Laura Mulvey discusses voyeuristic viewing pleasures in her article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Mulvey also goes into detail about scopophilia, which encompasses the pleasure in looking and the pleasure in being looked at, and of the misrecognition that occurs between the (male) spectator and the protagonist (scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect). I would like to discuss the evolution of “the long love affair/despair between image and self-image” (Mulvey 18) with the constantly changing world of technology many people now watch films and movies on their computer, so a computer now becomes a form of the cinema screen. Also in today’s society many people have video cameras built into their computers for programs such as skype, ichat and the newest “video chat” sensation: chat roulette. Which leads to spectators becoming the actual subject on the screen and a whole new level of scopophilia and voyeuristic pleasures.
For anyone who does not know what Chat Roulette is, it is a website where one can video chat with someone random, and you can constantly change the person you are chatting with by “next”ing them. Chat Roulette is also notoriously known for being a place where (mainly) men expose themselves and masturbate while video chatting with their random partner, this is the example I will be discussing in further detail. The entire video chatting experience relies on a scopophiliac element, you are watching a person in their personal environment but you are also given the narcissistic element of being able to see yourself in the same window. I believe many people who go on Chat Roulette tend to forget the person in which they are watching/chatting with is an actual physical human being. The use of the screen is too familiar to the viewing of films, so the misrecognition occurring here is the opposite than the one Mulvey discusses. The other (on the computer screen), whom a person chats with becomes an object and maybe even a victim. The males that masturbate on Chat Roulette becomes in a sense what Mulvey calls a Peeping Tom: “fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs … whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching in an active controlling sense, an objectified other.” (17)
This whole idea of exposing oneself on the computer screen, also relates to Linda William’s essay “Film Bodies”. Williams explains “gross” genres pornography, horror, and the women’s film and discusses their sadistic and/or masochistic appeals to the spectator. If we were to evaluate male genital exposure on Chat Roulette in the same way William’s evaluated the film genres the person who exposes himself on the screen would be a sadomasochistic spectator. This is because the viewer identifies with the image on the screen (because it is in fact himself) and this exposure is in a sense humiliating, but he receives pleasure in the humiliation, why else would he be doing it? It is also in a more abstract sense sadistic because the sight of the man’s genitals is surprising and humiliating for the other spectator on the other side. The other spectator becomes a victim who must look at the man exposing himself (at least for a couple seconds until they can click “next”), but the other spectator is also a voyeur because everyone who goes on Chat Roulette in some sense is a voyeur.
I think this Chat Roulette example also relates to the film Peeping Tom (Powell 1960). In the final scene of the movie Mark finally reveals the full weapon attached to his film camera he has been using to kill the women. It is a mirror that reflects so that the victim can see their own fear and watch their own death. In the end he kills himself the way he has killed his victims. The Chat Roulette example is similar because the computer screen is the spectator’s mirror and their film device because they not only see themselves but they also see their “victims” reactions and that is where the pleasure comes from. Williams explains “fetishes instead of genitals, looking instead of touching” (Williams 6) which clearly describes Mark’s scopophilia in Peeping Tom, but in the Chat Roulette example I would re-appropriate the quote to be “fetishes and genitals, looking and touching.”
Here is a gross/funny blog of a girl who does screen captures of her on Chat Roulette with people who expose themselves. Warning: Contains nudity. http://chatroulettepricks.tumblr.com/
