Voyeur TV

LAURIE HOWELL, host:

As concerned as Americans are about space and privacy, it seems a bit hypocritical to be so incredibly mesmerized by voyeuristic television shows. But many of us are. Thanks to talk shows and reality TV, we can now see real people, not actors, do just about everything on television. People confess the most intimate and embarrassing details of their lives, they get arrested, and we even see them beat each other up and nearly kill themselves.

Lately, we've been able to watch real people on a deserted island endure the elements, hunger and, worst of all, each other, so one of them can win a million dollars. And now CBS brings us "Big Brother": 10 people sharing a house with 28 cameras and 60 microphones--similar to the film "EdTV," but truth will probably be stranger than fiction.

Voyeurism is now its own entertainment genre, but film critic Bob Mondello says it began much longer ago than you might think.

BOB MONDELLO reporting:

When Thomas Edison was casting about for something to film with the new kinetoscope he'd just patented in 1896, one of the first things he came up with was "The Kiss." Actors John Rice and May Irwin were playing the romantic leads in a Broadway stage show at the time and Edison got them to re-enact for his camera the play's climatic embrace.

(Soundbite of film projector)

MONDELLO: It's hard to get too excited over "The Kiss" today. The players spend more time puckering than they do in physical contact. It's kind of a peck, really. And the whole film lasts less than 30 seconds. Still, that was enough to offend moralists when they saw those big projected lips meeting in what was then considered a lascivious embrace. They flooded newspapers with letters and politicos with petitions. It was the very first moralistic reaction to cinematic romance and it set the tone for nearly everything that's followed.

(Soundbite from "Rear Window")

Ms. THELMA RITTER (Actress): New York state's sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse.

MONDELLO: Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window."

(Soundbite from "Rear Window")

Ms. RITTER: And they got no windows in the workhouse. You know, in the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker. Any of those bikini bombshells you're always watching worth a red-hot poker? Oh, dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms.

MONDELLO: Thelma Ritter scolding Jimmy Stewart for doing exactly what moviegoers had been doing in the half-century since "The Kiss." Film makes voyeurs of us all by letting us stare at intimate moments. In "Rear Window," Jimmy Stewart think he's witnessed a murder, and as he gets obsessive about sitting in the dark observing his neighbors, it's the fear of getting caught watching that the movie exploits. Hitchcock knew that we, because we were also sitting in the dark watching, would identify with that. A few years later, British director Michael Powell decided to implicate the audience even further in a brilliantly creepy film called "Peeping Tom."

(Soundbite from "Peeping Tom")

Unidentified Man #1: The most interest is in the reactions of the nervous system to fear.

Unidentified Woman #1: Fear?

MONDELLO: "Peeping Tom" depicts a psychotic filmmaker whose perversely customized camera allows him to photograph women watching themselves die. Of course, it was the audience that was peering through his lens, and the effect proved so distressing to viewers in 1960 that it pretty much ended the director's career. Within a couple of decades, other films, including the aptly titled "Sex, Lies and Videotape," established that Powell was just ahead of his time.

(Soundbite from "Sex, Lies and Videotape")

Ms. LAURA SAN GIACOMO: And you just want to ask me questions?

Mr. ROB LOWE: I just want to ask you questions.

Ms. SAN GIACOMO: That's all?

Mr. LOWE: That's all.

Ms. SAN GIACOMO: (Laughs) Is this how you get off or something, taping women talking about their sexual experiences?

Mr. LOWE: Yes.

Ms. SAN GIACOMO: Would anyone else see the tape?

Mr. LOWE: Absolutely not. Nobody else sees the tapes except for me.

Ms. SAN GIACOMO: How do we start?

Mr. LOWE: I turn on the camera and you start talking.

MONDELLO: The camera, you'll notice, has become central to Hollywood notions of voyeurism. Also, privacy. To generations raised on television, just sitting in the dark and watching surreptitiously now seems normal, but add a camera or a hundred hidden cameras, as a popular movie recently did, and it's still possible to make the concept feel pretty racy.

(Soundbite from "The Truman Show")

Unidentified Man #2: Two hundred twenty countries tuned in for his first step. The world stood still for that stolen kiss. And as he grew, so did the technology. An entire human life recorded on an intricate network of hidden cameras and broadcast live and unedited 24 hours a day, seven days a week to an audience around the globe. Coming to you now from Sea Haven Island, enclosed in the largest studio ever constructed, and, along with the Great Wall of China, one of only two manmade structures visible from space, now in its 30th great year, it's "The Truman Show."

MONDELLO: Voyeurism, previously considered an intimate vice, went global with "The Truman Show." And amazing as it now seems, that notion was thought goofy and satirical just two years ago. I'm Bob Mondello.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #3: This is the true story...

Unidentified Man #4: Of seven strangers.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #5: Meet the Bowler family.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #6: Sixteen Americans forced to abandon ship.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #3: And have their lives taped.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #5: To wash, dress, eat and...

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Woman #2: Pigs who live in a mansion.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #5: They volunteered to go back in time.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #6: Find food and survive.

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #3: "The Real World."

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #5: "1900 House."

(Soundbite of static, music)

Unidentified Man #6: Last week on "Survivor."

Unidentified Woman #3: It was the worst night I've ever slept.

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