The Windows Issue

LIBERTAS

The Windows Issue v ol . 27, n o. 1

SATREBIL Editorial Staff EDITORS IN CHIEF Ben Caldwell Raven Hudson

ART EDITORS

WRITING EDITORS

Juan Aguilera

Alice Berndt

Emilie Hoke

Samantha Ewing

Hannah Lee

Jayleen Jaime

Akua Owusu

Emelyn Schaeffer Sam Spada

Dear Readers, This issue of Libertas comes to you in the midst of a global pandemic and an ongoing, national, social, political crisis—as you know. Our staff conceived of this theme, windows, as a way to hopefully better understand the way we view others, how we view ourselves, and how we might relate to one another, especially from a distance—in this case, through the mediation of the window.

The pieces in this issue explore these themes in a variety of ways. In Fiona Stanton’s “At the Vanity of a Bedroom I Shared with my Sister,” the vanity is a window which reflects both the inner and outer self, however dubious that reflection may be. Joe Claire’s photographs depict empty urban spaces, within which a sense of isolation resonates. Meanwhile, Mary Nell Todd’s painting of a theater is a window in and of itself, through which the audience returns the gaze of the viewer. And Julia Tayloe’s review of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window points out the inherent voyeurism in cinema.

Windows, we think, are a symbol for the way we’ve all experienced the past seven months. We’ve learned and socialized through screens, spent much of our time indoors, and adjusted quickly to a different way of life. However, we’re witnessing––be it personally or from afar––what’s likely the most consequential political moment of our lives. In this respect, we sometimes have a responsibility to participate in, rather than passively observe, what’s happening outside. The world through the window is closer than it may seem. As you read through this issue, we’d ask that you keep in mind the empathy, mindfulness, and focus that the present moment asks of us.

Your co-editors-in-chief, Ben and Raven

Libertas belongs to the students of Davidson College.

Contact the editors at libertas@davidson.edu.

LIBERTAS October 2020 WRITING 4 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15

ART

Super Dental Tavie Kittredge The Night-Watch Alex LaBrec Fly (tw: suicide) Hannah Lee At The Vanity Of A Bedroom I Shared With My Sister Fiona Stanton Whole Laura Bullock Beach House Kate Griffith The Box Taylor Drake Maternal Impression Fiona Stanton

4 5 7 8 11

Pane Joe Claire

12 13 14

Lake Erie Adelle Patten

Union Station Joe Claire Untitled Nina Yao DC Joe Claire Untitled Mary Nell Todd

Untitled Nina Yao Untitled Margo Parker

Hitchcock’s Rear Window: A Review Julia Tayloe

Cover: Admo Joe Claire

special thanks to...

Faculty Advisors: Zoran Kuzmanovich, Paul Miller (emeritus), Scott Denham (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Madeleine Page, Alyssa Glover, Samantha Gowing, Meg Mendenhall, Michael DeSimone, Jordan Luebkemann, Will Reese, Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Lamar Clarkson, Andrew Haupt, Jimmy Newtin, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright Founder: Zac Lacy

SUPER DENTAL

by Tavie Kittredge

“I don’t want to wear a mouthguard,” said the hero, pasting on a moonbeam smile marred by the bloody gap of his missing topright incisor.

Maren sighed. “Mr. Marvelous, fighting crime is a high risk activity. In order to protect the integrity of your smile–”

He interrupted, rugged marble jaw set as if he were about to take on a villainous foe. “Let me rephrase. You cannot make me wear a mouthguard. I’m not a child!”

Maren threw her hands in the air. She had had this same conversation with countless heroes who could not understand that no matter how powerful they were, constant fist fights would make them look like pirates or Jack-O-Lanterns made to scare, rather than save, children.

She took a long, deep breath. It did not help. “Mr. Marvelous, the Super Dental team would never force you to do anything you do not want to do or intend to demean you. However, we must warn you that unless you begin protecting your teeth you won’t be eating anything harder than baby food by age forty. “Now,” she pulled out the tray of sample mouthguards, “we can find a mouthguard that enhances your image. Sir Paperclip was very enthusiastic about this one with the fangs and–”

“I don’t want any of them,” Marvelous grumbled petulantly.

“We also offer inconspicuous clear guards that photos will barely–” “No.”

Maren blinked, slow and hard, to fortify herself, then gave him her best cotton candy smile. “Alrighty then! Thank you so much for coming in today, Mr. Marvelous. The dentist will be in to see you in just a moment. You should be looking at some of those X-rays we took earlier and discussing surgery options for that tooth. Alright?”

Mr. Marvelous nodded, perfect golden curl bouncing over his broad forehead. With that, Maren spun on her plasticky white flats and strode out of the room, the white pencil dress of her uniform twisting around her.

+ + +

It was almost dark when Maren finally left the orthodontics practice. A single lamppost attracted a swarm of moths and cast thin 4

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PANE

by Joe Claire

UNION by Joe Claire STATION

bands of light into the shadows of the parking lot. As Maren passed the dumpster, the shadows seemed to twist and wreath like grasping fingers.

Maren stopped and leveled an unimpressed stare at the dumpster. It sat there innocently, green paint peeling.

Maren began walking again. Deep, inky black shadows stretched around her like a monster baring fangs.

She stopped again, huffing as she stared into the unnatural darkness. “If you want something, say it,” she demanded. “It’s late and I just want to go home, take a hot shower, and not deal with any conceited pricks for the next 48 hours. I’m not a Hero and I don’t have any family you could charge for ransom–”

She froze as the shadows twisted like a toilet of darkness flushing in reverse and a boy materialized. A black leather jacket— over a black t-shirt, black jeans, black converse, and under a rats nest of black curls—washed out his pale white skin so that it glowed like midnight highway reflectors.

“I have a tooth problem,” said the boy without preamble. He pulled his cheek to the side, showcasing a yellowed tooth, melted away in the center to bare raw tissue.

“Yep, that looks like a root canal. And? There are people, other than random assistants like me, who might actually be qualified to help you with that. If payment is a problem–”

“I’m a villain,” said the boy.

Maren took an unconscious half step back. “Right.”

They both stared at each other for a long moment. Finally Maren, seeing that the boy wasn’t about to launch into a villainous monologue or attack, broke the silence. “So was that a threat or something?”

The boy waved his hand and spoke in a rush, “No, no! I’m not like a villainous villain. It’s just the United Fists are trying to catch me because I shadowportaled the Catess’s pet panthers back to the Amazon, and I know that she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for them and bought them fresh tuna every day and cried for the first two weeks they were gone, but the panthers told me they were sad and they were making all the other cats feel small.” He glanced down with a fond smile at the skinny grey cat that had somehow appeared while he was speaking and now twined between his ankles. “Cats are very prideful.”

“So you’re running from the biggest hero agency in the world because you used that shadows ‘pffffff,’” she circled in hands in a vague allusion to the boy’s appearance through the shadows, “to rescue the wrong cats, who you can also talk to?”

“Yep.”

Maren pinched the bridge of her nose. “And you thought it was a good idea to ambush me in an abandoned parking lot and then make me choose between risking my job by trying to perform an unlicensed dental surgery for the first time—not to mention helping a fugitive—and letting some kid who is how many years old?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen years old suffer terrible pain and risk losing a tooth?”

“Yeah?”

Maren sighed and stared at the boy’s face, stark against the shadows. “They said in school that a brighter smile for everyone made the world a better place. As long as you understand that I am in no way qualified to perform this surgery, and there is a high likelihood you’ll lose the tooth and if the anesthetic goes really wrong or maybe blood poisoning, there’s a small possibility I could kill you– Well, we might as well go ahead.”

The boy beamed, wincing as he pulled at the tooth. “Thank you!” he rasped.

+ + +

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Maren’s footsteps echoed in the empty mausoleum of the dental clinic. Icy marble countertops and stark white walls gleamed ominously in the thick stillness. She led the boy through the abandoned office, through short twisting hallways with bare walls.

The operating room was both familiar and strange at night, like a childhood playground under a midnight moon. Maren had examined hundreds of mouths in this room, yet in the darkness, the smooth curves of the reclining chair, the clean angles of the table, and the alien eyes of the examining light were born again. The mirrors that lined the walls twisted and repeated the scene into dreams stranger yet.

The boy pulled himself onto the chair with a huff.

Maren relaxed into her familiar routines, snapping on latex gloves and fitting a paper mat to a tray. As she laid out her tiny torture instruments one by one, in a row of gleaming metal and plastics, she asked, “Have you brushed your teeth?”

“Uh, no. Not today, and not… in a while.”

“Right. Flavor? We’ve got mint, bubblegum, blue raspberry, chocolate, fish–”

“Fish? I’m not a cat.”

“Just giving you the options. Sharkman’s a fan.” Maren continued, muttering, “Now there’s a man that doesn’t have to worry about mouthguards.”

“I guess… Blue raspberry.”

“Say ahhhh–”

+ + +

As Maren used sweet blue foam to wash the mouth of a fourteen year old criminal with powers that could easily kill her (drop her over a volcano, teleport her head away from her body, call a mob of cats to eat her) she couldn’t help thinking about how she had gotten here.

Like every child, she had once wanted to be a hero. She had wanted out of the little apartment she shared with her mom, she wanted steak every night, she wanted to be the one on TV. When it was clear she had no superpowers, not surprising considering she was the daughter of a single powerless mother, she hadn’t given up.

She dreamed of other types of heroes: of inspiring audiences from an orchestra on a golden stage, of being a trauma surgeon and saving lives before a racing clock, of being a lawyer and rescuing the innocent with only her arguments. But then there was reality. There was her mom dying in her senior year of high school and leaving her all alone in the world, there was the looming spectre of student debts, there was working three jobs just to make rent. In the end, she had to believe she was fortunate, making it through a three-year dental assistant program, and gaining certification to do nothing more than clean mouths and make snide comments at the actual dentist.

In the end, there was making a life—a life she would defend till death—out of being a bottom feeder, out of picking the scraps of wealth from the teeth of the rich and famous. There were no heroics, only cleaning she was never quite allowed to complete. Her life left her free though, she thought, free to do no heroics. If great power equals great responsibility, then no power equals no responsibility.

She was free to aid and abet a villain.

+ + +

Maren had walked past the Super Dental surgeon performing hundreds of root canals, though she’d only been in the room a fraction of the time. She knew the theory behind the surgery, partially from proximity and partially from that one quiz years ago, when she’d memorized the steps to a root canal for approximately an hour before and after the test.

So how was the blood such a surprise?

Everything had been going well. She had delivered the localized anesthetic, and located the center of the impacted cap. Then, she had 6

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drilled down with the partially intelligent Robodrill that the Super Dental surgeon liked to tell women about.

The blood gushed out in a unrelenting streaming of red. It smelled like sweet iron and it was warm beneath the thin barrier of her gloves. It was slippery. It was sticky. And it just wouldn’t dry up. She dabbed it again and again with cotton swabs, but she could barely remove any of the infected tissue before the blood obscured it again. She cussed under her breath.

It took her close to three hours to fully clean out the tooth. By the end, her white dress was spotted red-black. A mound of cotton swabs on the side table held enough blood to run a small rodent. The boy was half asleep, drooling pink and twitching slightly whenever she hit a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves. Yet, she still had to put a protective crown over the tooth. The problem? Blood, of course.

It formed a slick barrier that would get between the adhesive of the ceramic crown and the remaining bone of the tooth.

Maren pulled out her tools of battle: an icepack, a handpiece with that released a stream on concentrated air, and a fresh bundle of cotton swabs. She took a deep breath and double-checked the protective crown resting by her elbow and the little bottle of glue. Then, she sprung into action.

First the ice pack cooled the tissue around the tooth and slowed the flow of blood. Then, the cotton swabs and stream of air switched between cleaning and drying the exposed tooth. Finally, she carefully placed a single drop of adhesive and quickly pressed the crown into place. She held it in place, holding her breath. Had she properly vanquished the blood? Would the cap hold?

She counted slowly to a hundred, then gently removed her finger. She tapped the cap. It held steady. If it wasn’t past midnight, Maren would have whooped.

+ + +

She began to clean the blood off the boy’s face and mouth. He stirred. “A-done?” he asked dazedly around his swollen cheek.

“Just about,” said Maren. “You’re good to go.”

“Thnk ya,” he mumbled. “Look out fo’ Cat Lord on tv, y’?”

“You weren’t supposed to tell me your name,” scolded Maren.

“I was supposed to have plausible deniability.”

The boy snorted and gestured toward her. “Bloo’ in y’ hair.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s the blood’s fault, not mine. It’s aggressively messy.” Cat Lord struggled to stand. “So before you leave, I got an info packet for you.” She pressed the info pamphlets into his hands.

“And if anything feels weird go to a real doctor, yeah? And maybe find yourself some antibiotics? I don’t want my nasty surgery to kill you.”

The boy nodded sleepily, and began to gather darkness around himself.

“And Cat Lord?” said Maren.

“Yeah?” he asked, his feet already faded to shadows.

“Take a mouthguard. Wear it. Love it. No arguments.”

“’Kay,” the young, powerful, hero-villain said. He took a black mouthguard to go.

The Night-Watch

It was near sunset when I threw on a pair of shorts. In three months, I had never encountered a single neighbor when I’d run for a mile or two, taking in the biting cold and exhaling it in short huffs. A few lakefront houses could be spotted between the trees, but the lights were always off and the garages stayed closed. I quickly realized that my parents were the only homeowners below the age of seventy in my new neighborhood. Worse, they ripped me from the suburbs and settled in the sticks of South Carolina in the middle of winter, when even the old folks would ditch this place for the deeper south.

At my old house, I’d never dare go out alone if the sun was about to set. Here, it was never more than me and the road, so I decided it didn’t matter.

Under the trees, the wind sent goosebumps down my bare legs, but when I’d break into a patch of sun, it felt comfortable and soft. I had been waiting for the first day of warmth since I’d moved in, and it seemed the stretch toward summer was finally beginning. My thoughts completely distanced themselves from the road. As each stride brought me steadily forward, my mind was looking still farther ahead, dreaming of visits from the friends I left behind.

A steady hum snatched my attention. Veering left in the grass, I shifted to a fast walk and waited for the car to drive past me. I was excited to get my first glimpse of a neighbor, but after a few moments, the hum was still pawing at my back. A burning in my stomach rose toward my chest. The seconds crept by, but the hum kept its distance. The sense of this stranger’s stare gripped my gut. I picked up the pace of my walk and clutched my phone a bit tighter. After another two-hundred feet without relief, I turned around.

It was a white truck, not different from the ones I saw loading and unloading hay around my new high school. The orange sun reflected off the windshield, keeping me from seeing the driver. My stare broke the illusion that his threat had

Untitled

Alex LaBrec gone unnoticed, and just like that, the truck sped up with a loud whir. As it barreled in my direction, the goosebumps on my legs returned. The hair on my legs scratched against my shorts as I began a steady jog in the same direction as before. When he pounced, it’d be better for me to be in motion. A moving target.

I kept my eyes glued to the bend ahead of me, hoping someone could turn the lights on in one of those houses and see me running away. When the hum was directly behind me, I burst into a full sprint, feeling my thighs strain to pull me forward. An image of a deer scared away during one of my runs flashed into my head--eyes wide, every muscle desperate to escape this deadly hunt.

I was prepared to scream, to alert anyone that could hear me. But instead of coming to a screeching halt, the tires kept tumbling forward. I watched the truck speed past me and toward the bend, the engine spitting sporadic coughs. My ears perked in its direction to hear it hum farther and farther down the road. After just a few moments, all that was left was the sound of my own breath again.

Every lick of cold air pointed to the parts of my body I had left vulnerable, exposed to someone hiding just beyond the bend. I tucked my fists into the sleeves of my sweatshirt and kept using them to rub down my shorts as I returned home. The sun was nearly gone, and I could feel the air slipping underneath my baggy shirt collar and biting up my thighs. The houses tucked between the trees were still dark, but the eerie sense of being watched didn’t kept its grip inside my chest. My imagination filled the dark spaces between the trees with more hunters, patiently watching me with wet lips and greedy eyes. Allowing my footsteps to fall into a rhythmic jog, I didn’t look back until I reached the familiar warm orange windows that peeked through our branch curtains. Over my shoulder, I watched the road become masked by the night, and I wished I could feel alone again.

Nina Yao LIBERTAS Vol. 27 No. 1

7

DC by Joe Claire

fly.

8

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[tw: suicide]

by hannah lee

What would it be like to fly?

Would it be sublime, omnipresent as the turbulent takeoff deafens even the most imposing wind, and the vessel shatters the heavens?

Or would it be painful, with every flutter stuttering, and every gasp suffocating, like a butterfly limping with one delicate wing?

“You’re not ready yet?” Icarus gives me a soft smile. With the sun so high in the sky, their blond curls are illuminated like an angel’s halo.

“I thought I was ready…”

Outside, I feel a brisk wind’s breezy arms beckon me, whispering my name as it invites itself in and raises goosebumps on my bare skin. I feel vulnerable and light, as if I’ll be swept away and disappear into thin air. I guess that’s kind of the point.

When I close my eyes, I picture Icarus moving behind me, their arms wrapping around my waist. “It’ll be okay,” they soothe, voice like honey and wax. “You can do it.”

But I’m not sure I can, and it doesn’t feel right when there’s so

much I don’t know.

Why did Icarus leave me in the first place? I’ve asked them daily since their return, but they answer in riddles, evasive and meaningless.

For a while I was furious, demanding a response with vitriolic screams.

But now, the question tiptoes around when I visit our favorite places, or maybe as I fall asleep.

I want to ask one last time.

“Icarus?”

“Mhm?”

“Why did you leave me?” I exhale, breath shaky, and hope that this time, they’ll provide some clarity. Maybe their answer will change my mind.

They don’t say anything for a while, just rest their head against my neck until I imagine their warm breath on me.

“Look,” they say, pointing to the sky, and I straighten. With grace, a flock of migrating birds glide past. “Don’t you envy them? How they fly as high as they want? Have the strength and freedom to escape?”

I shake my head; Icarus is cryptic as always. I have to bite back the bitterness, swallow it so it doesn’t intensify and intoxicate. But when I reflect on their lies, that they’d stay here, stay with me and for me, the pain roams around a little. A memory here, an exchange there.

When we first met. The last time.

I accidentally give the pain too much freedom, because it slips into the crevices of my body before overflowing all at once. Tears cascade down my face. Even though I’m past the point of anger, the wounds are turning back time to when they were first inflicted-- deep purple and fresh, yet not embedded in unscathed skin.

Icarus wipes my tears away. “I’m sorry. But I wanted more. I wanted to keep going up.” They let out a dry laugh. “But I fell hard, didn’t I?”

“I was there for you, to catch you when you fell.”

“I know,” they say softly, eyes crinkling with a sad smile.

I face the sky again, and there’s another silence between us, but it’s nice somehow. The sun is at its peak now, and the sky is a blooming, otherworldly fiery blend-- a delicate balance between Heaven and Hell.

“Okay, Icarus,” I whisper. “I’m ready.”

They don’t say anything, though I feel them hoisting me up to the sill. I glimpse down, and the distance is disorienting and so much farther than I thought. My heart flutters in my ear, screaming at me to return inside to safety.

But I’m above everyone else. Even above Icarus, maybe.

For a fleeting moment, it’s electrifying-- before I realize I’m straddling two worlds, simultaneously inside and outside, like a purgatory. I stay like that for a while. It could have been two minutes or two hours, but when the wind finally rises, it’s no longer inviting or gentle.

Its strong waves wrap around my limbs, imploring me to rest at sea.

I wonder if Icarus felt the same way.

I turn around, one last time, just to say farewell. But they’re not there anymore, so I have to remind myself that it’s not goodbye.

I’ll be seeing them soon.

As the wind falls, I close my eyes, spread my wings, and fly.

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At the Vanity of a Bedroom I Shared with my Sister Fiona Stanton Taught to be obsessed with display, with the carnal heaviness that comes with Performance, I reach into myself and pull out the dark, wormy flaw that rendered me voiceless and careful at birth.

I hold the rapidly softening parcel up to the mothering mirror:

Here is the thing I hate the most,

Here is the thing that soured my body, made it false & useless & unwanted.

In the mirror, I see the flaw is liverish and birth-colored,

And pitted like an olive, The flaw takes itself seriously.

The flaw cries over boys it doesn’t even know.

The flaw is a Pisces Sun, Virgo rising.

The flaw is a cherry pit, a fetal pig dressed up in yellow— The flaw wants to go home.

The flaw told me so itself, in a voice that chirped and faltered, The flaw doesn’t even know where home is.

For these reasons I Savor the moment of separation, that cutting that severance:

This is the sort of thing I like to celebrate at night with sugar and wine, while wearing red and laughing at jokes I’ve heard my father tell.

This is a good time

I am having a good time,

I am always having a good time.

But when the mirror fogs and the flaw has gone Cold, I decide the celebration is over.

If someone asks, I say it never happened in the first place.

I say I have always been this way.

I tell them I want to go home.

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Whole

Laura Bullock Dive in Drink up the liquid gold Feel it from head to toe Take all that you deserve A weathered storm earns a million rainbows Technicolor dream coat Dream boat sail me to the shore Bare feet in warm sand like the hug that went missing from my body Sunkissed soul glowing golden brown after years of harsh red burns Be my solace Ease my pain Take it all Take the sticks from my shaking arms so that they may reach for the sky and touch the stars Cut the ball chains from my ankles so that I may run to the Moon to Mars to Jupiter Free my spirit from its chamber like a flitting butterfly in the breeze too pretty to worry about the grass beneath it too light to worry about the sky above it.

Let that sky turn pink as the glorious sun escapes from its vast blueness Show me that same pink that shines deep within me Let the bell ring out for all to hear I have made it I am the fullest moon The greenest leaf The widest smile Try now to tear me from the ground beneath my rooted feet You will fail I am whole As I have always been As I always will be.

Mary Nell Todd

Untitled LIBERTAS Vol. 27 No. 1

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Beach House

Kate Griffith

Adelle Patten 12 LIBERTAS

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Everyone called on Sunday to say they heard me yawn And now everyone’s yawning And slipping through handsy floors And making laps around the attic And it’s an epidemic Behind my graying door I like the house with yellow beer past eight-thirty and before two Until I can get my licks or fix everything Feeding the purple tongues in my pocket Who fumigate my room And set blank sobs and florid brume On violent light which leaves lavender snow That will disappear no matter how you hold it And is dark gray when I’m passing in my car I’m going to bed early tonight Past eight-thirty but before I forget That next Sunday I’ll remember how to sing a lullaby To a sleeping dog past two When sleeping still and the laps around the convenience store will be a Softer song for my drive back home and a Housefish released Where over shiny and invincible worms I will build a sparse white house with a successful garden And clean windows And I’m certain construction won’t be so long this time And I’ll finally focus On having a fun, relaxed summer before I sell it and haunt it Over the holidays

Lake Erie No. 1

Untitled by Nina Yao

The Box

by Taylor Drake

The boxes on his phone tell him that wake up’s at 6 AM, yet the ringing bells fail to hail him from the linen sheets of his bed.

There the phone sits arm’s length away.

Soon its subject will start the day.

“What could keep him in this dark room?”

“Should I again exploit his gloom?”

Two hours later he groans to roll onto his chest to scroll his phone FACEBOOK. ORANGE MAN. GAY PORN. alone.

The screen goes black. It’s lost control.

Dull indulgence the night before kept the box from its power source.

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13

Maternal Impression Impression

II.

I.

burned tinder & all in all made a name

for the town of Salem that would snag in the air like a clothesline wire for years,

Fiona Stanton

My mother told me once

that it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t love the person.

I get more joy, honey, out of eating

certain foods, than I ever did out of That.

So here are the dreams that are not allowed, and that come anyway,

Here is the way the mouth locks, the tongue splits, when you are faced with a boy silhouette at the end of a hallway—

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don’t look him in the eye.

And in that solemn place in Massachusetts,

where they locked up old women and servant girls, where they hung a rope,

Ordeal By Water was the term used for forced drowning.

An english king argued that water was in fact so pure an element, that it repelled the guilty completely. It floated them.

III. I wash my face incessantly when I come back

from his apartment, I swallow hot water in the shower.

I name my lower back culpable,

& remember I inherited my mouth from a grandmother I never met.

Untitled

Hitchcock’s

Rear Window (A Review)

Rear Window (1954) has everything I’ve come to expect from Hitchcock: beautiful blondes, incompetent cops, unproblematized violence against women, and big ass, metaphorically significant windows. L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) and his socialite girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), piece together that his across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Thorwald, has murdered his nagging wife by watching him through their windows. They look from behind the imagined barrier their windows create and transgress it as representatives of our own voyeuristic interest in the narrative.

Alfred Hitchcock is not afraid to beat us over the head with his message in Rear Window–to look through a window is to see something you aren’t meant to see. The film opens on a shot of a young woman through her window. She’s getting dressed, her back to the camera, completely unaware that she is being watched by both the audience and her neighbor, Jeff. We start the film with a reminder that we are invading the film as voyeurs just as much as Jeff, passively participating but unable to break through the imagined wall between us and the action. Textually, we are also warned about the consequences of looking into windows: the nurse who tends to Jeff’s broken leg warns him that the punishment for a “peeping tom” is to have your eyes put out with a red-hot poker. Although they solve a murder and Lisa learns to loosen up in order to be worthy of Jeff’s love (she’s not like other girls ™) they are repeatedly punished for violating the barrier created by their windows. When Lisa is caught breaking into Mr. Thorwald’s apartment, Jeff (and the audience) watch helplessly as he throws her around and she cries out for help. Later, when Thorwald tries to kill Jeff, it’s by shoving him out of the window. Hitchcock argues his point by showing us narratively, repeatedly, that moving through windows, either by looking or physically, is a risky choice.

Much like a window, film is a false barrier, an imagined wall between us and what we’re looking at. Windows and movies provide voyeuristic fantasies, allowing us to see into a space that is whole and complete, its own little narrative, and not to be seen in return. Hitchcock acknowledges and participates in our desire to watch without being seen, and his thrillers are particularly suited to our nosy interest in solving the mystery we’re shown. He does so with the reminder, however, that we are as much of a peeping tom as Jeff.

Although it’s pretentious, Rear Window is fun in that it brings to the forefront the voyeurism inherent to film as a medium and plays with the separation we imagine between ourselves and a screen: the two sides of a window.

Julia Tayloe

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LIBERTAS last word Get to know the staff! (by staring into our windows)

Raven Hudson -String lights shaped like the phases of the moon (That one’s not out. It’s just the New Moon) -Smoke. (from incense) -One caffeine-free diet coke -A black cat on the windowsill Ben Caldwell -Pages of next story taped to the walls -Meticulously organized calendar that hasn’t been touched in two months -Grainy B&W 8.5x11 pawprinted picture of some band dude -“ “ “ “ “ “ vaporwave Karl Marx Emelyn Schaeffer -Worships the extra-wide windowsills of the apartments -String lights always on for the ~aesthetic~ -Succulents that she calls her babies on the windowsill -On her third watch of The West Wing in 2020 Emilie Hoke -Soft light for reading by -Tea kettle at the ready -A colorful and cozy sweater, looking for the perfect fall day Alice Berndt -Essential oil diffuser on windowsill to ~destress~ -Binge-watching trashy Netflix shows instead of doing midterm assignments -Sweatpants during Zoom presentation -Would sell soul for an oat milk latte

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LIBERTAS Vol. 27 No. 1

Sam Spada -The gay cousin at family reunions -Mug on desk: 10% hot chocolate and 90% whipped cream -Evidence of tax evasion -Voice goes up five octaves when lying Hannah Lee -Crying in front of the computer because at least my FBI agent is there for me -Side character -*opens window blinds* *closes*: “That’s enough of the outside world today.”

-‘Grimacing face’ emoji Akua Owusu -Hospital room/ prison cell walls -Lives out of a suitcase -i’M fOrEigN -Looks like there’s always a party going on Samantha Ewing -Messy bookshelf -Mug filled with peppermint tea -Fall-scented candles Julia Tayloe -Me constantly breaking and then painstakingly repairing my blinds -Stacks of things I’m supposed to be reading under my cherished copy of Midnight Sun -Skeletons Jayleen Jaime -The Communist Manifesto and a poster of dogboy Marx -A spider that I occasionally make eye contact with and am too apathetic to kill -A failed fermentation project that my roommate has been asking me to throw out