Scopophilia is, I suppose, literally erotic, containing as it does juxtapositions of luminous examples of peinture a l'huile with Goldin-composed, supersaturated chromogenic, separated-at-birth photographs.
Thus, for Riggs, Renov's suggestion of rethinking the documentary gaze as constitutively multiform was well founded, as Riggs's cinematic project involves the necessary destabilization of the binary of documentary epistephilia and fictional
scopophilia, for a new understanding of film expression.
In his conflation of
scopophilia and exhibitionism, linked "instincts" that exist somewhat "independently" from erotogenic sexual activity, with cruelty, Freud appears to suggest that these drives hinge on pitilessly attempting to exert dominance over the entire exhibitionistic spectacle.
Laura Mulvey writes, "fetishistic
scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something fascinating in itself" (42).
tend to represent themselves as "true" to some sort of nature, to universal structures of "Ideal" nature, or to codes that are "wired in" to the visual cortex and to deeply instinctual roots of visual pleasure associated with
scopophilia, voyeurism, and the desire to see without being seen.
The trope of the "travelling gaze" relies on the Foucauldian understanding of
scopophilia as a disciplining and an ordering relationship of power.
But the understanding of time and space to which Agee intermittently appeals is a kind of knowing that to a degree resists domination by resisting
scopophilia in both its social-documentary and romantic-aesthetic forms.
While the narrator-character denies that her
scopophilia could be construed as sexual in nature (9-10) it becomes clear that she views the young man as an object of desire:
Decking out 40000 with wallpaper, vinyl, paintings, mobiles, paper fringe and video work, all covered in distorted black-and-white fashion patterning--houndstooth, checkerboard, polka dots, cowhide--CamLab creates an (obviously ineffectual) camouflage of psychedelic decoration for their investigation of decorative display, subjectivity, and
scopophilia.
She explains the concept of
scopophilia (pleasure in looking), an idea derived from Freud's work Three Essays on Sexuality, as a process where the viewer enjoys watching others and subjecting them to a controlling gaze.
And that is indeed what we find in the passage: a frenzy of
scopophilia and a profanatory urge to defile the object of desire, all the more disorientating because Dominique (in good psychoanalytic fashion) does not understand what is going on, cannot penetrate the secret of his motivations ("je me demandai ce que j'etais venu faire en pareil lieu" [189]).
2) We thereby discover that the generic conventions of the detective story themselves, in their arousing and catering to our
scopophilia, have kept us from reading the dream properly.
