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 "real" life begins. Some 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, everything," they answer, and the child is left to cope with this divine intrusion.”
Cinema has evolved in two paths. One is spectacle. Like the Phantasmagoria, its goal is the creation of a total substitute sensor/ world. The other is peep show, which claims for its realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without need of color, noise, grandeur.”
Excerpts from
The Lords and the New Creatures
Jim Morrison