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Here’s an interesting snippet from the New York Times blog this week about a bill introduced into the city council to ban voyeurism.  I was surprised to read that the AP reported that voyeurism “is already illegal when the subject is unaware and the image is recorded on camera, but as the law stands now, New Yorkers are still free to look as much as they want.” I was under the impression that anything that could be seen from a public place could also be recorded on film from that place, and that makes sense to me. It also makes sense to me that if something is visible to the public, the public should be allowed to look at it.

The idea of policing the gaze is a very murky one. Visual culture types have noted that there’s something aggressive in the act of looking, and especially in the act of photographing or videotaping, for a long time. It’s taboo in Western culture to look at another person too intensely without invitation–Grandmothers have reminded children for centuries that “it’s impolite to stare”–but to legally proscribe intense looking at visible body parts, even “private” parts, seems less than wise. What, after all, would we really be making illegal? The perception of a certain spectrum of electromagnetic waves reflected off certain surfaces? Can you imagine a police officer herding you off to prison mumbling something like “Come along now, you aren’t allowed to perceive that”?

I’m especially interested in the fact that Vallone and many of the commentators refer to a man who enjoys looking at female genitalia as a “pervert.” While the methods of the voyeur in question may be unconventional–downright rude, really–I’m not sure how the desire he’s expressing is abnormal, or even likely to be linked to any sort of truly destructive criminal behavior. Nor do I think that abnormal desires are necessarily wrong.

The solution here seems to be pretty obvious: have some policemen hustle the guy along, even under false pretenses. He probably wouldn’t put up a fight. It would be ridiculous for this to turn into an all-purpose law against looking.