The Space of Rear Window John Belton In Book III of the Republic, Plato identifies two distinct and op- posed modes of representation-imitation (or mimesis) and simple narration (or diegesis).1 Contemporary literary theory has inherited this distinction in the form of mimetic and diegetic theo- ries of narration, which range in sophistication from the simple opposition of drama, which "shows" a narrative, and the novel, which "tells" it, to the more complex narrative theories of Wayne Booth and Gerard Genette, which view narration as a fusion of mimetic and diegetic techniques.2 Though the cinema has tradi- tionally been regarded as a dramatic form because it presents itself to its viewers as pure "story" rather than mediated "discourse" (to borrow Emile Benveniste's terms),3 it clearly mixes narrative modes. Classical narrative cinema tells as it shows; indeed, it can only tell through showing. Dramatic spectacles are staged for and then "read" by the camera, and this reading narrativizes them. Cinematic narrative techniques clearly rely upon certain codes of representation that were previously developed in the plastic arts, the theater, and literary narratives. Any notion of "pure" cinema-of a mode of expression that is unique to the cinema and that has evolved autonomously out of the singular nature of the medium's raw materials-must be qualified by the essential impu- rity of the cinema's quasi-theatrical, quasi-novelistic mode of nar- ration. The figure most frequently identified with the notion of "pure cinema" within classical Hollywood filmaking is Alfred Hitchcock, who often cites Rear Window as his "most cinematic" work because it "is told only in visual terms."4 Yet Rear Window is arguably one of Hitchcock's most "theatrical" films. In what This content downloaded from 205.175.119.241 on Thu, 18 Oct 2018 23:04:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1122 JOHN BELTON follows, I want to map out the representation of space in Rear Window in terms of its quasi-theatrical, quasi-cinematic nature and to suggest that the film, as a limit-text, explores the parameters of theatrical and cinematic modes of narration. The credit sequence of Rear Window is set against three windows whose bamboo blinds rise in succession to reveal a Greenwich Vil- lage courtyard and the apartment buildings which enclose it. The film ends (that is, before the current distributor, Universal, re- placed Paramount's original logo and end titles with its own) with a similar theatrical effect-the successive lowering of these same shades. Beyond the curtained windows lies a space that serves as both a stage and a screen, a space controlled by the authorial pres- ence of Alfred Hitchcock, who invisibly raises and lowers the bamboo shades to open and close the film's narrative. This space is quasi-theatrical in its pro-filmic unity and three-dimensionality and yet also cinematic in the flat, multi-win.

1. The Space of Rear Window
John Belton
In Book III of the Republic, Plato identifies two distinct and
op-
posed modes of representation-imitation (or mimesis) and
simple narration (or diegesis).1 Contemporary literary theory
has
inherited this distinction in the form of mimetic and diegetic
theo-
ries of narration, which range in sophistication from the simple
opposition of drama, which "shows" a narrative, and the novel,
which "tells" it, to the more complex narrative theories of
Wayne
Booth and Gerard Genette, which view narration as a fusion of
mimetic and diegetic techniques.2 Though the cinema has tradi-
tionally been regarded as a dramatic form because it presents
itself
to its viewers as pure "story" rather than mediated "discourse"
(to
borrow Emile Benveniste's terms),3 it clearly mixes narrative
modes. Classical narrative cinema tells as it shows; indeed, it
can
only tell through showing. Dramatic spectacles are staged for
and
then "read" by the camera, and this reading narrativizes them.
Cinematic narrative techniques clearly rely upon certain codes
of representation that were previously developed in the plastic
arts, the theater, and literary narratives. Any notion of "pure"
cinema-of a mode of expression that is unique to the cinema

2. and
that has evolved autonomously out of the singular nature of the
medium's raw materials-must be qualified by the essential
impu-
rity of the cinema's quasi-theatrical, quasi-novelistic mode of
nar-
ration. The figure most frequently identified with the notion of
"pure cinema" within classical Hollywood filmaking is Alfred
Hitchcock, who often cites Rear Window as his "most
cinematic"
work because it "is told only in visual terms."4 Yet Rear
Window is
arguably one of Hitchcock's most "theatrical" films. In what
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1122 JOHN BELTON
follows, I want to map out the representation of space in Rear
Window in terms of its quasi-theatrical, quasi-cinematic nature
and
to suggest that the film, as a limit-text, explores the parameters
of
theatrical and cinematic modes of narration.
The credit sequence of Rear Window is set against three
windows
whose bamboo blinds rise in succession to reveal a Greenwich
Vil-
lage courtyard and the apartment buildings which enclose it.
The
film ends (that is, before the current distributor, Universal, re-

3. placed Paramount's original logo and end titles with its own)
with a
similar theatrical effect-the successive lowering of these same
shades. Beyond the curtained windows lies a space that serves
as
both a stage and a screen, a space controlled by the authorial
pres-
ence of Alfred Hitchcock, who invisibly raises and lowers the
bamboo shades to open and close the film's narrative. This
space is
quasi-theatrical in its pro-filmic unity and three-dimensionality
and yet also cinematic in the flat, multi-windowed design of
the
apartment complex across the way, which resembles nothing
other
than a series of little movie screens. In front of the shades lies
another space that, though architecturally segregated from that
of
the courtyard, is similarly theatrical and cinematic. The
apartment
interior is not merely a spectatorial space from which the main
action beyond the window is seen, but serves as a space for the
playing out of another drama. Both spaces invoke notions of
the
theater and the cinema and use them as metaphors through
which
specators are asked to read the action that takes place within
these
spaces.
The overall organization of the film, whose action is divided
into
distinct, temporally continuous units by a series of fades,
resembles
the act structure of the theater, which breaks down the action
into

4. discrete "blocks" of time. In this way the structure of the
narrative
suggests that of a drama built around scene or act divisions.
Even
the device of the fade is theatrical, resembling the lighting
tech-
niques of the curtain-less theater, which raises and dims the
lights
in lieu of the raising and lowering of a curtain. The fade is
clearly
a "filmic" device which draws upon theatrical convention;
Hitch-
cock's use of it here, in the context of other theatricalisms,
gives
further support to the notion that the film is engaged in a
playful
acknowledgement of its own constructedness, an acknowledge-
ment which it shares with its audience.
Within the film itself, the shades are once again lowered (and
later raised)-this time by a character within the fiction, Lisa,
who
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M L N 1123
first announces "show's over for tonight," then picks up an
over-
night case with her lingerie in it and carries it to an adjoining
room
to change. Displaying the nightwear to Jeff, she describes it as

5. a
"preview of coming attractions." Lisa's dramatic gesture with
the
curtains and her comments about "coming attractions" function,
like the credit sequences themselves which acknowledge Hitch-
cock's magisterial presence as narrator, to lay bare the film's
de-
vices.5 Hitchcock playfully uses Lisa to unmask the film's
status as
staged spectacle by having her call attention to the narrative's
two
central "attractions"-the murder mystery plot that is "playing"
across the courtyard (the show that is over) and the love story
that
is being acted out within Jeff's apartment (the coming
attractions)
-and to characterize them as "constructions." Not only are the
film's two main playing spaces thus metaphorically identified
as
sites for fictional spectacle, but Lisa consciously identifies
herself
here (and elsewhere) as a construction similar to that created
for
the stage or the screen and presents herself as a spectacle for
the
male gaze. Earlier, her introduction in step-printed close-up as
she
kisses Jeff in his darkened room presents her as a magical
materia-
lization of male erotic fantasy, appearing, as it were, out of the
dreams of the still-sleeping Jeffries. Then, wearing an eleven
hundred dollar Parisian dress, Lisa introduces herself, dramati-
cally turning on lamp after lamp as she recites each of her three
names-Lisa, Carol, Freemont. In both instances, Lisa's self-
spec-
tacularization directs Jeff's (and our) attention away from the

6. space of the courtyard and toward that of the interior of the
apart-
ment, effectively opposing the lure of one space with that of
an-
other.
In general, the film's narrative is built around a pattern of alter-
nation from story-space to story-space, from scenes in Jeff's
apart-
ment which foreground the action taking place there to scenes
playing out across the way, from Jeff as "actor" to Jeff as
"spec-
tator." And Lisa herself openly competes for Jeff's attention
with
the space across the way. Indeed, as she lowers the shades, she
jokingly threatens "to move into an apartment across the way
and
do the dance of the seven veils every hour" in order to catch
Jeff's
eye. By the end of the film, with Lisa's entry into Thorwald's
space
and Thorwald's into Jeff's, the film's spaces have been revealed
as
continuous rather than segregated and its stories as intertwined
rather than opposed. The love story can only find resolution
through the solution of the murder mystery by Jeff and Lisa
acting
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1124 JOHN BELTON

7. together as a team. Though still object of spectacle for Jeff,
Lisa
has inserted herself, as spectacle, within the space of the
murder
plot, i.e., Thorwald's apartment, where she herself is in danger.
In
a dramatic turnabout, Jeff's space suddenly becomes the object
of
Thorwald's gaze, and, dangling out of his own rear window,
Jeff is
himself inserted into this same plot; and, much as he earlier
watched helplessly as Thorwald attacked Lisa, so she now
watches
as Thorwald attacks him, their relationship thus perversely
sealed
through this exchange of roles and places.
Given this spatial portrait of the film as a whole, what I want
to
examine in greater detail is how one part of that larger space
that which is seen through Jeff's rear window-relates to the
other and to explore that relationship in terms of the film's
overall
construction and narrativization of space. At the same time, I
want
to discuss the way in which the film plays with the differences
be-
tween theatrical and cinematic notions of space and, through
this
process, calls attention to its own construction of space. In this
way,
the film explores and lays bare the nature of cinematic space,
re-
vealing it to be an amalgam of theatrical and cinematic
qualities.

8. Much as the curtain-effect conjoins notions of theater and
cinema (in that both traditional, legitimate theaters and first-
run
movies houses regularly used curtains to open and close their
pro-
grams in the 1950s), so are the spaces in Rear Window both
theat-
rical and cinematic. I am using the term "theatrical" metaphori-
cally to describe a certain kind of cinematic space, a space that
re-
sembles but is not identical to that found in classical theater.
Traditional theatrical space is the product of architecture; it is
de-
fined by the proscenium, beyond which space does not exist for
the viewer.6 Though, as Andre Bazin and Christian Metz point
out, the convention of the footlights may tend to separate the
spectacle from the spectator, the two, like Jeff and his
courtyard
within the film, must necessarily share the same overall space.7
This unity of space is literalized in Rear Window through its
single-
set construction, which imposes certain theatrical constraints
upon
the action.
At the other end of the film's spatial spectrum lies what I
would
call "cinematic" film space, a space that is "other" for the
spectator,
who is necessarily segregated from it, physically prohibited
from
entry into it.8 Not bound by the Aristotlean unities which
dominate
the traditional theater, cinematic film space is, with the

9. exception
of certain single-take films, such as Rope (whose space might
be
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MLN 1125
described, using the above distinction, as "theatrically
cinematic,"),
constructed out of flat, temporally and spatially discontinuous
images which the codes of classical narrative cinema have
taught
spectators to transform into an illusorily continuous space.
Rear Window plays with the differences between theatrical and
cinematic film space, relying on set design and certain kinds of
camera movements to establish a concrete, unified, theatrical
space
and on editing, framing, and camera movement to construct a
more abstract, psychological, cinematic film space. At the same
time, the film plays with the psychology of traditional
theatrical
and cinematic spaces, i.e., with spectators' attitudes towards
and
understandings of those spaces. In particular, the film exploits
tra-
ditional notions of theatrical space as resistant to and cinematic
space as conducive to manipulation for purposes of
narrativization

10. and then collapses the two, rendering both kinds of space
equally
manipulatable and narrativizable, though this is achieved in
dif-
ferent ways.9 The theatrical-cinematic distinction is most com-
monly articulated in terms of the concepts "showing" versus
"telling" (see Booth, or Scholes and Kellogg), mimesis versus
die-
gesis (Plato), and/or spectacle versus narrative (Mulvey).10
This
distinction is in need of qualification in that showing and
telling,
mimesis and diegesis, and spectacle and narrative are
discursive
modes which differ in degree, not in essential nature; drama is
diegetic as well as mimetic, telling as it shows, and cinema
involves
"both the presentation of actions and their mediation."1 But
what
concerns me here are not so much theories of narration as the
psychologies of different kinds of space in terms of their
conduci-
veness to narrativization. In this context, space in the classical
the-
ater is, as Boris Eikhenbaum argues, understood as a given,
some-
thing to-be-filled-in, and resistant (though not entirely
invulner-
able) to attempts to reshape it.12 It presents the narrator with
an
obstacle of sorts which must be overcome by the forceful
presence
of an authorial voice which directs spectatorial attention within
a

11. fixed space. Space in the cinema, in as much as it is flat and,
through montage, discontinuous, is seen less as a given than as
a
construction; it is a transformation of the real, bearing the
marks
of an intervening discursive presence.
Both of the spaces that I wish to discuss are constructed: theat-
rical film space is a literal construction, a feature of the pro-
filmic
set design, while cinematic film space is a more figurative
construc-
tion, the result of medium-specific techniques such as framing,
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1126 JOHN BELTON
camera movement, and editing.13 And the nature of their con-
struction determines, in large part, the role these spaces play in
the
film's production of meaning.
The set on which Rear Window was shot consisted of seven
apart-
ment buildings, most of which were, at least, five or six storeys
in
height. The apartment houses were built with a slight forcing of
perspective in order to enhance, through changes in scale, the
illu-
sion of depth. "At least thirty of the apartments worked-that is,
they were lit and furnished to suit the characters of their occu-

12. pants."14 The sets are designed to satisfy narrative demands.
Miss
Torso, for example, is provided with a fairly open space
because
she is a dancer and her movements require it; the shape of her
windows permit us to see her dance. The space of her
apartment is
continuous, unlike that of the Thorwalds. The Thorwald set,
though apparently identical to that of the couple with the dog
(above them) and that of Miss Lonelyhearts (below them),
empha-
sizes the couple's estrangement; they occupy separate rooms-
he,
the living room; she, the bedroom; even the color of the paint
on
the walls of these two rooms differs, which is not the case for
walls
in any other apartment. The couple with the dog are routinely
seen together, on the fire escape for example, while Miss
Lonely-
hearts, though alone, repeatedly moves from room to room,
uni-
fying, to some extent, her space by moving easily through it.
Hitchcock's set design and staging turns the Thorwald's
windows
into fixed framing devices which dramatize their isolation from
one another and their discordance as a couple.
Each working apartment in the elaborate set was individually
wired so that it could be lit separately. The lighting board with
its
control switches was located in Jeff's apartment, behind the
camera, enabling Hitchcock to direct the lighting from a central
location. The unique nature of the set and Hitchcock's decision
to
shoot the film primarily from the vantage point of Jeff's apart-

13. ment forced the director to take unusual measures in his
direction
of actors. The movements of those actors across the courtyard
were directed by Hitchcock-from behind the camera in Jeff's
apartment-by using short-wave radios and outfitting the actors
with flesh-colored receivers, a communication procedure which
permitted Hitchcock to co-ordinate background with
foreground
action more easily.15 This production information, together
with
the overall design of the set, reinforces the notion that the
film's
space is centered around the apartment of its central character.
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M L N 1127
Contemporary theorists who link cinematic space to the codes
of
Renaissance perspective would view Rear Window's spatial
features
as a further instance of the "centering" properties of cinematic
space in general, which tends to address a subject whose
position
that space determines.16 Thus Jeff might be said to occupy a
point
within the space of the film which identifies him, in a purely
spatial
way, with the traditional film spectator. At any rate,
Hitchcock's art
direction here has rendered the "theatrical" quality of the set

14. de-
sign "cinematic." The set has been built for the camera and for
the
cinema spectator, placing them at its central station point.
The set design reproduces the conditions of spectatorship in the
conventional movie theater. In this way, it is possible to see the
film, as Jean Douchet and others do, as being about
spectatorship.17
Jeff functions in one space as a surrogate spectator, watching
events on a giant screen or series of mini-screens across the
way. 18
The basic desires which spectators bring to the cinema-desires
for sex, romance, adventure, comedy, etc.-are realized on these
mini-screens. Miss Torso's window, as screen, recapitulates the
subject matter of primitive, pre-1905 peep shows which feature
women dressing and/or undressing and erotic dancing.19 Miss
Lonelyhearts offers us the woman's picture-a melodrama of ro-
matic longing and isolation of the sort found in Now Voyager.
The
composer's window, barred to symbolize his frustration,
reveals, as
Robert Stam has suggested, the essential scenario of a success
mu-
sical, in which the struggling artist is finally recognized.20 The
couple on the fire escape belong solidly to the world of
screwball
comedy-that is, until the moment of awful truth when their dog
is discovered murdered. And on Thorwald's screen plays a
noirish
crime film which reworks the murderous love triangles of
James
M. Cain.
In considering the film's set design, one must, of course, re-
member that Hitchcock, as a former art director and set

15. designer
himself, has always paid close attention to matters of design.21
Rear
Window, as a project, enables Hitchcock to indulge his passion
for
design. At the same time, the project poses certain challenges
to
him as a designer, especially the difficulty of working within
the
restrictions of a single set in a unified space, which are
restrictions
that he had earlier explored in Lifeboat and Rope.
More so than these earlier films, Rear Window displays a
remark-
able coincidence of theme and design. The central character's
im-
mobility within the fiction clearly dictates the design of the set
as
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1128 JOHN BELTON
well as the structure of the narrative. Since Jeff cannot leave
his
apartment, his world is effectively reduced to the immediate
visual
and aural space around him (except for occasional telephone
con-
versations with off-screen characters, whose voices refer to a
source that is actually elsewhere, although the telephone gives

16. them a source within the scene). Everything else is excluded.
The confined space of the courtyard mirrors Jeff's confinement
to his apartment and to his wheelchair.22 As in the theater,
there is
no space beyond the parameters of the set. The exception which
proves the rule is the narrow section of the "outside" world
which
is seen through the alleyway next to the Sculptress' apartment.
Though it suggests access to an "elsewhere," through which we
can
see traffic and anonymous pedestrians, it is as contained a
space as
that of the courtyard. Indeed, Miss Lonelyhearts' entry into that
outside space-she goes to a bar across the street where she
picks
up a young man-reveals its essentially confining nature; it pro-
vides no escape for her but returns her to an even more
desperate
isolation. The young man's aggressive sexual advances are
more
than she had bargained for. Though she successfully fights him
off, her failure to find "her true love" in this foray into the
outside
world leads eventually to her decision to attempt to take her
own
life later in the film.
This spatial restriction and Hitchcock's reliance upon a single,
more or less fixed camera perspective, which is firmly rooted
in
Jeff's apartment for the bulk of the film, would normally tend
to
limit narrative complexity, preventing, for example, cut-aways
to
other events taking place elsewhere in the city or preventing

17. entry
into other spaces or perspectives which might facilitate
narrative
exposition or broaden point of view. It would also seem to
restrict
the role of sub-plots, that is, of other characters and stories
which
might serve as foils for the central characters and their story.
What
Hitchcock has done is to build his sub-plots into his set design,
using the neighbors across the way as foils for his central
romantic
couple.
At the same time, this fixed camera perspective tends to limit
the
film's narrative perspective in general, preventing other points
of
view or different perspectives on the action, such as we might
find
in the more spatially open work of Jean Renoir or Robert
Altman.
In Rear Window, all other narrative perspectives, such as those
of
Stella, Lisa, and Doyle, which initially differ from Jeff's in
their
refusal to believe him, ultimately give way to his perceptions,
in
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MLN 1129

18. large part because these characters are forced to share his
spatial
position, to see events from the single perspective which is his
own.
For Jeff, trapped at a fixed station point, there is only one
possible
way of interpreting what he has heard and seen; his stubborn
ad-
herence to his reading of events is partially understood in terms
of
his immobilization in space, which prohibits him, unlike the
other
characters, from gaining other perspectives on what is
happening.
Denied the mobility of others, his position in space forces him
to
see something that has been, as it were, anamorphically
encoded
into a larger representation, like the death head in Hans
Holbeins'
The Ambassadors (1533). One might argue, then, that the film
presents us with two psycho-spatial systems; by "psycho-
spatial," I
mean that the spaces exist as perceived from different
subjective
perspectives, 1) Jeff's and 2) that of the characters around him.
In
this way, Jeff, who is figuratively de-centered in his variance
from
the perspective of other, more mobile (and thus presumably
more
"objective") characters, attempts to re-center the views of

19. others
around his deviant, de-centered view. Thus the more that the
other characters come to share his space-such as Lisa who
moves
in on him and spends the night-the more able they are to share
his understanding of what has and is still taking place across
the
courtyard.
The film not only overcomes the potential restriction imposed
on it by the set's unity of space, but it actually uses that
restriction,
transforming it into a productive limitation, which serves to
further
reinforce the confined nature of Jeff's perspective and our
forced
identification with it-without sacrificing the narrative diversity
of
more conventional screenplays. In short, Hitchcock's script
makes
the film's spaces and the set design perform double duty: the
set
both establishes a concrete playing space for the immediate
action
and, at the same time, functions abstractly, referring to other,
un-
seen spaces. For example, although we never get to see Lisa's
fash-
ionable, uptown apartment, it nonetheless exists for us,
metaphor-
ically displaced (and down-graded in status) in the apartments
of
Miss Torso and Miss Lonelyhearts.
As Lisa prepares dinner from "21" for Jeff, Jeff watches Miss
Lonelyhearts welcome and toast an imaginary male guest. She

20. drinks alone by herself, starts to cry, and then buries her head
in
her arms. Unaware of the implicit similarity between Miss
Lonely-
hearts and Lisa, who is preparing a dinner for a man (Jeff) who
is
"not really there" for her, i.e., who has withdrawn from any
emo-
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1130 JOHN BELTON
tional commitment to her, Jeff comments that "at least that's
some-
thing you'll never have to worry about." Lisa, acknowledging
her
kinship with Miss Lonelyhearts, replies: "Oh? You can see my
apartment from here, all the way up on 63rd Street?"
Jeff, in turn, likens Lisa to Miss Torso instead, who is enter-
taining three men in her flat: "No, not exactly," he replies, "but
we
have a little apartment here that's probably about as popular as
yours. You remember, of course, Miss Torso?"
When Jeff cynically comments that Miss Torso has chosen the
most prosperous-looking man for her date, Lisa informs Jeff
that
"she's not in love with him-or any of them."
Jeff: "Oh-how can you tell that from here?"

21. Lisa: "You said it resembled my apartment, didn't you?"
In correcting Jeff's reading of the action, Lisa identifies her
own, empty socializing with Miss Torso's, using the latter's
space
and activity to temporarily "stand in" for her own, off-screen
activ-
ities. In this way, the courtyard set takes on a metaphorical
func-
tion, and its spaces become sites for the vicarious playing out
of
fantasy scenarios projected upon it from another space, that of
the
interior of Jeff's apartment.
It has become by now a critical commonplace to connect the
ac-
tivities in Jeff's apartments with those in the apartments across
the
way. Jean Douchet, for example, interprets what Jeff sees in
the
apartments opposite him as projections of his own desires.23
Robin
Wood views each character or story as functioning to comment
on
Jeff's relationship with Lisa.24 The squabbling Thorwalds and
the
overly amorous newlyweds thus become projected options for
Jeff
if he were to marry Lisa, and both options are portrayed as
equally
unacceptable. Hitchcock's direction often supports this notion
of
projected options. For instance, in their first scene together,
Lisa
asks Jeff to leave his job at the magazine and the single,

22. vagabond-
like existence it promotes. As she seductively pleads "isn't it
time
you came home," the camera dollies in and reframes the couple
to
include the newlyweds' closed window in the background,
associ-
ating her indirect proposal of marriage with them.
By the same token, it is surely no coincidence that the Thor-
walds' apartment is directly opposite Jeff's and at a level that is
ap-
proximately the same as his own. Indeed, its frequent presence
in
the background of scenes that take place in Jeff 's apartment
subtly
colors our reading of those scenes. Most significantly, it
provides a
crucial point of reference at the conclusion of Jeff's first
argument
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M L N 1131
with Lisa, when he refuses to leave the magazine and become a
fashion photographer. As Lisa begins to set the table for
dinner,
Jeff looks at the Thorwald apartment which is also engaged in
dinner activity. The mirroring that takes place here is rather
com-

23. plex. Thorwald, who in several respects reflect's Jeff's notion
of
marriage as entrapment and whose plight is compounded by the
fact that his wife is an invalid, serves her dinner in bed. She
openly
rejects this husbandly gesture by tossing aside the flower which
he
had put on her tray. Meanwhile, Lisa, whom Jeff has just
rebuffed,
prepares and serves dinner to Jeff, who is also, like Mrs. Thor-
wald, an invalid. Though Jeff seems to identify himself with
Thor-
wald as the hen-pecked husband in a bad marriage, Hitchcock
complicates this identification by likening Jeff, as ungrateful,
cranky invalid, to Mrs. Thorwald. The sequence clearly
confounds
any simple theory of projection that might reduce the
relationship
between the film's foreground and background to that of one-
for-
one allegory.
The use of the newlyweds' and the Thorwalds' apartments cited
above represents one way in which Hitchcock can make his set
de-
sign function meaningfully within the narrative. But in order to
achieve this in these scenes, Hitchcock needs to articulate a
rela-
tionship between the spaces of the actual set. In other words,
Hitchcock reconstructs, as it were, the overall space in order to
make
it signify at specific points within his narrative, using camera
move-
ment (as with the newlyweds), editing (the Thorwalds at
dinner),
or some other formal device. Hitchcock narrativizes the space,

24. in
part, by drawing it into the temporal continuum of the
narrative,
giving it associations with specific characters or actions at
specific
moments. The distinction that I want to make here concerns the
difference between construction and reconstruction, between an
object, event, or space and a reading of that object, event, or
space.
For instance, the overall set design constructed by Hitchcock
and
his art directors sets forth certain absolute thematic ideas, such
as
the claustrophobia of the enclosed space of the courtyard or the
literal spatial opposition between Jeff's and Thorwald's apart-
ment, which might be seen as floating motifs without any fixed
place in a narrative sequence. These thematic motifs exist
statically
within the set before filming begins. Their construction and
staging
has given them a potential for narrative realization that can
only
be realized by their placement in a temporal sequence.
Their reconstruction begins when characters enter these spaces
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1132 JOHN BELTON
and events take place within them, that is, when the shooting
starts. Camera movement, framing, and editing create the space

25. anew, either realizing ideas implicit in the set, such as the
point-of-
view editing which links Jeff and the Thorwalds during diner,
or
reading the set in a way which elicits a new idea, such as the
re-
framing which positions the newlyweds' window in the back-
ground as Lisa obliquely proposes marriage. In this way,
concrete
space becomes "psychologized," that is, it becomes related to
char-
acter psychology. By a similar process, the original block of
space
becomes narrativized, that is, it is made significant for
narrative
purposes. One example from early in the film will illustrate
what I
mean.
In the first shot after the credit sequence, the camera dollies
out
of Jeff's rear window to explore the set. Though somewhat
narra-
tivized by the camera movement which "reads" the set, the set
exists largely as pure spectacle-something to be looked at and
admired before the story proper begins.25 Subsequently, two
elab-
orate crane shots survey the courtyard, moving from right to
left.
The first surveys the overall space, and the second introduces
spe-
cific characters such as the composer, the couple sleeping on
the
fire escape, Miss Torso, and Jeff. All these characters are
engaged
in apparently random, morning activities. The camera

26. movement
that presents this activity is as much descriptive as narrative in
ef-
fect. The movement functions merely to describe, as it were, an
equilibrium, a state necessary to a narrative but distinct from
the
disruptive process that sets a narrative in motion.26 Though the
narrative has begun, nothing of major narrative significance
has
been initiated, as least nothing that implies temporal linearity
or
involves narrative causality. Indeed, the second crane shot is
not
continuous but actually cuts from the composer to the couple
on
the fire escape, deliberately eliding the space occupied by the
Thorwalds. This enables Thorwald's subsequent entry to disturb
the film's initial, non-narrativized space with a narrative
urgency.
It is important to note that both of these crane shots conclude
their "neo-realist" portrait of daily routine with close-ups of
Jeff,
his back to the window, asleep in his wheelchair. Jeff's
conscious-
ness will play a major role in shaping this space for us. Once
Jeff
wakes up, the story-and the cutting-begins, as Hitchcock de-
ploys point-of-view and reaction shots to counterpoint Jeff's
tele-
phone conversation with Gunnison, his editor at the magazine.
What is interesting about the editing here is that although it
estab-
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27. All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
MLN 1133
lishes Jeff's voyeuristic interest in his neighbors (the
sunbathers,
Miss Torso), it remains rather random in terms of its narrative
function. By that I mean that there is no sense of a connection
between what Jeff is saying and what he is seeing. The two
spaces-
that of Jeff's apartment and that of the neighbors across the
way
-remain separate. That is-until Thorwald enters. As the Willie-
Lomanish salesman returns to his hot apartment, looking
haggard
and at the end of his rope, Jeff, complaining that he has had
nothing to do for the past six weeks but look out of his window
at the neighbors, tells Gunnison that "if you don't pull me out
of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something dras-
tic .... like get married. Then I'll never be able to go
anywhere."
As Jeff and Gunnison talk off-screen about marriage, we see
the
Thorwalds' apartment in which the tired husband is greeted by
a
nagging wife. For the first time in the film, the dialogue and
the
visual action coincide.27 Thorwald is identified with "doing
some-
thing drastic," an identification which sticks with him as a
char-
acter. An expectation is introduced which will soon be realized.
At

28. the same time, Jeff's perception of the Thorwalds' marriage as a
kind of imprisonment and denial of free movement-"I'll never
be able to go anywhere"-relates not only to his present
immobil-
ity in his wheelchair but to his potential marriage to Lisa. In
other
words, the first seeds of the narrative to follow are planted here
and made significant for us by a kind of synchronization of
word
and action. Point-of-view editing and dialogue have begun to
nar-
rativize the space, i.e., to create meaningful relationships
within it.
There will subsequently be references to the random events and
characters seen in these initial crane shots, but, unlike the
Thor-
wald story, their presence here does not introduce narrative ex-
pectations. The narrative recuperates, as it were, these events
and
characters retroactively, developing them into a series of
subplots
tangential to the central narrative. The central narrative-indeed,
all these narratives-becomes tied to and organized around Jeff's
perception. With one crucial exception, i.e., when Jeff falls
asleep
as Thorwald exits with "Mrs. Thorwald" on their way to the
train
station, the events which follow will be understood from Jeff's
point of view.
The exception, I might add, is there to prove the rule. The nar-
rative so effectively allies the spectator with Jeff's reading of
events that, even though we see "Mrs. Thorwald" leave, we
sup-
press that knowledge, prefering instead to suspend our reading

29. of
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1134 JOHN BELTON
its significance until another explanation, more consistent with
Jeff's logic, is made available to us. It soon comes in the form
of
Lisa's pat rebuttal to Doyle's evidence from eyewitnesses:
"We'll
agree they saw a woman-but she was not Mrs. Thorwald. That
is,
not yet."
The shot of "Mrs. Thorwald's" departure reminds us of the
presence of another narrating agency-that of Hitchcock, whose
narrative "consciousness" here exceeds that of the sleeping Jef-
fries. Hitchcock uses this sequence as a snare to complicate our
reading of the film's events and our identification with Jeff.
Though apparently full of significance, the sequence refuses to
deliver up its meaning to us, in large part because it is not read
but
merely described, presented to us through the same sort of
omni-
scient crane shots with which the film began. In terms of
Roland
Barthes' hermeneutic code, this sequence-shot snares,
equivocates,
jams, and provides only partial answers.28 Its meaning is
incom-
plete, awaiting the interpretation of some reader figure and, in

30. that way, permitting the spectator to suspend interpretation of
it.
Two levels of narration are foregrounded by this sequence-
shot-the "subjective" readings of events by Jeffries collide with
the "objective" narration by Hitchcock.29 Moreover, each level
is
identified with different, aesthetically opposed formal devices.
Jeff
reads/narrates via point-of-view and reaction shot editing
patterns.
While also implicitly bound up in this stylistic device,
Hitchcock, as
omniscient narrator, reads/narrates via camera movement. For
ex-
ample, the film's first act of "narration" occurs while Jeff
sleeps,
well before the coincidence of dialogue and action discussed
above. After one of the initial crane shots which surveys the
court-
yard, the camera tracks from Jeff's face to his cast and from
there
to the various objects in his room (smashed camera, action
photo-
graphs), which serve to explain the cause of Jeff's injury: he
pre-
sumably broke his leg taking photographs of a crash at a car
race
when his attempts to get something "dramatically different"
brought him too close to the action. Hitchcock's camera
movement
engages us in a cause and effect logic through which we
assemble
Jeff's "story." Thus implicated in the logic of detection and
posi-
tioned/addressed as readers of clues, we readily identify with

31. Jeff's
attempt to do the same later in the film. This "narration," how-
ever, differs from that which begins with the introduction of
point-of-view editing moments later-not only in its privileging
of
Hitchcock as narrator but also in its essentially descriptive
function.
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M L N 1135
It tells us about Jeff 's character by engaging us in an active
recon-
struction of past events, of a previous story that will relate only
indirectly to the Thorwald murder mystery or the love story. In
other words, it does not cause these other stories or set them in
motion in as direct as way as Thorwalds' (or Lisa's) entry does.
One
might conclude, then, that Hitchcock plays with different kinds
of
narration, exploring the relationship between omniscient and
sub-
jective narrators, which are, in turn, seen in terms of the
different
"psychologies" of camera movement and editing. His use of
these
different narrative voices produces a layered narration, which
constantly shuttles the spectator back and forth from one level
to
another and from identification with one narrative voice to that

32. with another. In playing with different kinds of narration,
Hitch-
cock foregrounds the process of narration itself, making us
aware
of the various mediating agencies through which the story is
told.
The interplay between omniscient and subjective narration
finds
resolution in the final shot of the film, in which the omniscient
narrator is seen to contain and over-ride all other narrative
voices.
The crane shot which surveys the courtyard and those whose
apartments open onto it echoes the film's initial crane shots,
pro-
viding a closure of sorts.30 Yet that closure is over-
determined,
characterized by an implausible simultaneity in the resolution
of
the film's various subplots. The composer and Miss
Lonelyhearts
listen together to his recording of "Lisa;" the childless couple
have
a new dog; Miss Torso welcomes home her short, fat, soldier
boy-
friend; and the newlyweds squabble. Meanwhile, the Thorwald
apartment is being repainted; the new paint covers over the
blood-
stained narrative that is past and presents a fresh surface (a
blank
canvas, as it were) for the playing out of a new story. The
crane
concludes its circular survey of the major characters in the film
with a return to Jeff's apartment, where he is found asleep and
with both legs in plaster casts, a comic doubling which funtions
as

33. something of a "topper," as a gag which recalls and extends the
slow disclosure of the courtyard space and final revelation of
Jeff
in a cast that structured the crane shot which opens the film.
This
gag is itself topped by the final image of Lisa, dressed for a
globe-
trotting adventure and reading (apparently) a book whose title,
Beyond the High Himalayas, suggests her capitulation to Jeff's
way of
life. Yet this image is soon revealed as a deception, a piece of
the-
ater complete with costume (her "male" attire) and props,
which
has been staged for Jeff's benefit. She picks up a copy of
Harper's
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1136 JOHN BELTON
Bazaar, a magazine identified with the "old" Lisa, and begins
to
read it. Her "act," which is designed to deceive Jeff,
recapitulates
the narrator's own "act"-ivity in manipulating/misleading the
film's
spectators.
The neatness of the narrative resolutions which we see in the
final crane shot becomes something of a joke on Hitchcock's
part

34. and draws attention to his own arbitrariness as narrator. Like
Lisa
who offers Jeff a preview of coming attractions and presents
her-
self as spectacle for his gaze, Hitchcock ultimately
spectacularizes
his own presence as narrator. It is as much Hitchcock whom we
have come to see as it is the story which he tells. The concrete
playing spaces of Rear Window thus finally refer us to another,
more abstract space-that of Hitchcock's narration.
Rutgers University
NOTES
(This article is based on a paper delivered at a Hitchcock
conference held at Pace
University in June of 1986.)
1 Plato, Republic, 393a.
2 See Wayne Booth's "Telling as Showing" in his The Rhetoric
of Fiction (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1961), 211-240; and Gerard
Genette's "Frontiers of
Narrative" in his Figures of Literary Discourse, trans. Alan
Sheridan (New York:
Columbia UP, 1982), 128-143.
3 Emile Benveniste, "Les relations de temps dans le verbe
francias," Problemes de
linquistique generate (Editions Gallimard, 1966), 237-250.
4 Alfred Hitchcock, "Rear Window," Take One, 2, no. 2 (1969),
18.

35. 5 The film's reflexivity has, of course, been discussed by
virtually every critic that
has dealt with the film from Jean Douchet and Robin Wood to
Robert Slam
(Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-
Luc Godard [Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press], 1985) and David Bordwell
(Narration in the Fiction
Film [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press], 1985). My
interest here lies with
the ref lexitive aspects of the film's treatment of space rather
than with issues of
plot and character or viewer activity. Thus, I will treat Rear
Window largely in
terms of its exploration of the nature of cinematic space,
hopefully comple-
menting the work of others on the film.
6 Meyerhold's Constructivist theater did away with the curtain
and the pro-
scenium shortly after the turn of the century, and the modern
theater of Brecht
and others repeatedly plays with the notion of the proscenium
and with Aris-
totlean unities. I have used the term "traditional theatrical
space" to distinguish
the classical techniuqes I refer to here from modernist practice,
in which a non-
traditional, theatrical space is created.
I would like to thank Tom Gunning whose comments on the
mss. led to a
rewriting of the discussion of theatrical space.
7 Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? (volume 1), trans. Hugh Gray
(Berkley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1967), 100-102, and Christian Metz,

36. Film Language: A
Semiotics of the Cinema, trans. Michael Taylor (New York:
Oxford UP, 1974),
9-10.
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M L N 1137
8 Indeed, only spectators within films may enter into it, as in
Sherlock Jr. and The
Purple Rose of Cairo.
9 Boris Eikhenbaum makes this distinction between the
resistance of theatrical
space and the conduciveness of cinematic space to
manipulation in "Problems of
Film Stylistics," Screen 15, No. 3 (1974), 25-26.
Eikhenbaum argues that time and space in the cinema are
constructions and
that the cinema does not merely reproduce the time and space
of phenomenal
reality, but actively constructs them. In the theater, however,
time and space are
more or less "naturalistic," i.e., determined by the actual time
and space of the
performance. Thus, theatrical time and space are givens; they
are passive blocks
of theater which resist all effort to shape them. For him,
cinematic time and
space are not merely filled but built (through montage, camera
movement, and

37. other medium-specific devices).
Though Eikhenbaum exaggerates the resistance of theatrical
time and space to
manipulation, his distinction becomes useful in describing the
"psychologies" of
the different times and spaces in the traditional theater and in
montage cinema.
10 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
1961), 3-20, and Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The
Nature of Narrative
(New York: Oxford UP, 1966), 4; Plato, The Republic, Book
III and see discus-
sions of mimesis and diegesis in Andre Gaudreault's "Recit
Scriptural, Recit
Theatral, Recit Filmique: Prologomenes a une Theorie
Narratologique du
Cinema," Doctoral Thesis, University of Paris-Ill, 1983, 57-
138, and David
Bordwell's Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press,
1985), 3-26; Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema," Screen 16,
No. 3 (1975).
11 Thomas Gunning, "D. W. Griffith and the Narrator-System:
Narrative Structure
and Industry Organization in Biograph Films, 1908-1909,"
Doctoral Disserta-
tion, New York University, 1986, 36-37.
12 Eikhenbaum, 25-26.
13 Gunning considers the issue of film narration in a way
which is relevant here.

38. For him, narration takes place on three levels-the organization
and staging of
the pro-filmic event, the reading of that event by the camera
(framing, distance,
angle, movement), and the final reconstruction of this camera-
generated
footage in the editing. See Gunning, 37-40.
14 Joe Hyams, "Hitchcock's Rear Window," New York Herald-
Tribune, August 1,
1954.
15 Frank Scully, "Scully's Scrapbook," n.d., newspaper column
in clippings file on
Rear Window at the Film Study Center of the Museum of
Modern Art.
16 See, for example, Comolli's "Technique and Ideology,"
Baudry's "Ideological
Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus," (both in
Movies and Methods,
Volume II, ed. Bill Nichols [Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1985]) and
Heath's "Narrative Space" in his Questions of Cinema
(Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1981), as well as Noel Carroll's section on Renaissance
perspective in "Address
to the Heathen," October No. 23 (1982).
17 Jean Douchet, "Hitch and His Public," trans. Verena Conley
in A Hitchcock
Reader, ed. by Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague (Ames:
Iowa UP,
1986). 7-8
18 One person has suggested to me that the array of screens

39. resembles a bank of
television sets on display in the window of an electronics store,
a display practice
that persists from the 1950s to the present day.
19 See, for example, the Annabelle dance films (Edison, 1894),
Fatima (1897), From
Showgirl to Burlesque Queen (Biograph, 1903), or Pull the
Curtains Down, Susie.
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1138 JOHN BELTON
20 Stam, 44.
21 Here, I am referring to Hitchcock in a somewhat different
way then I have
before. His former status as art director has nothing to do with
his status as
implied author, narrative presence, or enuniciator; it is merely
part of what
David Bordwell would call his "biographical legend." The
relevance of bio-
graphical information here, like that of on-set production
information earlier,
can be argued only on a figurative not on a literal level. His
biographical legend
informs our reading of the film without literally existing within
it. By the same
token, a critical discussion of the film's set design ought to
acknowledge any

40. extra-filmic criteria that led the critic to focus upon it in the
first place.
22 The sense of claustrophobia produced by the courtyard
design is enhanced by
the shooting of the film within the confines of a studio sound
stage. Shooting on
location (without sets whose perspective has been forced)
would have resulted in
a less centered space and one possessing less sense of being
controlled. Certainly
the sound that was recorded during production on location
would have had a
different, perhaps more open, spatial quality.
23 Douchet, "Hitch and His Public," in A Hitchcock Reader, 7-
8.
24 Robin Wood, Hitchcock's Films, Third Edition (New York:
A.S. Barnes, 1977),
69-70.
25 A similar conjunction of camera movement and spectacular
set design occurs in
the Babylonian sequence of Intolerance; in both instances, the
crane shots have a
descriptive rather than a narrative funciton. Indeed, Griffith
brings his multi-
storied narrative to a halt in order to display his fabulous set.
In early cinema, camera movement is initially associated with
non-narrative ma-
terial, e.g., panoramas, and it acquired a narrative function
only in the
post-1908, Griffith period (though even Griffith, as in the
sequence above, con-
tinues to recognize its descriptive status and associations with

41. pure spectacle).
26 That is, it is the descriptive element of narrative process,
not something that
falls outside of narrative itself.
27 This coincidence of dialogue and action immediately
follows Hitchcock's cameo
appearance in the composer's apartment. Bellour argues that
these appearances
occur "at that point in the chain of events where what could be
called the film-
wish is condensed." See Raymond Bellour, "Hitchcock; the
Enunciator," Ob-
scura No. 2 (1977), 73. Ruth Johnston made a similar point in
her paper on Rear
Window at the Pace conference on Hitchcock (June 1986).
Hitchcock's gesture
of winding the clock here might be seen as a setting of the
narrative in motion
since it is followed, more or less promptly, by Thorwald's
entry.
28 Roland Barthes, SIZ: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (New
York: Hill and Wang,
1974), 75-76.
29 Hitchcock's objectivity here clashes with Jeff 's subjectivity,
where elsewhere the
two narrative voices seem to coincide or agree. Interestingly,
this "objective"
shot initially serves to prevent the audience from seeing the
truth of Thorwald's
guilt, while Jeff's limited subjectivity provides a more accurate
understanding
of what has happened. It is important to note, however, that

42. Hitchcock's 'objec-
tivity' is ultimately redeemed; we discover that we, like
Thorwald's eyewitnesses,
have been had; we misread what we saw. In this way,
"objectivity" has been
revealed to be accessibile only through a problematic
subjectivity (our own
misreading).
30 Closure takes place through two successive gestures, the
crane shot and the
dropping of the bamboo shades, which answer the film's
opening and give the
film a chiastic (abba) structure.
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Contentsp. [1121]p. 1122p. 1123p. 1124p. 1125p. 1126p. 1127p.
1128p. 1129p. 1130p. 1131p. 1132p. 1133p. 1134p. 1135p.
1136p. 1137p. 1138Issue Table of ContentsMLN, Vol. 103, No.
5 (Dec., 1988) pp. 969-1233Volume Information [pp. ]Front
Matter [pp. ]Paul de Man: The Subject of Literary History [pp.
969-994]Lacan's Letter [pp. 995-1011]Déracination: Phèdre's
Monstrous Pedagogy
[pp. 1012-1030]Proust's Influence on Sterne: Remembrance of
Things to Come [pp. 1031-1055]Desired Reconciliations: On
Language as Experiment [pp. 1056-1071]Thinking Before
Totality: Kritik, Übersetzung, and the Language of
Interpretation in the Early Walter Benjamin
[pp. 1072-1097]The Rose of Babylon: Walter Benjamin, Film
Theory, and the Technology of Memory [pp. 1098-1120]The
Space of Rear Window [pp. 1121-1138]ReviewsReview: untitled
[pp. 1139-1143]Review: untitled [pp. 1144-1147]Review:
untitled [pp. 1147-1150]Review: untitled [pp. 1151-
1154]Review: untitled [pp. 1155-1158]Review: untitled [pp.

43. 1159-1163]Review: untitled [pp. 1163-1165]Review: untitled
[pp. 1166-1169]Review: untitled [pp. 1170-1172]Review:
untitled [pp. 1172-1174]Review: untitled [pp. 1174-
1177]Review: untitled [pp. 1177-1180]Review: untitled [pp.
1180-1182]Review: untitled [pp. 1182-1184]Review: untitled
[pp. 1185-1189]Review: untitled [pp. 1189-1190]Review:
untitled [pp. 1191-1193]Review: untitled [pp. 1193-
1195]Review: untitled [pp. 1195-1198]Review: untitled [pp.
1198-1201]Review: untitled [pp. 1201-1204]In Memoriam:
George Armstrong Kelly [pp. 1204-1207]AAUP Benchmarks:
1989 [pp. 1214-1233]Back Matter [pp. ]
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122.3130749476Entire home/apt199121Brad /
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home/apt89502Brad / LizAdams47.6736070968-
122.3938028594Private room79279IanBroadway47.622366025-
122.3159180004Entire home/apt200100TonyhaiHolly
Park47.5341884029-122.2813932344Entire
home/apt18919Seattle OasisBelltown47.6153962664-
122.3486637459Entire home/apt15779AmandaWhittier
Heights47.6794116899-122.3705396261Entire
home/apt70698JamilahBroadway47.6174259787-
122.3267562717Entire
home/apt259143KellyEastlake47.6395260756-
122.3283787422Entire home/apt16559AlLoyal
Heights47.6789013609-122.3818632746Entire
home/apt7586TonyhaiSouth Park47.5254361097-
122.3290193368Entire home/apt2855DarrellLoyal
Heights47.6880480751-122.3923099994Entire
home/apt853SethWallingford47.6526306369-
122.3422171445Entire home/apt22594PinaMid-Beacon
Hill47.5603489768-122.3140231906Entire
home/apt9528MichaelWallingford47.6505515559-
122.3305886625Private
room55234CarolWedgwood47.6924645956-
122.2868837689Private room5544Piper +
KentWindermere47.6715870433-122.259947404Entire
home/apt11039MarieGenesee47.5664287096-
122.380842213Entire home/apt24929Gus & ChelseaPhinney

45. Ridge47.6794670377-122.3566000815Entire
home/apt75219IrmgardWest Woodland47.6717143403-
122.3658875979Entire
home/apt76216CarolWedgwood47.6942077243-
122.2862491662Private
room5025CarolWedgwood47.6928151492-
122.2853364671Private room4025JeanSeward
Park47.5616814291-122.272122828Private
room70178GoldieBroadway47.6258516153-
122.3200413234Entire home/apt11015JaneNorth
Admiral47.582391548-122.3944776132Private
room7563TrungGreen Lake47.6842730779-
122.326615922Entire home/apt15017TrungGreen
Lake47.6841569098-122.3259721542Entire
home/apt25019AnneNorth Admiral47.5799961341-
122.4020445001Entire home/apt79118Roberta & DanHaller
Lake47.7148851918-122.3329636496Entire
home/apt120222MaryMid-Beacon Hill47.5525663188-
122.3043496443Entire
home/apt13057DanniFremont47.6543710193-
122.3574537832Entire
home/apt12539JudithAlki47.5687392259-
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home/apt79352RalphWallingford47.6692278094-
122.3351737225Entire home/apt11092NatalieGreen
Lake47.6822606054-122.3434499989Entire
home/apt150251JoeBroadway47.6214209585-
122.3164195307Entire home/apt170154ShariSeward
Park47.5550843545-122.2645532615Private
room8556JanaHarrison/Denny-Blaine47.6189390326-
122.2921234178Private room75140JanaNorth Beacon
Hill47.5837867009-122.3167696768Private
room89348JulieMann47.612313045-122.2982521554Entire
home/apt68344TaraPortage Bay47.6500847223-
122.3193145113Entire home/apt24916MarciaSunset

46. Hill47.6699213774-122.4014638479Private
room60413DesmondMinor47.6129415063-
122.3126359568Private room909NadineLower Queen
Anne47.6276735193-122.3586108085Entire
home/apt750207MichelleRainier Beach47.5114571958-
122.2560809959Private room8836Ray & EileenWest Queen
Anne47.6354817084-122.3584777616Entire
home/apt85279AndrewNorth Queen Anne47.6441308606-
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home/apt2501HarrietSeaview47.5454306533-
122.3978372712Entire home/apt78260DeniseColumbia
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home/apt80153VidyaNorth Admiral47.5821599678-
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home/apt89165AprylInternational District47.5960491227-
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Ridge47.6777046524-122.3598388521Entire
home/apt24522KerryView Ridge47.6800375715-
122.2839834278Entire
home/apt99143DavidBroadway47.621627392-
122.3169293076Entire home/apt212131FlorCrown
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122.2812186071Entire
home/apt80340LoriBelltown47.6153386452-
122.347905293Entire home/apt200138Corinne & TomLoyal
Heights47.682309278-122.3787496619Private room90131Rose
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home/apt27576JudithPhinney Ridge47.6757467839-
122.3573890828Private room7530LoriBelltown47.6138602018-
122.3487873391Entire home/apt13989JudithPhinney
Ridge47.6778094417-122.3586213199Private room9083Rose
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122.3683941785Entire home/apt17081CherylLawton
Park47.6611973366-122.4014455229Private

47. room46167AngielenaGeorgetown47.5496907093-
122.3186791134Private room55134MichaelWest
Woodland47.6680705341-122.36208616Entire
home/apt120212WayneAlki47.5782293013-
122.4118121205Entire home/apt1602PaulMatthews
Beach47.7063897406-122.2807456217Private
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122.3743611707Private room601MaijaNorth Queen
Anne47.6432862428-122.3758186224Entire
home/apt21587MaijaWest Queen Anne47.6362890384-
122.3710252Entire home/apt175285Melody And
JustinWallingford47.6705794109-122.3236325184Entire
home/apt1254EdwinNorth Admiral47.5814326781-
122.3941090278Entire home/apt78211KimPhinney
Ridge47.67716562-122.3616928315Entire
home/apt85148NatalieGreen Lake47.6837806708-
122.3420128189Entire home/apt20031Prez & 'KeiaNorth
Beacon Hill47.5752909722-122.3020487339Entire
home/apt9947Audrey&BenoitNorth Beach/Blue
Ridge47.6981811943-122.3871013296Entire
home/apt1950Seattle OasisBelltown47.6157753482-
122.3487185841Entire
home/apt14466LoriBelltown47.6160746943-
122.346677477Entire home/apt139101EmilyWest Queen
Anne47.6329184028-122.372470634Entire
home/apt39568EvaLoyal Heights47.6812254063-
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home/apt1502JoeAtlantic47.5937973205-122.3051488362Entire
home/apt229148DavidBroadway47.6198828241-
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room9952AndraFremont47.6575891112-122.3543761956Entire
home/apt11991SuzanneFirst Hill47.6114811167-
122.3291210637Entire home/apt165162Seattle
OasisBelltown47.6152320255-122.3470274206Entire
home/apt14482Seattle OasisBelltown47.614972824-
122.3485544968Entire

48. home/apt9445KaraEastlake47.644810466-
122.3242851421Entire
home/apt1508KaraEastlake47.6464213197-
122.3249537509Private room503JoeBroadway47.6233621581-
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home/apt240154DanielFremont47.6563340605-
122.3499775327Entire
home/apt131122JenAtlantic47.5958290744-
122.2978842169Entire
home/apt1355JenBroadway47.6189713884-
122.3242071912Entire
home/apt165117DavidWallingford47.6558849377-
122.3321359689Entire
home/apt90183MarlowStevens47.6234428298-
122.306586925Entire
home/apt1950WilliamMinor47.6103771172-
122.3115658365Entire home/apt17549BryceFirst
Hill47.6136745639-122.3220282721Entire
home/apt15546EricNorth Admiral47.5800288098-
122.3902510918Entire home/apt10770KathyArbor
Heights47.5050883437-122.3782388157Entire
home/apt20029TaraPortage Bay47.6500516073-
122.3211013307Entire home/apt19923BryceFirst
Hill47.6130430105-122.3232142129Entire
home/apt196104TrungGreen Lake47.6835447395-
122.3309111444Entire
home/apt45029SheldonGreenwood47.6834831487-
122.3570538867Private room85196IanFremont47.666229972-
122.3606969089Entire
home/apt40025ChrisBroadway47.6256981038-
122.320953622Entire
home/apt49945ArvindBroadway47.628365679-
122.3262604689Entire
home/apt1754AllieBroadway47.6217782547-
122.3237870888Entire home/apt119142Jason And
SusyRavenna47.676753104-122.2939718457Entire

49. home/apt93210LeslieNorth Beacon Hill47.5851302744-
122.3152614466Private room72234Jyoti And TusharNorth
Beacon Hill47.5757694805-122.3163620885Entire
home/apt112124CarolineFremont47.6581070148-
122.3573889772Entire
home/apt15048MaxWallingford47.6598921769-
122.3304288335Private room7513VivianAdams47.6755332684-
122.3763240141Entire home/apt2180Michele &
RyanMadrona47.6090700187-122.2961326102Entire
home/apt269143Samantha & PeterGreenwood47.6992161483-
122.3507160208Private room71332SethFremont47.6588313139-
122.3479665132Entire
home/apt22546SethWallingford47.6541015659-
122.3385109442Entire home/apt25995SteveGreen
Lake47.6852808972-122.343157602Entire
home/apt8518BebBelltown47.615827761-122.340777299Entire
home/apt12533ElizaNorth Delridge47.5696575879-
122.3617112775Private
room8096DebWedgwood47.6852324694-
122.2894346437Private
room45180SasanBroadview47.7135183282-
122.3587352866Entire home/apt1952DianaWhittier
Heights47.6839408813-122.3730455326Entire
home/apt99244DonnaCrown Hill47.6973600413-
122.3762222118Private room75262AudreySunset
Hill47.6689948071-122.4028006387Entire
home/apt39524MarilynCedar Park47.7179619172-
122.2911406734Entire
home/apt87114LindseyStevens47.6278521271-
122.2987148426Entire home/apt2001Ann
PetrichFremont47.6542975861-122.3525885074Entire
home/apt80280AlanPike-Market47.6117183145-
122.3436849743Entire home/apt27544JayColumbia
City47.5605111091-122.278948301Entire
home/apt75308FlorCrown Hill47.7029543964-
122.3686115022Private room50158LizaPhinney

50. Ridge47.6780459888-122.3604255465Entire
home/apt95141JordanWallingford47.6585389006-
122.325818032Entire home/apt95166LizaPhinney
Ridge47.6787125823-122.3606643638Entire
home/apt1205AnniNorth Delridge47.5699913111-
122.3607137346Private room4522Rose And
GlenWestlake47.6364168374-122.3412438813Entire
home/apt13018AnniNorth Delridge47.5688564595-
122.3618439231Private
room4527TomRiverview47.5366044051-122.3560523137Private
room45282SerinaLower Queen Anne47.6208177429-
122.3563353111Entire home/apt95400TaraPortage
Bay47.6493265813-122.3192456029Entire
home/apt1998DebWedgwood47.6836234235-
122.2882782516Entire home/apt27518Chad &
RubenBroadway47.6196773839-122.3241470437Private
room98338KristinMount Baker47.5791652603-
122.2921189945Private room40118KristinMount
Baker47.5795538805-122.2936856203Private
room47230RonMann47.6209347612-122.2981467443Entire
home/apt95305FlorCrown Hill47.7015512911-
122.3665112761Private room8089AngielenaMid-Beacon
Hill47.5494561115-122.316577416Private
room60143BryceFirst Hill47.6135485752-
122.3213053989Entire
home/apt16848AexisGreenwood47.6877821424-
122.3485960913Entire
home/apt12363JeffreyGenesee47.5622061778-
122.385978316Private room7913MagalieCentral Business
District47.6143636866-122.3317161881Entire
home/apt2101Prez & 'KeiaNorth Beacon Hill47.5775607823-
122.3042806642Entire
home/apt225141LouiseGreenwood47.6986129648-
122.3634423796Entire
home/apt2752LouiseGreenwood47.6965616389-
122.3627507436Entire home/apt29513LauraColumbia

51. City47.5696153458-122.2939553015Entire
home/apt9022NanFremont47.6565084085-
122.3605705706Entire home/apt85456Prez & 'KeiaNorth
Beacon Hill47.5772706959-122.3018570929Entire
home/apt24940JoannaWallingford47.6636953872-
122.336225181Private
room8074MardeeFauntleroy47.518552187-
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room84145AliciaBelltown47.613483112-122.3484321114Entire
home/apt150160MelissaUniversity District47.6615375113-
122.3135910808Entire
home/apt8928FarhadFremont47.6516086237-
122.3560664705Entire
home/apt24098AnnMadrona47.6097485679-
122.290108581Entire
home/apt25013KayFremont47.6558721093-
122.3568839128Private room75232Rachel & GraceFirst
Hill47.6123428474-122.3297218464Entire
home/apt17576JanetteDunlap47.526971086-
122.2726504261Private room1751VipinNorth Queen
Anne47.6459738129-122.3623243312Entire
home/apt1403NicciMinor47.6037507448-
122.3081170769Private room4052RobertaHarrison/Denny-
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home/apt2297Darlene TikiOlympic Hills47.7261976611-
122.3014901461Private room5527Darlene TikiOlympic
Hills47.7255570168-122.3023993436Private
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Baker47.5684082524-122.2862140452Private
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Delridge47.5292447862-122.3585250569Entire
home/apt8957PatriciaAtlantic47.5924299848-
122.3019002512Private
room6028PhilippeBroadview47.7227266354-

52. 122.3566842766Private
room12510LouisBriarcliff47.6325968957-
122.3987989598Entire home/apt11537KerriColumbia
City47.5625275097-122.2924397951Entire home/apt1501Patti
And BensonAdams47.6716905009-122.3852390652Private
room95223CraigWallingford47.6524341561-
122.3378533129Entire home/apt165142CatherineNorth Queen
Anne47.6421518092-122.3695927757Entire
home/apt150229GillianEastlake47.6433899897-
122.3258219494Entire
home/apt155406RhondaGenesee47.5654363033-
122.3907565068Entire
home/apt25569WilliamEastlake47.6389730057-
122.3248878069Entire home/apt105121AllieMadison
Park47.6380629005-122.2779228318Entire
home/apt19919RachelPhinney Ridge47.6674564047-
122.3598804351Entire
home/apt1855CameronStevens47.6299568633-
122.3086099526Entire home/apt22555BleuHarrison/Denny-
Blaine47.619662372-122.2895565387Entire
home/apt15550Cheryl & SteveMaple Leaf47.6965313153-
122.3172587671Entire
home/apt129103TomBroadway47.6190565218-
122.3197340439Entire home/apt8027MattSeward
Park47.5554631737-122.2721838199Entire
home/apt154190AmyPhinney Ridge47.6794466877-
122.3635494503Entire
home/apt8184VaibhavBroadway47.6207252047-
122.3171502457Entire home/apt225135BarbaraMount
Baker47.5737539459-122.2927199102Private
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122.3584267761Entire
home/apt300269CarlGenesee47.566740773-
122.3810840679Entire home/apt9037KtMinor47.6090318632-
122.315480852Entire home/apt140392Margaret (And
Derrick)Mount Baker47.5793103478-122.2928860184Entire

53. home/apt15034JustinStevens47.6337693483-
122.3119497901Entire
home/apt28014ErinLeschi47.6063162173-
122.2948262083Entire
home/apt2001HeathLeschi47.6067368958-122.290087736Entire
home/apt4206SedoraColumbia City47.5514219196-
122.2808747054Private room7027
data dictionaryVariable NameValuesAdditional Information
host_nameThe name of the owner of the Air BnB
PropertyAllows us to see who is renting more than 1 property at
a time neighbourhood Names of Neighborhoods in ChicagoTells
you what neighborhood the listing is inlattitudeIn DegreesUsed
to Map datalongitude In DegreesUsed to Map dataRoom Type 3
values - Type of Air Bnb Listingtypes include shared room,
private room, and entire home/aptPricein dollars - price to rent
listing Depends on location and how much space you are
entitled to Number_of_reviewsNumber of Air BnB Reviews for
a listingTells us how many people have stayed/reviewed an Air
BnB listingHow Air BnB Works:
Seattle
Take Home Final Exam
Needs to be Submitted to Canvas by 11:59pm on Friday the 26th
There are Four Different Versions of this Exam
Even though this is a take home exam – you are not permitted to
work together.
If we find evidence of cheating/working together you will
receive a zero for the exam.
DO NOT PICK THE SAME MAPS OR EXAMPLES AS OTHER
STUDENTS! WE WILL CATCH YOU.
We will have a ‘drop-in’ during class time on Thursday the
25th. We won’t give you answers but we can guide you in the
right direction.
Along with this file you should have access to 2 excel files –
one will be used for Part I the other for Part II
Good luck!

54. Part I – Excel (28 points) – SEE THE ATTACHED EXCEL
FILE TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS
1. Calculate a Frequency Table based on the “room_type”
variable. ( 4 points)
Variable
Value
Code
Frequency
Room Type
Shared Room
1
Private Room
2
Entire Home/Apt
3
2. Make a histogram using the frequency table above – snip and
paste it below. Make sure that your histogram looks
aesthetically pleasing and only communicates relevant
information about Room Type. (4 points)
3. For the “Price” variable what percentage of listings cost more
than 100 dollars to rent? (3 points)
4. What is the latitude and longitude of the property with the
highest and lowest price? You should have 2 sets of coordinates
for this question. (3 points)

55. 5. How many total Air BnB listings are there in this data set?
(3 points)
6. Now summarize each room type and calculate the mean and
standard deviation for the number of reviews variable. (5
points)
Room Type
Average for each room type category for number of reviews
Standard Deviation for each room
type category for number of reviews
Shared Room(1)
Private Room(2)
Entire Home/Apt(3)
7. In your own words summarize/describe the relationship you
observe between room type and number of reviews (3 points)
8. Who is the host with the most listings? (3 points)
Part II – Mapping with Copypastemap.com (9 points)
Use the ‘MAPTHESEDATA’ Excel Files included with the
exam to create a map from this Website
Copypastemap.com
Answer the following questions based on the map you create:
9. What part of the city are most Air BnB properties located in?
(North, South, East, West, Central)? (3 points)
10. Take a Snip (or command + control + 4 on Mac) of the map

56. you created. Paste it below this question. (4 points)
11. When we created a similar map in Lab 6 we had a legend
category (Something appeared/popped up when the user clicked
on one of the points). If you could add a popup to each point
(Something that would appear about each property when the
user clicked on it) what variable from our Air BnB data set
would you include? Explain why this information would be
useful to include on a map. (2 points)
Part III – Social Explorer (20 points)
12. Instruction for Social Explorer:
Create four maps in Social Explorer based on the area you
conducted Air BnB analysis on. Tell a story about these maps
and explain how you used principles of visual hierarchy to
create them.
a) Create the following maps. You are trying to locate new folks
to rent/host properties on Air BnB.
Please use 2017 data.
Areas in Your City Where 50 percent of folks have a Bachelor’s
Degree or Higher
Area in your City that have over 40 percent owner occupied
housing
Areas where income is greater than 50,000 dollars
Areas where the age variable is less than 45
Use color, cut points, and classification methods to create maps
that highlight the areas that meet the criteria above in your city.
Each map should have an appropriate title as well.
b) Tell a 1-2 page long story analyzing your maps. Based on
your maps, which areas of the city match our criteria best?
Where would be a good place to recruit more Air BnB hosts?
Talk about some of the classification and color decisions you
made on the maps. How did you use principles of visual
hierarchy in your map?

57. Part IV – The standard deviation curve (8 points)
The diagram below is the normal distribution. Answer the
following question based on the diagram.
.
17. Explain in one or two sentences what this normal curve tells
us about a data set? (2 points)
If the average price of a hypothetical Air BnB data set is 88 and
the standard deviation 19: answer the following questions…
20. 68.2 percent of Air BnB properties are expected to fall in-
between which prices? (2 points)
21. What is a price that falls in between +1 and +2 standard
deviations? (2 points)
22. Provide a score that would be an outlier in this data set? (2
points)
Part IV: Miscellaneous (35 points)
23. Which diagram below best explains the relationships
between the length of classes at Temple (in hours that you meet
per session) and the number of days per week you have to attend
them?(2 points)
24. Examine the following two data sets: (2 points)
a) 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
b) 500001, 500002, 500003, 500004, 500005
Which has a higher Standard Deviation? (A or B)
25. What does Gerrymandering have to do with the Modifyable
Areal Unit Problem? You should define both (As we talked
about them in class – you will lose points for simply doing an
Internet search) and explain how they are interrelated. Research

58. and summarize a real life example of Gerrymandering. 2-3
paragraphs (6 points)
26. Explain how these maps demonstrate the principle of
ecological fallacy. They are both electoral college maps from
the presidential election in 2016. Democrat Hilary Clinton won
Blue state and Republican Donald Trump won red states. The
map on top shows the electoral college at the scale of the state
and the map on the bottom shows the electoral college at the
level of the county. The electoral college is a winner take all
system. If a candidate wins a state they get all the votes/points
for that state. 1 paragraph (4 points)
27. What are the principles of spatial analysis we discussed in
class? Use them to make sense of one of the maps from question
26. Focus your analysis on the location of the Air BnB data you
were given. 1-2 paragraphs. (3 points)
28. Choose a data visualization from fivethirtyeight.com or the
New York Times Graphics Twitter and explain what story it
tells. Also explain how visual hierarchy is used on this
visualization. You can copy and paste from your Packback
assignment on this topic. 1-2 paragraphs. (3 points)
29. Copy and Paste examples of two cartograms – one should be
a standard Cartogram (where shapes are somewhat preserved)

59. and one should be a Dorling Cartogram. Summarize what each
data visualization communicates. 2 paragraphs (4 points)
30. Include a picture/song/YouTube Video that describes each
of the following kinds of space (3 in total): Absolute Space,
Relative Space, and Emotional Space. They can be personal
examples – just explain why you chose them and how they are
related to the definitions we discussed in class. (4 points)
31. You wrote a love letter to Location Services in the last
class. What would happen to us without them? Name at least
one positive and one negative impact. 2-3 paragraphs. (4
points)
32. Throughout the semester I explained that maps are
representations of space. How is a map a representation of
space? Use our discussions of choropleth map classification and
projections to make your point. (3 points)

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122.313074947647.6733393883-122.39512028247.6736070968-
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122.392309999447.6526306369-
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61. 122.38084221347.6794670377-122.356600081547.6717143403-
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122.32661592247.6841569098-122.325972154247.5799961341-
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62. 122.348787339147.6778094417-
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63. 122.293971845747.5851302744-
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122.34077729947.5696575879-122.361711277547.6852324694-
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122.2808747054
RASHOMON
FROM AKUTAGAWA TO KUROSAWA
Kurosawa's Rashomon (or "The Great Rashomon Murder
Mystery," as Donald Richie
once dubbed it with the director's apparent approval l)
involves, like more conventional
murder mysteries, two distinct narrative lines: the story, or
stories, of a crime (the
various contradictory accounts of the murder of a samurai and
the rape of his wife)
and the story of an investigation (the attempt of the characters
at the Rashomon gate
to sort through these contradictions and determine what really
happened). In the case
of Rashomon , though, these two narrative lines actually
originated in two separate
literary sources, and the union of the two, according to
Kurosawa himself, was
essentially a marriage of convenience:
When I had finished Scandal for the Shõchiku studios, Daiei
asked me if I wouldn't

66. direct one more film for them. As I cast about for what to film,
I suddenly remembered
a script based on the short story "Yabu no naku" ("In a Grove")
by Akutagawa
Ryänosuke. ... It was a very well-written piece, but not long
enough to make into
a feature film.
... At the same time I recalled that "In a Grove" is made up of
three stories, and
realized that if I added one more, the whole would be just the
right length for a feature
film. Then I remembered the Akutagawa story "Rashomon."
Like "In a Grove," it
was set in the Heian period (794-1 184). The film Rashomon
took shape in my mind.2
"In a Grove," then, apparently provided Kurosawa with the
story of a crime; "Rasho-
mon" with the story of its investigation.3
These two Akutagawa stories have * othing obviously in
common beyond the fact
that both are in turn derived from episoc^s in Konjoku
Monogatari ("Tales of a Time
Now Past"), a vast twelfth century collection of stories drawn
from diverse sources.
"In a Grove" is ultimately based on a simpift tale of a bandit
who captures a samurai
and his wife through trickery, rapes the w Je, then goes on his
way, leaving the
155
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67. All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1 56 /Rashomon
mutually embittered couple to continue their journey.
Akutagawa alters the actual
narrative line by having the husband killed and the bandit
captured, but transforms
the story much more radically by having it presented through
the testimony of a series
of witnesses questioned by a police commissioner. These
accounts are presented to
the reader directly, without an explanatory narrative frame of
any kind, and as they
progress from the corroborative testimony of the disinterested
bystanders (a woodcutter,
a priest, a policeman) through to the blatantly contradictory
versions of the bandit,
the wife, and the husband (whose ghost testifies through a
medium), it becomes
increasingly clear that Akutagawa is less interested in the
contested facts of the crime
itself than in the difficulty, or impossibility, of determining
them. The medieval
anecdote is transformed into a peculiarly modern meditation on
the relativity of truth.
Akutagawa' s concerns in "Rashomon," on the other hand, are
less epistemological
than ethical. Set in a much more concrete and detailed version
of late Heian society
than "In a Grove," the story concerns an unemployed samurai's
servant who has been
reduced to a choice between starvation and a life of crime.

68. Taking refuge from the
rain in the ruins of the Rashomon gate, he comes upon an old
hag stealing hair from
corpses to make wigs. When the morally repelled servant
indignantly intervenes, the
hag protests in her own defense that the woman whose corpse
she was robbing had
been no better than herself (she had made her living by selling
snake flesh as dried
fish), but that neither woman had any choice, that any conduct
is justified by self-interest
and the need to survive. The servant ironically acknowledges
the cogency of her
argument by promptly turning it against her; concluding that he
has no choice either,
he proceeds to rob her of her own clothes. Essentially a study
in moral psychology
the story focusses consistently on the ethical waverings of its
protagonist, as he
progresses from "Helpless incoherent thoughts protesting an
inexorable fate," through
"a consuming antipathy against all evil," to his final
commitment to survival at all cost.
Kurosawa's indebtedness to these apparently unrelated stories
is as radically dissimi-
lar as the stories themselves. The influence of "In a Grove" on
the scenes in the woods
and in the magistrate's courtyard in Rashomom is patently
obvious. Kurosawa treats
it with scrupulous fidelity, not only in fundamental matters of
technique (in both story
and film, for instance, the witnesses' testimony is delivered in
response to implied,
but unheard, questions from the investigator), but even in

69. seemingly inconsequential
narrative details. As Donald Richie points out, for instance,
there is "no reason at all
for the bandit to be discovered by the police agent near a small
bridge (seen in the
film) except that this is where Akutagawa says it happened."4
If Kurosawa's indebted-
ness to "In a Grove" is too obvious to miss, it seems unlikely,
in contrast, that anyone
would ever even have suspected the influence of Akutagawa' s
"Rashomon" were it
not explicitly acknowledged in the title of the film. The critical
consensus is that "the
title story has little in it that Kurosawa used, except the general
description of the
ruined gate, the conversation about the devastation of Kyoto
during the period of civil
war and the atmosphere of complete desolation,"5 to which we
might add the notion
of the theft of clothing from a defenceless victim.
The most significant influence of "Rashomon" on Kurosawa's
film, however, is
not direct and narrative, like that of "In a Grove," but rather
oblique and thematic.
And an appreciation of that influence serves to illuminate the
real nature and function
fo the frame sequence. For, despite Kurosawa's account of the
film's origins, the
events at the gate are not merely narrative padding, and the
woodcutter, the priest,
and the commoner do a good deal more than provide narrative
exposition and a bit
of sententious choric commentary. The drama in which they
participate constitutes,
rather, a sort of interpretive re-enactment of the earlier drama,

70. and it is on the parallel
between these two dramas that the thematic coherence of the
film as a whole is based.
As the bandit, the wife, and the ghost of the husband offer
contradictory accounts of
what happened in the woods, so the second trio of characters
offer equally contradictory
responses to those accounts. Where the woodcutter responds to
the situation with
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Rashomon/ 157
bewilderment and the priest with growing disillusionment, the
commoner greets it
with complacent cynicism.
Both of these narrative strands function, in different ways, to
translate an epis-
temologica! dilemma, the viewer's inability to determine with
any certainty what
actually happened in the woods, into ethical terms. One aspect
of the interrelationship
of ethics and epistemology in the film has been widely
recognized, the role of egoism
in motivating the contradictory accounts of the crime. The film
goes beyond relativism,
as Stanley Kauffmann says, to reveal "the element that
generates the relativism: the

71. element of ego, of self."" In fact, it is "not so much about the
relativity of truth," in
Bruce Kawin's view, "as it is about selfishness, from the ego-
supportive fictions of
the narrators to the outrages they commit."7 Kurosawa's
addition of a fourth version
of the events in the woods to those provided in "In a Grove,"
the woodcutter's
eyewitness report, reinforces this emphasis on egoism in two
different ways: first, the
woodcutter's farcically ignoble version of the crime exposes
the full extent of the
self-aggrandizement involved in the earlier accounts; and
second, the commoner's
subsequent accusation that the woodcutter himself has lied in
concealing his theft of
the dagger extend the realm of self-interest and deceit within
the world of the film
even further.
It is not only the manner in which the witnesses tell their tales
that has to be seen
in a moral context, however, but also the manner in which the
characters at the gate
respond. If the events in the woods reveal the motive that
generates the relativism of
the courtyard, the events at the gate remind us of its potential
consequences. And it
is Akutagawa' s "Rashomon" which provides the model for the
central point made by
Kurosawa in the framing sequence of the film, its exposure of
the way in which our
judgements of the behaviour of others serve to license our own.
"In a Grove" emphasizes
the necessary arbitrariness of epistemological choice (the story
gives us even less

72. reason to trust one version of the crime more than the others, in
fact, than does the
film); "Rashomon" stresses the inevitability of moral choice.
Where the former insists
on the impossibility of certainty, the latter insists just as
strenuously on the need, even
in the absence of certainty, to make a commitment. The
intersection of these opposing
thematic emphases in the film results in a particularly clear
instance of what Naomi
Schor has described as the "hermeneutic double-bind"
characteristic of modernist
narratives focussing on the interpretive process, in which "the
absolute necessity to
interpret goes hand in hand with the total impossibility to
validate interpretation."8
The central interpretive decision faced by both the figures at
the gate and the viewers
in the audience, of course, is to determine, not which of the
contradictory stories to
prefer, but rather the significance of the contradictions
themselves. And it is the final
episode of the film, the incident of the abandoned baby, which
points up the real
importance of this decision. Interestingly, though, if there is a
single matter on which
the film's critics are largely in accord, it is their condemnation
of this incident.
Dismissing it as "false and gratutious,"9 in Joan Mellen's
words, they generally feel
relieved of any need to discuss it further. Even the few
defences that have been offered
tend to be curiously left-handed, like Stanley Kauffmann 's
suggestion, for instance,

73. that "one can argue that Kurosawa felt the very arbitrariness of
this incident would
make the central story's ambiguity resonate more closely."10
The one critic to accord
the episode the attention it deserves is Keiko McDonald, who
sees its effect as ultimately
subverted, however, by the darkening of the closing shot of the
film, which serves,
she contends, "as another justification for supporting the
relativity of man's nature as
the film's final implication."11
But this is scarcely the implication of the episode as a whole,
for the behaviour of
the commoner in robbing the baby of its clothing serves
precisely to expose the
connection between epistemological relativism and moral
anarchy. Interpreting the
stories he has heard from the woodcutter and the priest as
further evidence that the
world is shaped and governed soley by the demands of the ego,
he accepts the
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158 /Rashomon
implications of his interpretation and proceeds to act upon
them. Conversely, the
woodcutter's decision to adopt the baby is not merely a
sentimental afterthought on
Kurosawa's part, but rather, in effect, an unintentional

74. contribution to the debate, a
refutation of the commoner's cynicism through an actual
demonstration of the possi-
bility of selflessness, an assertion of something beyond ego.
If the behaviour of the commoner makes essentially the same
point as the ironic
conclusion of Akutagawa' s story, then, the behaviour of the
woodcutter makes a very
different point. And if that point has been lost on those of the
film's critics who
continue to see it as a demonstration, sometimes even as a
celebration, of relativism,
its force is clearly appreciated by the third figure at the gate,
the priest. Misunderstand-
ing the woodcutter's intentions in picking up the baby,
assuming that they are no
better than the commoner's, the priest initially concludes that
the commoner's cynicism
was apparently justified, after all; but the realization of his
error enables him, as he
tells the woodcutter, to regain his faith in humanity and in the
possibility of a morally
meaningful universe. With the action of the woodcutter,
Kurosawa's Rashomon permits
the priest, and its viewers, a way out, an existential escape
from moral relativism,
denied the readers of Akutagawa' s "Rashomon."
David Boyd
University of Newcastle
Notes
^ Donald Richie, "Introduction," Focus on Rashomon
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 1.

75. 2
Akira Kurosawa, Something Like An Autobiography , trans.
Audie E. Bock (New York: Knopf, 1982),
pp. 181-82.
^ Both "In a Grove" and "Rashomon" are reprinted from
Ryonsouke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Other
Stories (New York: Liveright, 1952) in Focus on Rashomon.
^ Donald Richie, "Rashomon," from The Films of Akira
Kurosawa , 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1970), reprinted in Focus on Rashomon, p. 85.
^ Richie, " Rashomon ," pp. 70-71.
^ Stanley Kauffmann, Living Images (New York: Harper and
Row, 1975),. p. 319.
^ Bruce Kawin, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-
Person Film (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), p. 86.
o
Naomi Schor, "Fiction as Interpretation/Interpretation as
Fiction," in Susan R. Suleiman and Inge
Crosman, eds., The Reader in the Text (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 169.
^Joan Mellen, The Waves at Genji's Door (New York:
Pantheon, 1976), p. 206.
^Kauffmann, p. 319.

76. ' ^Keiko E. McDonald, "Light and Darkness in Rashomon ,"
Literature! Film Quarterly, 10,2 (1982), 128.
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2018 18:47:18 UTC
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Contentsp. 155p. 156p. 157p. 158Issue Table of
ContentsLiterature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1987) pp.
137-205Front Matter"Breaker" Morant In Fact, Fiction, and
Film [pp. 138-145]"The Road Warrior" and the Fall of Troy [pp.
146-150]Bewitched and Bewildered Over "Eastwick" [pp. 151-
154]"RASHOMON": FROM AKUTAGAWA TO KUROSAWA
[pp. 155-158]Vision Denied in "Night" and "Fog" and
"Hiroshima Mon Amour" [pp. 159-163]Cinematic Qualities in
the Novel "Kiss of the Spider Woman" [pp. 164-168]"The
Persistence of Proust, The Resistance of Film" [pp. 169-
174]Woody Allen's "Comic Irony" [pp. 175-180]"Classical
Cinema" and The Spectator [pp. 181-189]"The Birth of Venus"
and The Death of Romantic "Love in Out of the Past" [pp. 190-
197]"Birdy": The Making of the Film-Egg by Egg [pp. 198-
199]An Anatomy of Horror [pp. 200-202]A Bibliography of
English-Language History, Theory, and Criticism of Italian
Cinematic Neorealism [pp. 203-205]Back Matter
"Still the Same Old Story":
The Refusal of Time to Go By
in Casablanca
The most remembered scene in Casablanca is also its epitome.
A sputtering propeller
scatters the fog at an almost deserted airport as two lovers,
fulfilling their destinies,
separate for the second and the last time, she to board the plane