In early October of 2020, less than six months into the existence of this blog, I created a post on Body Double that stood out from a lot of what I’d been doing here. That’s because it only had some brief introductory text and was largely comprised of screenshots from Brian De Palma’s sexually charged thriller. Body Double, like much of De Palma’s filmography, is concerned, even obsessed, with watching; with looking. As audience surrogate Craig Wasson spies on his sexy neighbor Deborah Shelton, we the audience spy right alongside him. Just like our stand-in Jake (Wasson), we drink in every alluring angle of Shelton’s body—plus the body of her body double, Holly Body, played by Melanie Griffith. We are complicit in Jake’s voyeurism. Jake’s spying eye soon puts him in danger, while we watch safely from our seats. When Jake tells Holly “I like to watch,” we’re nodding in agreement. De Palma frames Holly’s body throughout in ways that invite us to ogle her for our own sensual pleasure. On some level, all filmmakers understand our collective desire to watch, or look but few remind us of it as frequently, or as well, as De Palma.
I included a dozen shots from the film in that 2020 post, which was a lot more imagery than my usual posts contained at that time. What I’ve begun to notice in recent years is that the number of image-heavy posts here has escalated, and especially so in 2023. Now it’s almost the norm for me to include one or two dozen images in a post. Obviously, this happens most often with the “Random Image” posts, and while the more recently debuted “Hot Shots” series typically contains far fewer images per post, they’re still almost entirely about the images—they’re all about looking.
All of this talk about looking is really just a way for me to say out loud, as it were, that visuals clearly play a huge role in our understanding and processing of film and popular culture—with a caveat, of course, that I’m referring to those of us without serious visual impairments. My art background and love of film both indicate that looking is an essential aspect of how I process things.
Lately, I’ve been busy, with less time to devote to writing semi-lengthy movie reviews or crafting other such pop culture musings. I think this has led me to lean heavily on visually stimulating posts this year, because I think people love to look at visually stimulating images, and also because these posts are fun to research and put together. It’s basically win-win. The only downside is I fear I’m using them as a crutch sometimes, because, while they are often time consuming to put together, they aren’t nearly as taxing as finding the strength to write 700 words on, say, Body Double. Sometimes the words flow like butter, but other times it’s like trying to wring blood from a stone.
During times when I’m simply too mentally or emotionally exhausted to write, I feel down about myself, like I should charge through it all to make something happen. Maybe looking at eye candy helps snap me back into a positive mood during those moments. Ideally, I would to do more writing here at the site than I have been, but there are just times when life gets in the way, and all I can do is dance and vamp for a bit with “Hot Shots” or “Random Image Dumps.” I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with that. Sometimes we just need to look, to indulge, just like Jake in Body Double.
Well, what do you know? I just wrote more than 700 words, partly about not being able to find the words. Still, I’m going to let the visually arresting movie poster for Body Double have the last word.
The Starfire Lounge 
2 thoughts on “Just Looking”