A Look at Scopophilia & Voyeurism by Way of Blue Sky and Forrest Gump

Oftentimes, seemingly divergent movies correspond in what they express through their themes and general ideas. This is the case with the films Blue Sky and Forrest Gump. At first, these two motion pictures seem unlikely to have anything in common, but they show some interesting similarities in their depictions of female and male interaction.

Scopophilia, or the desire by the female gender to be looked at, is one of the main ideas present in both films. It exists as an erotic basis for pleasure in considering a separate person as an object (Mulvey, 24). In Blue Sky, it is exemplified by Jessica Lange’s character, Carly Marshall. She constantly strives to be the center of the male characters’ attention, especially by wearing provocative clothing. This produces a sense of separation for the male viewers, and plays on their voyeuristic fantasies, according to Mulvey (25). The counterpart to her scopophilic personality is her husband in the movie, Major Henry “Hank” Marshall, played by Tommy Lee Jones. He seems to symbolize the voyeuristic properties that are supposedly present in the actual male population. He says that he loves to watch her and to look at her body. This voyeuristic tendency on his part is probably the reason she decided to marry him in the first place. She physically and mentally needs a man like him to mesh with her scopophilic personality. He loves to look at her, while she loves having the satisfaction of being looked at.

Forrest Gump displays a similar idea. The character of Jenny, played by Robin Wright Penn, the iconic “hippy” of the sixties, also demonstrates this scopophilic quality. In one scene she is featured in a Playboy: College Issue, with a college letter jacket over her nude body. Another scene has her singing folk songs in front of a room of military men – she is nude in this scene also, with a guitar being the only object covering her body. The voyeuristic counterpart is always the male gender. In the Playboy scene, it is the American male population, while it is the room full of American soldiers (all being male, of course) in the other scene. In this scene, the soldiers and other the other military-types don’t seem to care what she is singing about and yell at her to show off her bare body – an aggressive representation of voyeurism. The title character of Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, does not seem to display this voyeuristic quality that is so apparent in all of the other characters. Instead, he accepts Jenny the way that she is and loves her unconditionally. Keep in mind that Forrest is a flawed male character.