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and naked, sometimes offered themselves up to these deprived eyes for private
excitements of their own.
More or less, we're all afflicted with the psychology of the voyeur. Not in a
strictly clinical or criminal sense, but in our whole physical and emotional
stance before the world. Whenever we seek to break this spell of passivity, our
actions are cruel and awkward and generally obscene, like an invalid who has
forgotten how to walk.
The voyeur, the peeper, the Peeping Tom, is a dark comedian. He is
repulsive in his dark anonymity, in his secret invasion. He is pitifully
alone. But, strangely, he is able through this same silence and concealment to
make unknowing partner of anyone within his eye's range. This is his threat
and power.
There are no glass houses. The shades are drawn and
activities are impossible in the open. And these secret events are the voyeur's
game. He seeks them out with his myriad army of eyes — like the child's
notion of a Deity who sees all. «Everything?» asks the child. «Yes, every-
thing», they answer, and the child is left to cope
with this divine intrusion.
The voyeur is masturbator, the mirror his badge, the window his prey.
Urge to come to terms with the «0utside», by
absorbing, interiorizing it. I won't come out,
you must come in to me. Into my womb-garden
where I peer out. Where I can construct a universe
within the skull, to rival the real.
She said, «Your eyes are always black.» The pupil
opens to seize the object of vision.
Imagery is bom of loss. Loss of the «friendly
expanses». The breast is removed and the face
imposes its cold, curious, forceful, and inscrutable
presence.
You may enjoy life from afar. You may look at
things but not taste them. You may caress
the mother only with the eyes.
You cannot touch these phantoms.
French Deck. Solitary stroker of cards. He
dealt himself a hand. Turn stills of the past in
unending permutations, shuffle and begin. Sort
the images again. And sort them again. This
game reveals germs of truth, and death.
The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet
possibly finite, card game. Image combinations,
permutations, comprise the world game.
A mild possession, devoid of risk, at bottom sterile. With an image there is no
attendant danger.
Muybridge derived his animal subjects from the Philadelphia Zoological
Garden, male performers from the University. The women were professional
artists' models, also actresses and dancers, parading nude before the 48
cameras.
Films are collections of dead pictures which are
given artificial insemination.
Films spectators are quiet vampires.
Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All energy and sensation is sucked
up into the skull, a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood. Caligula
wished a single neck for all his subjects that he could behead a kingdom
with one blow. Cinema is this transforming agent. The body exists for the
sake of the eyes; it becomes a dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable
jewels.
Film confers a kind of spurious eternity.
Each film depends upon all the others and drives you on to others. Cinema
was a novelty, a scientific toy, until a sufficient body of works had been
amassed, enough to create an intermittent other world, a powerful, infinite
mythology to be dipped into at will.
Films have an illusion of timelessness fostered by their regular, indomitable
appearance.
The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.
The modem East creates the greatest body of films. Cinema is a new form of
an ancient tradition — the shadow play. Even their theater is an imitation
of it. Bom in India or China, the shadow show was aligned with religious
ritual, linked with celebrations which centered around cremation of the
dead.
It is wrong to assume, as some have done, that cinema belongs to women.
Cinema is created by men for the consolation of men.
The shadow plays originally were restricted to male audiences. Men could
view these dream shows from either side of the screen. When women later
began to be admitted, they were allowed to attend only to shadows.
Male genitals are small faces
forming trinities of thieves
and Christs
Fathers, sons, and ghosts.
A nose hangs over a wall
and two half eyes, sad eyes,
mute and handless, multiply
an endless round of victories.
These dry and secret triumphs, fought
in stalls and stamped in prisons,
glorify our walls
and scorch our vision.
A horror of empty spaces
propagates this seal on private places.