Visual paranoia in "Rear window", "Blow-up" and "The Truman show"

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Against the backdrop of recent postmodern discourse on cultural theory, Eva Schwarz offers a compelling analysis of visual paranoia through a detailed examination of three films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up, and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show. Each analysis highlights the representation of the postmodern media and information age as a culture deeply rooted in the visual, reflecting a broader socio-political trend of cultural paranoia originating in late 1940s American politics and society. This trend has since influenced Anglo-American culture. Schwarz explores the discourse surrounding the truthfulness of images and the reality of visual representations, which informs her theory of visual paranoia. Unlike typical paranoia films that focus on sociopolitical aspects, the selected films delve into the fundamental crisis of the visual itself. Rear Window addresses scopophilic paranoia, Blow-Up examines photographic paranoia, and The Truman Show culminates in a scopophobic manifestation of visual paranoia. The once-reliable adage "seeing is believing" is now called into question, as the visual in postmodern times becomes increasingly untrustworthy.