My favorite kinds of movies are the ones that make me feel like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window — 60 years old, two broken legs, with a super-zoom telephoto lens, in my pajamas all day watching other people’s lives like they’re TV, and Grace Kelly by my side taking care of me and doing all the leg work. In other words, I like movies that make me feel like a voyeur, observing and learning from others’ experiences.
I like movies about nothing. “A movie about nothing?! That doesn’t exist!” you might be thinking. In response, I would like you to think of a time when someone asked you to describe a movie you watched, and the only way you could describe it was by saying it was just about someone’s “coming of age,” or a character “just living their life.” These movies, my friend, were about nothing.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, voyeurism became a very popular film technique. Making audiences part of the movie by rendering them merely voyeurs emerged as a horror trope. During this time, audiences were shown all parts of a story — everything the main character doesn’t know — and suspense was built through the audience knowing all this information but not having any way to tell the main character. The exploitation of viewership draws viewers into the story, simultaneously immersing them in the experience and reminding them of the illusion of a film’s false reality. Being trapped as a voyeur built anticipation in movies like Rear Window and Peeping Tom. These films, and many others categorized under the voyeuristic genre, will use physical cameras, movies, video cameras, or film to emphasize the trapped nature of both the people inside the movie and the people outside.
Most literally and clearly, Rear Window is a great example of this voyeur style. The film presents audiences the main character, Jeff, with two broken legs, trapped in a wheelchair, who uses his camera to zoom in on the lives of others. Just like audiences watch the life of Jeff — unable to reach him or help him — he watches the lives of others unable to reach them or help them. This movie shows audiences that they are not just television viewers; they are, in fact, life observers.
Rear Window, and films like it, are not about nothing though; they’re suspenseful thrillers. Audience-as-voyeurs was used as a plot device, but peering into the lives of others wasn’t what the story was about. Voyeurism served a purpose in these films to make us feel just as trapped as the characters living out a horror-drama. As filmmakers explored and developed voyeuristic techniques, a new genre of filmmaking was created: movies and TV shows about nothing. What if audiences didn’t just feel like observers in thrillers? What if they were also observers in movies and shows about other things, like romance, work, school, and everything else we do to fill time? Expanding the voyeurism to movies of all kinds of stories allowed viewers to be passive voyeurs soaking in information, learning, and observing without having to be on the edge of their seats.
Watching a character do something so familiar on television or in a movie creates a feeling of comfort. No matter how different that character may seem, they show through their everyday activities that they are not really too different from us. The familiarity of the mundane makes audiences feel safe with those characters. We trust them. For example, no matter how unrelatably selfish characters on the sitcom Seinfeld seem, their friendships, dates, coffee shop-hang-outs, and office jobs make audiences see themselves in the characters. When we see ourselves in a character and trust them, we are more likely to listen to what they have to say. Establishing a character’s relatability through nothingness eases audiences into larger conversations they may have not been open to hearing otherwise. In this way, nothing can be used as a tool to persuade.
Seinfeld famously is a show about nothing. Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian living in New York City dating women and hanging out with his friends and we, the audience, just watch him. Of course, interesting things happen to him and his friends, but as far as the plot of the entire show goes, it’s just a show about someone living in New York City. It’s about nothing. At one point in the show, the characters George and Jerry make fun of the show’s premise by creating their own show with NBC in which they pitch the idea of having television programming about nothing. “Everybody’s doing something!” George says, “We’ll do nothing!”
Episodes take on conversations any person could have found themselves having back in the 90s, but they discuss them in creative ways. In the episode “The Couch,” Jerry and Elaine discuss whether or not they would date someone who is pro-life, while Kramer fights with his business partner over when a pizza is officially a pizza: before it goes in the oven or after? This episode juxtaposes a regular conversation about a current event with an in-depth conversation on the same issue using metaphors. Not once does Seinfeld tell its audience how they should feel about this issue. The show just tells us how different characters feel about abortion as an issue and then uses metaphors of everyday life, i.e. pizza making, to present the arguments. The audience is a voyeur on conversations and arguments and then is urged to make their own opinions based on the subtle facts laid out before them in the form of metaphors. If the show was too aggressive about the overarching topic of abortion, the show risks losing viewers because of the strong emotion the topic evokes. Through the metaphor and subtlety of nothingness, Seinfeld is able to discuss issues in a way that maintains viewership and gives audiences the space to form their own opinions. In this way, nothingness is a more effective way of discussing controversial and complicated topics.
Every person watching a movie or a TV show knows what it feels like to do nothing in a day. Maybe that’s even the reason they’re watching the movie or TV show: to fill the nothingness. Nothing is familiar and relatable. The Peanuts, by Howard Schultz, uses the relatability of nothingness to its advantage, because we all know what it feels like to be a little kid, sitting around, doing nothing, and pondering big questions. And since we know what this feels like, we also know how scary nothing can be. In the article How Peanuts Created A Space For Thinking, by Nicole Rudick, the author describes a comic strip of eight panels that all depict Charlie and Sally simply sitting on the earth, engulfed by the dark sky, discussing the Big Dipper. “Nothing much happens here, yet, in its openness and conversation, the strip is alive with wonder, possibility, and humanity.”
Howard Schultz is not afraid of nothingness, and in his comics, he urges us to welcome and embrace it. There is beauty in moments of blissful nothing. In this context, nothing is being used to give audiences the space to gain a new perspective on big issues. How would their younger selves have approached this conversation? How can I embrace nothingness to have the clarity I need in this situation? Observing The Peanuts allows audiences to open their minds to the greater nothingness that surrounds us in everyday life, empowering us to use it to inform our decision making and thinking patterns.
There is also a kind of nothingness that comes from studies of everyday life. Deliberate nothingness can contribute to the exploration of culture and act as a cultural commentary. Content about nothing that depicts a certain time period acts as a time capsule of that time. The Graduate came out in 1967. Taking place in the ‘60s, the movie could have been about a major political event or a movement in the ‘60s, but instead, the filmmakers chose to focus on the attitudes and feelings of young people during this period. Thus, the movie was not about anything, but audience members feel like voyeurs, or time travelers, peering into the life of someone in the 1960s.
Just as nothing can give us insight into a different time, it can also give us insight into people who are different from ourselves. Content where the consumer feels like a voyeur into the life of someone they may not understand serves to broaden their worldview. Movies like Frances Ha or Moonlight help us to get into the head of others and understand their perspectives. Audience members can put themselves into the shoes of those on screen and for 90 minutes, they can live a life totally unfamiliar to their own whether that be today, or 1960. Similarly, the documentary Get Back gave Beatles fans 8 hours of voyeurism, as we watched footage of The Beatles write their album Let It Be. Although being about the creation of an album, Get Back has no plot and that is referred to multiple times throughout the documentary. Producers worry that they’ve gotten all of this footage, but who would want to watch it because it’s not about anything. But in not being about anything, Get Back is about the intricacies, dullness, drama, and excitement of creating an album. It is about the nothingness of The Beatles going to work and doing their jobs-creating music.
Being a voyeur of life allows us as an audience to welcome new patterns, perspectives, ideas, and ways of thinking. Presented more subtly than in a thriller, passive voyeurism has found a role in broadening mindsets and introducing a new format for influencing audiences. Within the nothing is a lot of something. And that something is the way in which life has meaning and gives watching others’ lives even greater meaning.
