse you and provoke many different emotions. This was recognised from the beginning and there was deep suspicion of the potential social impact that this new medium could have. Those in authority feared that film would threaten to engage the lower emotion of those most vulnerable, the lower classes, women, children and the uneducated. Because of this film censorship was introduced at various points across the world between 1902 in New York and 1913 In Britain, this was to gain a control over the masses, restrictions of violence, nudity and religion were imposed. Whilst the masses were being controlled highly explicit material was still being produced and shown in ‘smoking rooms’ and brothels, ignored by the authorities and tolerated by the police. This material was only in the hands of the upper class and educated entertainment for the privileged.

There has been various theories’ put forward in relation to voyeurism in the cinema and the portrayal of women through film and photography. The most famous and original writings on the subject were put forward by the feminist writer Laura Mulvey in an essay entitled ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ wrote in 1975, at the time Mulvey managed to cause a stir amongst other writers in the same field. As a basis for the essay Mulvey reverted to the psychoanalytical theories put forward by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who in turn based allot of his theory on Sigmund Freud’s various writings on human sexuality, in relation to the developmental stages of childhood and ‘castration anxiety’. Lacan had a theory that is known as ‘The mirror stage’; briefly stated this is a stage of psychological development, which occurs in an infant between the age of six to eighteen months. The baby perceives itself as a bundle of parts and sensations, each part striving for satisfaction for its own sake. When the infant is held up to a mirror it begins to view itself as a coherent unified being, distinct from its mother and its environment. A child will develop from this stage with an idealised representation of itself, but this ideal being whom they are identifying with is a fantasy, an unattainable illusion.

This is also where we can identify with ‘Castration anxiety’. The young male will acknowledge his mother’s lack of a phallus and believe there to be something missing and subsequently fears the loss of his own.

To substitute this apparent loss a child would develop a fetish as a replacement in his mind for his mother’s lack. This is the basic grounding for a male functional role as active and a woman as passive.

Mulvey used these psychoanalytical theory’s as a basis to address the pleasures of looking and being looked at, as they relate to the male and female roles in Hollywood films from the 1950’s onwards. In her essay the relation between male and female roles are set up among certain terms, which are as follows.

• There are gender distinctions between the roles that men and women play in films, men being the agents of the action, women being passive objects or targets of the narrative.

The problem I have with Mulvey is that she does not account for the role of the female voyeur and female fetishism, this is probably because she has political and feminist goals to reach and she was writing with a 1970’s ideology, which is now twenty five years old.

Freud only identifies that a female child will identify with her mother as being the same and having no fear of loss, he does not offer any explanation for fetishism in women nor does he recognise its existence. Mulvey is basing her theory on a theory that has a certain unexplained avenues of questioning and she also does not offer any explanation to these questions.

I believe that screen narrative in cinema is very much based on the social ideology of a particular time. That is to say that a particular film would be made and its structure and contents would relate to the particular beliefs of the writers and directors. These particular beliefs are based on the principals imposed onto a particular society, basically relating to how and where an individual is raised and brought up to interpret the values of the world around you. Only by the changing of this social ideology can a progression be made. This would be achieved by the Re-structuring of the values and beliefs to create a new ideology, then passing on this new ideology to a future generation.

There is often a connection between ideology and pleasure, the pleasurable watching of a film always includes some form of ideology, usually the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad.

Laura Mulvey argued that in the ideology of the fifties through to the early nineties film narrative has placed all viewers (male and female) in the position of the male voyeur and this is a direct result of the narrative films conventions rather than an incidental by product. For example men are not usually employed to act as spectacles of desire such as the way in which the ‘Bond girls’ appear in a typical James Bond film.

The objectification of women in film is a key feminist argument. I would say that a large majority of men would look at any woman on screen as a potential fantasy figure, especially women who play strong female leads, of course there is a question of personal taste but as a generalisation I would say that this is true.

Whatever role a women plays on screen she will always be an object of the male gaze and in many respects the male character will always be an object of the female gaze.

There are exceptions to this of course depending upon the viewers sexual preferences, for example gay men will gain pleasure from watching other men and vice versa.

These are all elements that have not been taken into consideration by Mulvey, but they are observations I am making now in the Twenty-first Century from a different social perspective. I will come back to Mulvey’s writings later in connection to specific films.

One of the most well known and widely discussed film directors to tackle the subject of Voyeurism is Alfred Hitchcock. Films such as Rear window, Vertigo and Psycho all have strong psychological and voyeuristic themes put across in a highly visual style. In Rear window the story centres on a documentary photographer, Jeffries, who is confined to a wheelchair after breaking hi leg in an accident. He spends his time observing the activities of his neighbours through his apartment window; Jeffries expands his voyeuristic activities with the use of binoculars and telephoto lenses, which lets us as the viewer see what he is seeing. Rear window as a film could be taken as a metaphor for the cinema itself, with Jeffries representing the audience and his subjects the screen.

Laura Mulvey, once more, wrote texts about this film (she particularly centred on Hitchcock as a subject for her discussion) relating to scopophilia in the cinema.

Scopophilia can be defined in Freudian terms as "The pleasure in looking; taking other people as objects; pleasure in surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim".

There is a sense of innocence in Jeffries voyeurism, as it is not shown to be wrong or perverted; it is portrayed as harmless. He is not viewing for sexual satisfaction, or so it would seem, but because of his interest in people as a photographer and out of boredom.

It is still important to point out however that he mostly viewed women, including Mrs Torso and Mrs Lonelyheart, although his main interest was concerning Mr Thornwall because he suspected him of killing his wife.

I found the way in which Hitchcock visually showed Jefferies observation placed the Viewer in his own helpless position and made you identify with the character.

In Vertigo there is a much more complicated plot dealing with a number of issues. The issue that is most interesting however is the male hero, James Stuart’s pursuit of his ideal female and his transforming of Kim Novack’s character into his own fantasy figure. This does convey the message of woman as image, but it is quite personal to Stuart’s character and his own personal obsession.

Psycho deals with the twisted and perverse and links voyeurism with Norman Bates as a characteristic of his psychological illness. Interestingly enough voyeurism is a common trait found in many real life serial killers, filmmakers are often quick to match voyeurism and sadism together as combinations leading to violent results.

There was a film released in the same year as Psycho, 1960 that had voyeurism as its main subject matter, a very dark and quite disturbing film by Michael Powell, called Peeping Tom. This film connects the issues of voyeurism with cinematic apparatus; it concerns a young cameraman, Mark, traumatised by his childhood experiences. He gains satisfaction in filming women with a camera that has a knife concealed in its tripod. Mark films the fear in their faces at the moment of death and then watches the footage over and over in the darkness of his room. Mark had been turned into this disturbed killer through his own upbringing. His father, a psychologist specialising in fear, used him for his own experiments and research when he was a child, filming him in enticed moments of fear.

The film’s visual style implicates the audience in Marks voyeurism, the film’s opening shot is seen through the lens of Marks viewfinder, the viewer sees the footage exactly how Mark would see it, also sat in a darkened room. The film shows very little detachment, instead of observing the character you are the character observing.

This film seemed to cross the line of what a cinema going audience could take and subsequently was pulled from theatres. The audience did not like to be implicated in this way, it was almost like they did not want to admit to their own fantasies or feelings of guilt. This film virtually ended Michael Powell’s career but with it he pointed out the audience’s own preoccupations and highlighted the voyeuristic qualities of cinema and other media.

Since 1960 other films have touched upon the various themes of voyeurism and nearly all link the voyeur to infatuation, obsession, social retardation and crime.

The film Sliver by Philip Noyce explored Voyeurism in a slightly different light in more recent years. Staring Sharon Stone and William Baldwin as victim and voyeur.

This film was seen as an erotic thriller almost playing off the success of Basic Instinct, it was set in a hi-tech apartment building owned by Baldwin who had cameras installed in every room. He enjoys watching other people’s lives as though it was one big soap opera and he takes a sexual interest in Stone through watching her. He attempts to introduce her into his voyeuristic world, which is a different approach from usual, merely by introducing a female character to the role of voyeur we question the notions of voyeurism and its moral implications. There is an interesting scene in which Baldwin sends Stone a telescope as a gift and she uses it to look into the apartment across from her and gains pleasure from watching a couple make love, she turns away to consider whether what she is doing is right. When she looks again she sees the couple watching her through their own telescope. This poses the question is everybody watching everybody? And I think the answer is yes.

The final film I want to talk about and the film that I feel is the most relevant in our present society is ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, directed by Stanley Kubrick, this was to be his last film as he died shortly after its completion. The film deals with the marital problems of a young New York couple, played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who after some harmless flirtation at a party begin to question their commitment to each other. Kidman who plays Alice tells Cruise, who plays Bill, that she once had a serious attraction to a navel officer they met on vacation some years ago and if he had felt the same way she would have given up everything to be with him even for one night. Bill with a crises of confidence towards Alice, suddenly gets called out to attend upon a patients death, with this confusion and jealousy playing around in his mind he sets out on a journey of sexual discovery which progressively descends into an underworld of voyeuristic and ritual sex.

This film operates on many levels, it concerns itself with adult sexual relationships and the fetish of looking, scopophilia, and it is about the role of image in the post-modern world. Stanley Kubrick does as Michael Powel did in ‘Peeping Tom’, from the very beginning he makes us accomplices in looking, the opening scene which is inter-cut with the credits involves Kidman sliding out of her dress. Kubrick turns the audience of the film, us, into voyeurs by casting Kidman and Cruise in the lead roles, as they are a real life couple that are hounded by the media and watched by the public in reality.

We enjoy watching Alice and Bill as they watch themselves make love in front of a mirror as much as we enjoy Kidman and Cruise reveal themselves in front of the camera. Not knowing how much of what we are seeing is acting or reality creates a sense of realism. This could be the central image of the film, as it is offering the viewer sexual stimulant and voyeuristic pleasure whilst making social and cultural commentary.

The idea of how a film works outside its own bounds is central to the themes I have previously discussed. This film shows us through fiction a fantasy we may have in reality and along with the themes set in the actual film it shows image relating to icon and fantasy. Sexually stimulating images, be it on screen or on the street are all fantasy and forms of temptation. The more you delve into this fantasy and temptation the less you actually see or gain in the long run and the more you look at what you fantasise about the more you loose touch with your own sexuality because you are living your dreams through others.

Kubrick suggests that the arts, especially film, have a very important role to play in our own self-conscious awareness of culture. We all watch films and we all have fantasies. Film is powerful upon influencing culture and, as I have stated earlier, it can stimulate a whole range of emotions; Fear, sexual arousal, amusement and anger are among just a few. It can change the way we view our selves and live our lives but film is not real life. Real life is what we live every day. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is about people who are seduced by images and total self-involvement, in reference to the name of the film ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ means simply that you are looking but not actually seeing.

Photographers who have tackled the subject of voyeurism specifically are actually not that common, in relation to the art world many have touched upon voyeuristic themes in selective photographs but few have taken it as a subject in its own right. The first photographer to truly look into voyeuristic themes in depth, I would say, was Cindy Sherman in her untitled film stills photographs 1977-80. The concept behind them I find links very closely to the feminist writings of Laura Mulvey and her discussion on the male gaze in cinema. Each photograph seems to rehearse the structure of the male gaze; each photograph seems to emulate a stereotype and category of specific roles women represent on film. Sherman captures the female character (herself) in a parody of different voyeuristic styles. The camera intrudes into moments in which she is unguarded, sometimes undressed, absorbed in her own world of privacy, of her own environment. Some photographs show her looking startled by a presence, unseen, watching. Her photographs seem to show the voyeur constructing the woman in endless repetitions of her vulnerability and his control.

Sherman manages to convey this feeling of someone watching by the way in which she aesthetically constructs the print, for example, by framing a print outside a room so that you are looking through space, which conveys the feel of distance. This distance can feel enhanced by the use of grain and print quality or a diffusion of image. In Shaman’s Untitled film still #2, for example, there is a slight haze around certain points that would suggest that the photographs have been taken through some form of netting or a hidden place.

Some of Shermans photographs along side the films ‘Sliver’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ seems to suggest a shared or permitted voyeuristic act. Such as voyeurism in a relationship, watching your partner dress or undress, opening your eyes whilst kissing or engaged in sexual activity, unbeknown to your partner but at the same time an acceptable scopophilic pleasure. Mulvey has suggested that the active male and passive female roles exist as a rule. It is only true in connection with the past history of representation in popular culture, there has been and to a certain extent still is a male dominant position present, but as I have stated this is not reality. The female voyeur does exist, but, the primary mediums in which voyeurism is expressed are very much male orientated and dominated.

Mulvey’s studies of spectatership focus mainly on how media texts and narrative codes construct subject positions, rather than investigating the viewing practices of individuals in specific social contexts. Mulvey fails to take into account the female spectator on any level and only accounts for male heterosexuality.

Women are also involved with double identification of male and female roles meaning that a woman can identify with a male role in the same sense as a female role. Voyeurism is not necessarily purely a gender issue; it is primarily a power issue. Since the 1980’s there has been a vast increase in the sexual use of the male body throughout cinema, television and photography all accounting for this female and homosexual gaze. Could this be because of the discussions and theory brought to light by Mulvey in 1975? Or because of artists such as Cindy Sherman highlighting similar issues throughout photography? Or is it more likely to be the progression and development of a culture and society which, in many ways, could be going too far? We have extreme political correctness in one hand and freedom and liberation of sexual imagery through the mainstream media in the other.

Within the last five years we have witnessed the mainstream birth of the internet, the continued growth and development of satellite, cable and digital television and the relaxing, and basic acceptance, of sex and violence in the mass media. We have also seen new technology develop and appear such as CCTV cameras on the high street and in retail outlets. The world has become more hi-tech and as cameras get smaller, better and cheaper people have begun to take an interest in peoples lives more than ever before.

We are a nation glued to ‘soap operas’, daytime television, talk shows, real life documentaries and ‘docudramas’. We are been shown everything and we want to see everything. Voyeurism on a world-wide scale has arrived. At the top of the scale are the government, police and the employers who are helping to create a new ‘watched’ culture with the use of closed circuit TV systems. There is believed to be over 200,000 CCTV systems in the UK alone and for the average person living in a city their image would be captured on camera over 400 times a week. Whilst such surveillance is usually dedicated to crime fighting, it is unregulated and open to abuse by camera operators. It is estimated that upto 10% of the time spent filming women on CCTV cameras by shops, businesses and organisations is motivated by voyeurism. Some camera operators are known to have made ‘greatest hits’ tapes and other material captured on CCTV has become the footage used to create television programs for entertainment purposes. Programs such as ‘Police, Stop Action’ and ‘Worlds Dumbest Criminals’, there is now even soft core pornography being shot and produced to look like it had been recorded on CCTV, such is the demand for such viewing. All of the above programs have appeared on mainstream television and satellite channels.

Mainstream voyeurism also features heavily in the tabloid press; there have been a great amount of stories, features and scandals based around the press invasion of privacy and voyeuristic tactics. The press photographers have practically ‘stalked’ celebrities with their zoom lens cameras, photographing their every move. A Good example of this is the ‘Fergie toe sucking’ incident which was photographed by a press photographer with a high-powered zoom lens. He peered over the top of a wall onto a swimming pool while Sara Ferguson was engaged in a sexual activity. The photographs were all over the tabloids the next day.

Many women in the public eye have been targeted for the pure reason of gaining a topless photograph. A photographer could make thousands of pounds for such photographs and the newspaper or magazine would sell many more issues purely due to the fact. The most recently targeted celebrities include ‘Posh Spice’ Victoria Beckham, Drew Barrymore and Martine McCutchen. Victoria and Martine were both photographed topless at poolside with there boyfriends and Drew was photographed whilst changing after a jogging session in a secluded carpark.

Many more celebrities have been caught unaware and are usually in a helpless position to do anything about it because of legalities surrounding public and private space.

The most widely followed and photographed person in this country and possibly the world was ‘Princess Diana’. She had been continuously watched and observed since the early eighties, the media was totally obsessed an infatuated by her every move. On many occasions they photographed her in sexually suggestive poses, photographing her legs as she got out of cars, photographing her in swimsuits on foreign beaches from great distances and on one occasion a gym owner set up hidden cameras so he could photograph her exercising. All these occasions are acts of premeditated voyeurism for financial gain. Diana lost her life in 1998 whilst been pursued by the press on a French highway, even after the car had crashed the press continued to take photographs of Diana’s body. In reality who can blame them, it is the nation as a whole who created this obsession and fascination in the identification of a fantasy image, their need to know everything and see everything. And it was the photographers job, with money as the incentive, to bring this to them.

The main outlet for voyeuristic images and stylised photography today is the Internet. If you were to type ‘SEX’ into one of the major search engines there would be around 15,000,000 pages available for you to look at, which reflects the reality of the worlds obsession. Voyeurism is taking off at a vast pace on the net with sites claiming to have thousands of photographs and video footage taken without the consent of the subjects.

These are all images taken in women’s toilets, changing rooms, cubicles, sports clubs, up women’s skirts, down blouses and photographs from anywhere where women or men (there are a growing number of gay sites) can take their clothes off. These sites are designed particularly for people with this sexual fetish and they often border on the obscene to the absurd. There are also sites that claim to have links to high street stores, boarding school dormitories, brothels and hotel bedrooms. They call themselves names such as ‘Voyeur Web’, ‘Peeping Moe’ and ‘Sneaky Peaks’ and they all charge around $5-$10 a month access. For legal reasons many of the sites that claim to have real material contain fake images and around 80% of all spycam material is faked. Pornographic photographers are now switching from the more glamorous studio settings to images of a lower quality meant to suggest the models have been caught unaware in a cubical or changing room.

Because of the technology now available and the lowering price of equipment it has become affordable for the real amateur voyeurs to buy and use the equipment on themselves and their neighbours. Surprisingly there are very few legal complications and very few laws anywhere to protect people from the video voyeurs; providing they aren’t trespassing or breaking into peoples homes it would seem to be perfectly legal. Protection against undesirable material on the Internet is co-ordinated by the Internet watch foundation, the IWF, who respond to public complaints. There have been no complaints so far as regards to spycam victims.

With all this material freely available to anyone who wants it, on television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet it would seem that we are a nation of voyeurs who all take pleasure in some form of voyeurism. Within all the different distinctions, discussion and revelations I have exposed and compiled here, will the notion of voyeurism still remain hidden behind the preconceived ideals we started with? Will it still be regarded as an act of the deprived and socially inept? Or can it be accepted as a trait apparent in us all, men and women regardless of gender, class and age?

Throughout the history of film, photography and Twentieth Century culture; pornography, erotica and voyeurism have always existed in one shape or form. Technology has improved it but culture and society have made it grow and are slowly pushing it more and more into the mainstream.

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