‘Spectator’: Frans Zwartjes on cinema and voyeurism
Since the conception of the medium, voyeurism has been a recurring thematic concern for both filmmakers and critics. Famously explored in silent era masterpieces like Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman, the social foundations of voyeurism have undergone rapid changes due to the undeniable impact of the internet and social media platforms. While many failed to anticipate the current state of society’s relationship with the voyeuristic process, Frans Zwartjes is an exception.
Although the Dutch artist found varying modes of expression through different art forms such as music and painting, Zwartjes’ experiments with cinema are the ones that are discussed the most. Garnering a lot of attention during the late 1960s, the avant-garde filmmaker became famous for his tendency to edit in camera instead of participating in the conventional editing process. During an interview with Mike Hoolboom, Zwartjes recalled his entry into the industry.
The director said: “I made my first film in 1968. I was teaching at the academy in Eindhoven at the time. I wanted to combine all the media, so I told the director that I needed a camera. ‘Buy it,’ said the man. At the time, I often had exhibitions of my paintings, drawings and objects, and I didn’t want somebody or other to come and give a speech at the opening. So I decided to make a little film of the one exhibition so that I could show it at the following opening. But I got… well, you know, obsessed is perhaps a bit strong… but I got really excited about that filming. So I started to make films for myself.”
Zwartjes added: “I was a bit overexposed sexually back then. I had an extreme interest in sex. It made me scream with irritation that what you always saw in films was a man and a woman together – commotion – one, two, up you got. That was not eroticism, that was gymnastics. At the point that they actually made it into bed, a blanket was pulled over the action. Everything went black, and a while later, you heard teeth being brushed. What I wanted was solely to film under the sheets, in a manner of speaking.”
While this was a recurring subject for Zwartjes, his 1970 work Spectator is the perfect culmination of his erotic interests. Filmed in a stark black-and-white visual language, the short is primarily made up of disturbingly claustrophobic close-ups of a woman being objectified by a man. Interestingly, Zwartjes strips all eroticism from the work while exploring the consequences of the male gaze, transforming the entire spectacle into a terrifying nightmare.
In addition to the feminist frameworks within which it operates, Spectator is also interesting because it predicts the ways in which sexual rituals would adapt to the internet era. Throughout the film, the man prefers to view the woman through artificial lenses since that’s the only way the illusion of eroticism can be maintained. In a world where sexual rituals have been restructured to fit the algorithms of the virtual domain, the voyeuristic fetishisation described in Spectator can only be seen as a prescient warning.
Watch the film below.
