Watcher and The Invisible Man: The Violence of Voyeurism

Part One: Don’t Trust Your Husband

In 1938, British playwright Patrick Hamilton wrote a Victorian thriller about a husband plotting to drive his wife insane so he can steal the jewels hidden in her house. When he lights the upstairs gas lamps to search in secret, the rest of the building’s lights dim and flicker. When his wife questions this, he assures her that the lights aren’t flickering at all, causing her to doubt her own sanity. The play was aptly named Gas Light, a term which has now become synonymous with psychological manipulation, particularly associated with the psychological manipulation of women.

In a 2007 stage review, New York Times critic Ginia Bellafante once said “Gaslight established the blueprint for a kind of domestic-peril thriller. Every time an actress portrays the sort of wife who discovers that the greatest threat to her mental and physical safety is the man sitting in her breakfast nook, Mr. Hamilton’s estate ought to receive some type of remuneration. Mr. Hamilton believed our most dangerous enemies were always in the room with us.”

Interestingly, Hamilton’s play would go on to be adapted for film twice–once by British director Thorold Dickinson in 1940 and then again by American studio behemoth MGM in 1944–and the latter would involve some real-life gaslighting of…