Spy on Your Neighbors!
What are they up to over there?
The Rome daily “La Repubblica,” Italy’s second largest paper with about 530 thousand newsstand copies a day, just behind Milan’s “Corriere della Sera,” is running a photo contest that we find a little difficult to imagine in an Anglo-Saxon legal and cultural environment.
Under the somewhat breathless headline “The Secrets of the Window Across the Street” and then some ennobling citations of the Hitchcock film with Jimmy Stewart, “Rear Window” (1954), it invites readers to spy on their neighbors and share the result over the Internet.
For those of you who do not remember what that movie was about, it’s the one in which Stewart portrays a photographer who, stuck at home with a broken leg, begins snooping obsessively in the windows of his neighbors across a back alley. He then comes to believe he has witnessed a murder being committed by Raymond Burr, of all people. Stewart’s glamorous girlfriend, Grace Kelly, is at first not impressed by his pathetic voyeurism and is skeptical about any crime having taken place, but eventually comes around and helps solve the mystery.
“Cinema intellectuals” here – assuming the two terms are not mutually exclusive – just go nuts for that kind of thing.
At any rate, having got the moral cover story in place – if Alfred Hitchcock put it into a film it is art rather than snooping – La Repubblica then reminds readers that cameras are about “peeking” and invites the public to do its worst and to submit the outcome to its site. No mention is made of “releases,” “privacy” or other such foolishness, The paper says “several thousand” nosy neighbors have so far submitted snaps.
What do you suppose is happening in the entry above? Are they looking at baby pictures? Is that a drug deal going down? Could one of those women be selling a kidney to another? Doesn’t Francesca look a sight in that cheap house dress? Do you suppose it’s a nightgown and she just hasn’t bothered to change? Trash anyway…
6.04.08
A Nice Place to Visit It's Such a Great Airline, Let's Keep It!