Is this how people entertained themselves before the Nintendo?
I mean staring out the window at neighbors for long stretches of time.
shareA few weirdos did that before TV became common, but it was rare. At the time, most people stuck in that position would have read books or listened to the radio or spent hours on the telephone bothering everyone they knew, or written letters or started that novel they were working on, or built a ship in full said out of matchsticks or whatever, anything but spy on their neighbors. But maybe Hitchcock wanted us to think that Jeff's background as a photojournalist would lead him to investigate the only thing there was to investigate, his visible neighbors. Or maybe, as some say, Hitchcock was putting his own fondness for voyeurism on the screen.
FYI I just spent a couple of months at home with a badly broken leg, and even though I live in an apartment complex and could have devoted my time to staring at my neighbors if I'd wanted to... I never once wanted to. I may be a weirdo, but I'm not THAT weird.
I had a cast that I couldn’t move and I ended up drawing a lot.
shareI drew, I read, I telephoned, I studied for more advanced certification, I watched TV and movies and listened to music, I deep-cleaned the parts of my apartment I could reach, I played online naturalist (identifying living things from photographs), I cooked, I played stupid online games, etc.
Most of those activities would have been available to people with broken legs in 1954, with the exception of the online stuff and TV stuff, but of course they'd have had a huge variety of radio programs if they wanted electronic entertainment. The fact is, most people don't find their neighbors that interesting, and they know that spending hours watching your neighbors is creepy as fuck.