Watching You: 2

After getting your feedback and insightful comments, I went about digging some more on this new voyeuristic culture (an act of voyeurism this!). The idea was to seek an alternative explanation.

I figured voyeurism is in a way a democratic power re-appropriation by the masses. In other words, now everyone has the power to see hence the playing field is somehow leveled. Think about the times when certain sections of cities were off limits for certain castes and access to knowledge, education, and scriptures was restricted to certain segments of the population. Foucault, a very famous theorist coined the ‘clinical gaze’, which refers to the power of a physician to know all (think therapists).

Zoom out to current scenario, where public and private spaces are being collapsed in an information explosion and everything can be seen. In this age of media overkill we are all empowered, hence we are all voyeurs.

More:
Ironically, the mainstream embrace of voyeurism comes precisely as many Americans feel their own privacy is in danger, be it from surveillance on the job, marketers on the Net… “These shows are a kind of acting out of the mingled fascination and fear that surrounds this, a way of playing it out in a kind of harmless way."- Article on Times, about Reality TV.