Voyeurism Quotes

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ~ Jennifer Birkett

Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too. ~ Andy Warhol

The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal. ~ Chris Hedges

They never saw him drawing pictures of them naked at their antics in his notebook. ~ Virginia Woolf

I was not exploiting any real individual's story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality. ~ Emma Donoghue

'Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons' is a kind of novel in verse about the arc of an urban lesbian love affair - and I suppose there is a certain amount of voyeurism in the consumption of fiction! The 'Sancerre' poems here are more contemplative and about the relationship of the individual to local and wider histories. ~ Marilyn Hacker

There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching. ~ Sontag, Susan

Prostitution is illegal in many places, but porn is not. But what is porn if not sex for money, caught on camera? What the law actually prohibits then is having paid sex in private and not allowing anyone to watch. ~ Merlyn Gabriel Miller

The beatings are further proof that Spike's "humiliation," the level to which he has sunk, and a physical sign of vulnerability. But they are also "sexy wounds" (as Buffy playing Robot-Buffy says in "Intervention"), since Spike's body is displayed to be looked at. Further, as with Angel and Dru, Spike and Buffy's relationship uses pain/violence as eroticism (when Spike tells Buddy "I love you," she responds "You're in love with pain" ["Smashed"]). Mulvey's association of voyeurism, sadism, and narrative is useful here. ~ Lorna Jowett

I watched you undress. Shame on you! ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

Walking was a habit he'd been unwilling to give up. He couldn't see the point in shutting himself up in a vehivle any more often than he had to, doing damage to the earth and the air in order to avoid using his body.
People did just that all the time, though. Most claimed they needed to save time. It was true they had little enough of that-- their lives were so soon ended. But Nathan didn't see them treating time as precious otherwise. They'd sit in their cars at a fast-food place for fifteen minutes when it would be quicker to park and go inside.
No, he blamed the modern culture of urgency. Only the most urgent sensations, emotions, and situations were considered important. They called it living life to the fullest. Not surprisingly, many sought numbness in alcohol or the pervasive voyeurism of reality TV while others tried to live a perpetual peak experience through drugs, sex, or celebrity. Ordinary lives, ordinary living had little value.
Nathan thought people needed to wash dishes by hand sometimes. Prepare their own meals more often. And take walks. ~ Eileen Wilks

Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to give comfort [to] fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy petting – but novels are the full monte. Frankly, if I didn't enjoy writing novels I wouldn't do it – the world hardly needs any more and I can think of numerous more useful things someone with my skills could be engaged in. As it is, the immersion in parallel but believable worlds satisfies all my demands for vicarious experience, voyeurism and philosophic calithenics. I even enjoy the mechanics of writing, the dull timpani of the typewriter keys, the making of notes – many notes – and most seducttive of all: the buying of stationery. That the transmogrification of my beautiful thoughts into a grossly imperfect prose is always the end result doesn't faze me: all novels are only a version- there is no Platonic ideal. But I'd go further still: fiction is my way of thinking about and relating to the world; if I don't write I'm not engaged in any praxis, and lose all purchase. ~ Will Self

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place? ~ William S. Burroughs

All reality TV shows are a triumph of voyeurism. They choose contestants who are ill-suited and slightly freakish. ~ Terry Wogan

Just don't stare at my ass, Landemere," he added.
"I wasn't staring at your ass," Arranulf, who had been staring at his ass, said. ~ Andrew Ashling

It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked. For many centuries, in Christian art, depictions of hell offered both of these elemental satisfactions. ~ Sontag, Susan

I think reality TV is so popular because it makes everyone in the country feel like, 'Hey, I can be on TV. I can be a star overnight.' I think America also has a little voyeurism in their hearts. ~ Shanna Moakler

I studied a truckload of true crime, praying for illumination, but most true crime relies on luridness and voyeurism for effect. ~ Poe Ballantine

Having been in the newspaper business for a long, long time, I often wonder, Why do we actually need to know about something like a bus crash in Bangladesh that has no effect on us at all? That can be nothing other than voyeurism. ~ Simon Winchester

Most men don't mind if another woman watches. It's the women who are watching who don't want to be seen. ~ John Irving

There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news. ~ Kim Edwards

Human beings crave for novelty and welcome even wars. Who opens the morning papers without the wild hope of huge headlines announcing another great disaster? Provided of course that it affects other people and not oneself. Rupert liked order. But there is no man who likes order who does not give houseroom to a man who dreams of disorder. The sudden wrecking of the accustomed scenery, so long as one can be fairly sure of a ringside seat, stimulates the bloodstream. And the instinctive need to feel protected and superior ensures, for most of the catastrophes of mankind, the shedding by those not immediately involved of but the most crocodile of tears. ~ Iris Murdoch

What they call philosophy I call literature; what they call literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip; and what they call gossip I call (generously) voyeurism. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world. ~ Kobo Abe

Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives
their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness. ~ Chaim Potok

Mizuko wonders if the GPS is still monitoring their progress. She has the distinct feeling of being watched by something in the darkness. This makes watching the footage and reading the story at the same time a strange experience, as if she can sense me, a menace from the future, following them along the dark road. ~ Olivia Sudjic

It was a miraculous thing to be able to watch the person you love undetected, ~ Ann Patchett

Satan's warming me a throne, that's how long [I've been watching you]. Not a chair, not a seat at the bar. The big guy's got a throne with my name on it. ~ Sarah Winter