Watching Man on Wire is like sitting on pins and needles; one indulges the entertaining pleasures of anxiety that go hand in hand with a well-crafted suspense thriller. But Man on Wire offers something more. Hidden trauma haunts the anticipations of narrative suspense and, quite literally, the suspensions of disbelief that make up the content of this charming yet disturbing film. Will this insouciant, serenely contained tightrope walker make it across the potential dangers of his death-defying craft? And, if he falls, can we the audience bear to look? A perverse spectatorship situates the viewer in a tension between scoptophilia and scoptophobia. At the same time, it