Stalking, and how it is portrayed in western culture

The video for Shayne Ward's new single Gotta Be Somebody has just been released. Directed by Billy Woodruff, the film was shot in Los Angeles. The narrative of the film shows a stalker pursuing the singer.



Above: the film shows the stalker taking photographs from a street corner across from the singer's (presumably fictional) apartment block. The entire narrative of the film is set in an urbanscape at night. Note that the stalker is very attractive and not the crazed obsessive type normally associated with stalkers.



Above: in what can only be described as an exhibitionist display the singer appears half-naked at a window and the image is captured by the stalker. The girl then follows him through the city with an undercover ingenuity that you would normally associate with a John Le Carre character. Eventually the singer corners her and snatches the camera away (when he looks at the images he sees the extent of her obsession).



Above: having chased the stalker away the singer returns to his apartment, apparently regretting what he has done. The stalker then appears, having gained access to the apartment, and approaches him. The ending is left unresolved.



Above: we think of stalking as a modern phenomenon but it is a theme that can be traced back to the middle ages. Roger Boase has analysed the idea of courtly love from a Freudian perspective. Is modern stalking the same as medieval unrequited love (and if so, how far back does this monomyth go)?



Above: the video for Justin Timberlake's 2002 song Cry me a river was directed by Francis Lawrence and shot in Malibu. The film won MPVA awards in 2003. The narrative opens with a sinister hoodie (played by Justin Timberlake) breaking into the home of a former lover.



Above: after rummaging through her possessions and ritually violating her bedroom the hoodie waits until his former lover returns.



Above: the narrative ends with the hoodie peering through the opaque glass of a shower unit while the naked (and unsuspecting) former lover is bathing - this image would be terrifying if it ever happened for real.



Above: this has set me thinking how far back we can trace the practice of stalking, and how it is portrayed in western culture. Elaine stalks Lancelot in Tennyson's Idylls of the King (and the Lady of Shallot). Keats writes of a knight stalking La Belle Dame sans Merci. Echo stalks Narcissus. The whole Trojan War cycle can be seen as an exercise in stalking (with Agamemnon in the Justin Timberlake role). So that takes us back fourteen thousand years at least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mu8MrCR5pQ&ob=av2n

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLGOm-NJVts