Bio:
Basje Boer (Amsterdam, 1980) is a writer of both fiction and essays. Her most recent book is titled Pose – Over hoe we kijken en wie we spelen (Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2022), a collection of essays on the roles assigned to women, both on the big screen and in everyday life. Boer writes about film and (pop) culture for publications like De Groene Amsterdammer, de Volkskrant and de Filmkrant. She graduated in photography from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.
Synopsis:
In Psycho we see Norman Bates spying on Marion Crane while she undresses. How he feels is obvious. But what is it like for her to be watched? In her video essay Hitchcock’s Gaze: What It Means to Be Looked at, writer Basje Boer uses the films of Alfred Hitchcock as a starting point to talk about how we glorify female passivity, and what the consequences of doing so are. She doesn’t only focus on Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window, but also draws parallels with, amongst others, Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl, Twin Peaks, Walt Disney’s fairy tales and the Shakespeare character Ophelia. A collaboration with Menno Kooistra.
