Emasculation

http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/Arts/Departments/english/Documents/Clinton%20Adas.pdf

Clinton Adas

 

The Representation of Gender in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo 

2006

‘This vertigo is the reason that Scottie can no longer carry out his duties as a policeman which results in him feeling emasculated. His injured state emphasises his human weaknesses, and it is by adding these weaknesses that Hitchcock essentially makes him easier to relate to, as we as viewers can identify with his vulnerability.’

 

 Scottie feels emasculated right from the start of the film. The scene we are looking at is at the end of the second ‘act’ of the film. Does this event therefore reinforce and emphasize his metaphorical castration? He seems perfectly able to deal with the loss of his masculinity to an extent at the start of the film, but seems utterly humiliated after his inability to save Madeleine, possibly explaining his attempt to recreate her, almost as to undo his wrong, and regain his masculinity in the process. Would he have felt so emasculated if he was unable to save her, but hadn’t already suffered emasculation? He was able to deal relatively easily (it seems, although there is clearly a large gap between the end of the first scene and the next one) with seeing the death of a colleague trying to save him, but seems very unable to deal with seeing the suicide of someone he loves and is trying to save.

‘From this point onwards Scottie tries to overcome the humiliation and guilt caused by the rooftop incident. This humiliation and guilt on a deeper level represent the fact that because he could not carry out his policeman duties he feels feminized to some extent. Therefore, although Scottie is an ex-policeman who would be a hero by nature, he is still a complex male – “the hero, yet reluctant; the lover, yet confused; the innocent, yet menaced and menacing” (Auiler 19). The fact that Scottie failed to rescue Madeleine is important to the representation of the masculinity as it deviates from the typical role of the male being the hero and subsequently signifies the collapse of the ‘hero’ complex.’

 

Scottie is thrown into a similar situation to that which he has been in before in this scene, with the roles reversed. In the first scene of the film Scottie is in danger of falling to his death, and a colleague puts himself at risk, and ultimately dies to try and save him, giving him a hero status. Scottie find himself in a situation where he can’t even bring himself to climb to the top of the tower (metaphorical penis? Phallic symbol?) to try and rescue the woman he loves, let alone rescue her, let alone sacrifice his own safety, completely ridding him of any kind of heroic status (with the public or with Madeleine) he would have gained through these actions, further castrating and thusly feminizing him.

 ‘As the story unravels we see Scottie portrayed as being rather obsessive in nature, as he becomes the pursuer who chases Madeleine into somewhat extreme circumstances which are eventually out of both his and her control. It is this pursuit of Madeleine that Mulvey sees as Scottie’s erotic obsession based on a castration anxiety (Mulvey 23). Argued in greater detail, Mulvey states that because women in classical Hollywood cinema invariably signify sexual difference, looking at them threatens the male spectator with the image of castration (Corber 3). It is for this reason that the camera resorts to framing them as icons or objects to be looked at, interrupting the film’s narrative flow. Rather than being subjects who solicit the male spectator’s identification, women in classical Hollywood film function instead as objects of visual pleasure, allowing the male spectator to elude the threat of castration that is so often signified by their image (Corber 3). The pursuit of Madeleine is also a matter that Mulvey sees as a blatant act of voyeurism as Scottie derives great pleasure from following and viewing Madeleine throughout the movie. Not only does he derive great pleasure from following and viewing Madeleine, he also allows himself to think that he is once again enforcing the law which would help him regain his masculinity, while in actual fact he is coming close to breaking the law by becoming a ‘stalker’. ‘

Scottie, by the beginning of the scene I am looking at has managed to regain, at least in part, his masculinity. He feels ‘that he is once again enforcing the law’ thusly-regaining part of his masculinity, and somewhat ‘de-castrating’ him. He also believes he has saved Madeleine once, making him feel heroic again. What exactly this article is trying to say about the idea of women in Hollywood castrating men is slightly confusing to me, but I think it’s about the audience’s reaction as opposed to Scottie’s psyche, so I shall leave it for now.

‘When looking at this obsession in more detail one will see that Scottie is unable to accept Madeleine’s death which results in him recreating her via Judy Barton later on in order to satisfy his desire for her. Not only do we see Scottie’s obsession with Madeleine as an idealised personality (the vulnerable women in distress), we also see his obsession with specific attributes such as her blonde hair and clothing style, and it is these specific attributes that Scottie forces Judy Barton to acquire should she want to acquire his affection. It can be argued that not only was Scottie pursuing his obsession to recreate Madeleine, he was also pursuing his obsession with regaining his masculinity, in this case by exercising ‘power’ over women and their freedom (Corber 160). It is through his obsession with recreating Madeleine that Scottie becomes very inhumane, but at the same time, we can understand why Scottie behaves like this, making his actions to some extent justified. The ending reaffirms gender roles in that Madeleine is made to pay for her dangerous deceptive lifestyle by being destroyed, while Scottie on the other hand seems to overcome his vertigo and recover his masculinity.’

‘Bibliography

 

Adair, G. Alfred Hitchcock – Filming Our Fears. London: Oxford University Press, 2002.

 

Auiler, D. Vertigo – The Making of a Hitchcock Classic. New York: St Martin’s Press,

1998.

 

Corber, R. In the Name of National Security – Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political

Construction of Gender in Postwar America. London: Duke University Press, 1993.

 

Mulvey, L. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1989.

 

Vertigo. Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures, 1958.‘

Does Scottie Love Madeleine?

My answer to the question, does Scottie love Madeline?

I believe the answer is no, not at this point in the film. At least in a romantic sense. I think when they first encounter in the film she is initially an object of fascination and fetishism to him. As he follows he, he begins to sympathize with her, and I do believe at the point that they meet, up until the point Scottie starts showing this mania, he is in love with her. However at this point in the film I believe that she has become an object of fetishism once again, and something Scottie wants to posses, to own, whether he realizes it or not. She continues to be an object of fetishism throughout, and this is shown in the later stages of the film in his attempt to recreate her exactly in Judy.

There is an argument to say that Scottie does feel certain kinds of love towards her, but none of them a healthy romantic love that one would want from a relationship.

Tomorrow I shall attempt to answer the question, does Scottie feel emasculated by his inability to save Madeleine?

Does Scottie Love Madeleine? – Love

http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/a/theoriesoflove.htm

‘Theories of Love

By Kendra Van Wagner, About.com

Psychologists and researchers have proposed a number of different theories of love. The following are four of the major theories proposed to explain liking, love, and emotional attachment.

Liking vs. Loving

Psychologist Zick Rubin proposed that romantic love is made up of three elements: attachment, caring, and intimacy. Attachment is the need to receive care, approval, and physical contact with the other person. Caring involves valuing the other persons needs and happiness as much as your own. Intimacy refers to the sharing of thoughts, desires, and feelings with the other person. ‘
Does Scottie show attachment to Madeleine in this scene? He doesn’t seem to want to receive care from her, but rather bestow it to her, the only approval he seems to need from her is that she’s willing to be with him but he does seem to need physical contact with her, holding and kissing her.

Does Scottie care for Madeleine? Yes, he seems to hold her needs and happiness as greater importance than his own, and the only thing that stops him following through with these needs is his vertigo.

Does Scottie show intimacy towards Madeleine? Yes, holds nothing back in sharing his thoughts, desires and feelings with Madeleine.

So according to this theory on love it could be argued that Scottie does love Madeleine.

‘Based upon this definition, Rubin devised a questionnaire to assess attitudes about others and found that these scales of liking and loving provided support for his conception of love.

• Learn more about Rubin’s Scales of Liking and Loving.

Compassionate vs. Passionate Love

According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues, there are two basic types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. Compassionate love is characterized by mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Compassionate love usually develops out of feelings of mutual understanding and shared respect for each other.’ 

Scottie shows all of the factors attributed to compassionate love, except for trust. He doesn’t trust her to go uo the tower on her own. Does this disqualify Scottie from this theory?

‘Passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and fulfilled. Unreciprocated love leads to feelings of despondence and despair. Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months.’ 
Scottie shows anxiety and affection in his relationship with Madeleine. He also shows attraction, although not sexual. Does this again disqualify him from this theory of love?
‘According to Hatfield, passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal lover, and when you experience heightened physiological arousal in the presence of the other person. 

Ideally passionate love then leads to compassionate love, which is far more enduring. While most people desire relationships that combine the security and stability of compassionate with the intensity of passionate love, Hatfield suggests that this is rare.

The Color Wheel Model of Love

In his 1973 book The Colors of Love, John Lee compared styles of love to the color wheel. Just as there are three primary colors, Lee suggested that there are three primary styles of love. These three styles of love are: (1) Eros, (2) Ludos, and (3) Storge. 

Continuing the color wheel analogy, Lee proposed that just as the primary colors can be combined to create complementary colors, these three primary styles of love could be combined to create nine different secondary love styles. For example, a combination of Eros and Ludos results in Mania, or obsessive love.

 

Lee’s 6 Styles of Loving 

• Three primary styles:
  1. Eros – Loving an ideal person
  2. Ludos – Love as a game
  3. Storge – Love as friendship




• Three secondary styles:
  1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love
  2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and practical love
  3. Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love 

It could be argued that at the start of the relationship Scottie fell in the the category of Eros, idolizing Madeleine, and had at this point in the film turned to Agape, seeming to have bonded with Madeleine in a very real way, and acting selflessly to attempt to save her. Later in the film it appears to turn to Mania, trying to recreate Madeleine in Judy before realizing that they are the same person, and taking her to the top of the tower to confront her.

Triangular Theory of Love

Psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed a triangular theory of love that suggests that there are three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Different combinations of these three components result in different types of love. For example, a combination of intimacy and commitment results in compassionate love, while a combination of passion and intimacy leads to passionate love. 

According to Sternberg, relationships built on two or more elements are more enduring that those based upon a single component. Sternberg uses the term consummate love to describe a combination of intimacy, passion, and commitment. While this type of love is the strongest and most enduring, Sternberg suggests that this type of love is rare.

Does Scottie Love Madeleine? – Possession

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/68990/possession_and_fear_in_relationships.html?cat=41

‘Possession and Fear in Relationships

A man who is at peace with himself and others will have no need to control anyone but himself. Why any of us needs to control another is beyond me, until I examine the motivating factor behind control. It’s usually fear. The man won’t let his wife go to a party alone because he fears the men who might be there. A woman doesn’t want her boyfriend to hang out with his old buddies because she knows all they do is pick up women.

In relationships, there is a lot of fear at times. Because people want to protect and preserve what they have, sometimes they are motivated by fear. This fear leads to possession, not love. It makes demands, not requests.’ Madeleine is making requests of Scottie (Madeleine ‘Let me go into the church also’ Scottie ‘Why?’), where as he is making demands of her. He’s so afraid of loosing her that he physically holds her to keep her close to him, and tries to overcome his vertigo to save her. He also tells her how to act and how to think, with lines like ‘No, there’s nothing you must do.’ and ‘No one posses you, you’re safe with me.’ implying he’s the only person he feels is fit to take care of her. This idea of control and possession over her is also explored later in the film, when Scottie meets Judy, and tries to completely change her (back) into Madeleine. If Scottie is being motivated by fear, it is perfectly understandable. He has a perfectly legitimate reason to believe that Madeleine wants to kill herself. ‘It causes drama, not peace. Where’s the trust? One might ask. Trust is a very interesting thing. The problem with it is that experience may have taught us that people can’t be trusted, especially in relationships. Your past relationshipsinfluence your present and future ones.’  Does Scotties past relationship with Midge affect his present one with Madeleine? ’ Even if you try not to, you still subconciously judge your current girlfriend, boyfriend or spouse by the last relationship you were in. You find it hard to trust and hence, fear surfaces. 

Fear leads to control and passive/aggressive behavior. It leads to the inability to reason.’ Many of Scotties actions appear to be irrational once he is ‘in love’ with Madeleine, not least of all, not showing the slightest remorse for having an affair with a woman he believes to be married to an old friend of his. ’Yet, we may all have insecurities and fears we hope to manage and get over. The best way to do this is to shoot yourself and your lover…I mean, to be honest with your partner and express the fears as they surface. Don’t turn to control…turn to truth…express the fear and the rejection you feel. If you happen to be with a loving and kind person, hopefully they will understand. If you happen to be with a fearful person, help them, don’t reject them further. 

Pride is often a guise for fear. The prideful person will never admit he is insecure.’ Does Scottie feel insecure and emasculate by his vertigo? ‘Instead, he will play power games, turning everything in his direction, yet making everyone else out to be the bad guys. Unless you can assure such a person, a relationship with him is impossible. Sure, you can have a codependent relationship with such a person, but there will never be in depth love, only possession and fear. ‘

Written by Patricia Williams

Does Scottie Love Madeleine? – Fetishism

 Does Scottie really love Madeleine?

In this post I shall be exploring the idea of fetishism, and hope to move on to the idea of possession in my next post.

 http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1998/41/wray.html

 

‘Fetishizing the Fetish

When I was about 8 years old, I read with excitement an advertisement for a pair of x-ray glasses in the back of Boy’s Life magazine. You know the ad I’m talking about.

Matt Wray

Issue #41, December 1998

 

When I was about 8 years old, I read with excitement an advertisement for a pair of x-ray glasses in the back of Boy’s Life magazine. You know the ad I’m talking about. It promised to open up the whole of the hidden world to me, to reveal all that was secret and concealed, to bring into view the invisible and expose the undisclosed. This ad was particularly effective on me, because just a year before I had gotten glasses to correct my nearsightedness. When the optometrist placed those geeky new glasses over my eyes, everything around me snapped into focus and the fuzzy world of blurry lines and bleeding colors disappeared. As I read the ad for these special x-ray glasses, I recalled how thrilling it had been to be able to see everything so sharply, so clearly, for the first time in my life. Everything seemed to shimmer with intensity and brilliant, reflected light. The eye doctor asked me to read the license plate of a car across the street and I did so, flawlessly. My parents smiled at me and I could see their shining teeth from across the room. As I sat there, I imagined that maybe the car belonged to some bad guys, and I noted the license plate number again, committing it to memory. I fantasized that If they were bad, I could tell the police — I’d be a little hero! I’d do the right thing and everyone would know what I had seen with my nerdy new eyes. I felt like someone had gifted me with superpowers of sight. It was an unforgettable, supercharged moment for me.

If these new glasses could give me that special moment again, then I wanted those x-ray glasses! You might even say I developed a little fetish for them, since by having them, I’d have some special power or status I didn’t have before. But I knew my mom would never approve — the glasses were kind of pricey and, after all, the ad showed a guy looking through a woman’s dress, his eyes all bugged out. I knew I’d never get those glasses, but that only seemed to make me want them all the more. My desire finally waned when I showed my older brother the ad. He laughed in my face. “Don’t be an idiot,” he chided, “Those things don’t work!” I took in this news with a bit of disappointment and despaired of ever having that feeling again. My fetish for x-ray glasses was potent, but short-lived.

 

If today’s critical theorists have a fetish, it is probably fetishism itself. Clearly, we derive a certain perverse pleasure from using the term, enjoying its cachet and the way it wryly suggests a sexual, libidinal energy at work in everything from shopping to sport, from celebrity worship to public humiliations. For these reasons and others I’ll explain in a moment, fetishism as an analytical concept has enjoyed great favor among cultural critics. It is generally understood as a potent — I’m tempted to say magical — weapon of analysis for a wide range of culturally informed activities, most of them having to do with how we learn to want stuff, how we come to desire objects and things.’ (Madeleine is an object of desire to Scottie from the first moment he sees her. She is presented as a figure of immense beauty, with a strange allure about her. The voyeuristic elements of the plot present her as an object of desire from the first moment he sees her, in a paparazzi, or even stalker style scenario. Why are celebrities followed? Because the public is fascinated by the way their idols live and want to know more about them.)

‘But, like any term that enjoys great popularity, it has been so widely used and abused that it has come to mean quite different things to many different people. For the purposes of keeping this essay brief, I want to focus on just three different meanings of the word as it is used in different arenas: in everyday speech, in the psycho-sexual realm, and in the economic, material realm

Popular Fetishes

Fetish. What does the word mean to you? Popular meanings of words are notoriously difficult to get at — they are so context-specific, so changeable and unstable. But standard dictionaries are of some help here, since they offer the most common definitions. Webster’s gives us three choices:

Any object believed by superstitious people to have magical power’

(Madeleine is ‘possessed’ by the spirit of a dead relative, giving her a supernatural, magical quality.)

‘Any thing or activity to which one is irrationally devoted’

(Scottie appears to fall for Madeleine whilst observing her. Is this a rational attachment? He only agrees to follow her after seeing her.)

‘Any non-sexual object, such as a foot or glove, that abnormally excites erotic feelings’

(The nature of Scotties attraction to Madeleine does not appear to be erotic, and if it were, it would not be considered an abnormal arousal.)

‘The first definition offered above is the oldest and perhaps original sense of the word. Anthropologists and historians of religion noted that the ‘primitives’ they studied often carried with them everywhere and at all times little objects: carvings, stones, herbs, feathers and bones which acted as little charms, a means for warding off evil spirits, unpleasant dreams, or bad luck. To European observers, they represented a kind of magical thinking, a superstition common to the “less developed races.”

We rarely seem to use this meaning of fetish as a charm very much anymore. My sense is that the second definition is the one most of use in everyday speech — it’s broad generality helps us convey a wide range of meanings across a full range of human activities. People are said to make a fetish of sports, serious collectors are said to fetishize the objects they collect, and a parent might fetishize the lock of hair or the baby shoes of a lost child. The common denominator is that for the person who does not share the fetish, the devotion seems to be completely wacky and weird, inexplicable in an utterly confounding, and sometimes disturbing way. Even though we don’t really think of fetishes as magical charms in the old-fashioned sense, we do nonetheless recognize that there is something irrational, unenlightened, and superstitious about the behaviors associated with them. They still represent to us a kind of “magical thinking.”

It’s also my sense that we often imbue this general sense of the word — that fetishes are irrational and kind of weird — with some hints of definition #3 — that is, when we speak of fetishes in a general way, we often mean to imply that we suspect there is some strange or unusual erotic force at work. And, as sex and sexuality becomes more and more a topic for polite public discourse, this is increasingly so. We owe this definitional strand of the fetish as sexually determined to psychology — most famously to Freud.

…

Special thanks to Jillian Sandell for her help with this article.

Matt Wray is a Ph.D candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness.(Duke University Press). Reach him at mwray@socrates.berkeley.edu.

 

Copyright © 1998 by Matt Wray. All rights reserved.’

Romantic Leads

I was unable to find much relevant information on the effects of suicide on a bystander, so chose to research the other topic I referred to in my previous post, the romantic leads.

From the IMDb guide to romance movies.

‘Luminaries of the Genre

Bette Davis

Joan Crawford

Katharine Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Grace Kelly

Cary Grant

Clark Gable

Deborah Kerr’

http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Genres/Romance/

While the above list doesn’t give a complete over view of every actor and actress within the genre, it does give us a look at the kind of stars there were appearing in romance films typically up to the point when Vertigo was made.

The males appear to be strong and charismatic, with dark hair and a cheeky smile, as well as typically handsome (Carry Grant and Clark Gable). James Stewart (Scottie) has a very different physique and character to what one would expect from a male romantic lead. He’s tall and skinny. He doesn’t look like a physically strong man. In his early he often took on roles that required not rugged charm or dashing charisma, but an every man, likeable quality, such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), both films directed by Frank Capra.

Kim Novak (Madeleine) isn’t visually out of place for a female lead. She’s not the most stereotypical female for a romantic role, but she’s not as jarringly out of place as Stewart. Hitchcock seemed very keen on his petite blondes though, and there’s something ethereal and unearthly about them, which is well fitting with this particular character that so much seems to be unexplained about.

While the typical male lead is older than the female lead, Stewart looks a lot older than Novak. (Stewart was about 25 years the senior of his co-star). There’s something out of place about the two of them as a pairing, which is fitting with the tone of the film.

The books I have read, hoping to find some ideas on the representation of the male and female leads, I found the following quotes. In ‘Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony’ by Richard Allen, it says “Madeleine is a fetish object for Scottie Ferguson in a manner that is made explicit by the way in which, when he looses her, he reconstructs her image by using the body of one Judy Barton…” p.157. In ‘The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and the Feminist Theory’ by Tania Modleski, she says ‘…the male character oscillates between a passive mode and an active mode, between a hypnotic and masochistic fascination with the woman’s desire and a sadistic attempt to gain control over her, to posses her.’ p99.

These quotes lead me to my question. Does Scottie really love Madeleine? I will address this question in my next post, and explore the ideas of love, fetishism and possession of an idividual.

Hitchcock’s Films Revisited – Robin Wood

Hitchcock’s Films Revisited – Robin Wood – Columbia University Press – 1989

I chose to look at this text, because many of the other books I skimmed through, based around different topics relating to Hitchcock or Vertigo, referenced Woods writings. This seemed to indicate that this text would give me a good starting block.  The text contains a scene-by-scene analysis of the film. This is the paragraph relating to the scene I am looking at (p116).

‘There follows a sequence at the Mission of San Juan Baptista, culminating in Madeleine’s suicide. Here, in the livery stable, amid the décor of the past, Scottie makes his last effort to explain the dream, to make it reality. The suicide itself has a shattering effect on the spectator which is by no means to be explained solely in terms of visual impact, strong as this is – the bell tower, the unnerving “vertigo” shots down the stairwell, the body falling past the aperture then spread out lifeless on the roof below. On one level, again, we have Hitchcock capitalizing on audience expectation by abruptly defeating them: no one, I think, seeing Vertigo for the first time unprepared, thinks that Madeleine is going to die half way through. She is the heroine of the romance, the medium through which the escape wishes are to be fulfilled: we are prepared for the happy ending, or perhaps for the final grand tragedy, but not for this brutal midway rupture. But Madeline, as I have suggested, represents fulfilment on a deeper and more valid level than that normally offered by the Hollywood film: by this point in the film she has evoked in us all that longing for something beyond the daily reality which is so basic to human nature. We are in fact by this time so thoroughly identified with Scottie that we share his shock, and the resulting sense of bewildered desolation, in the most direct way, just as we share his sense of helplessness, even out of responsibility. We are stunned, the bottom is knocked out of the world, we cannot at all see where the film is going, what possible sequel this event can have: all is chaos. It is an effect that Hitchcock is to match two films later, in Psycho with the shower bath murder.’

This has given me a good starting point, if not a huge amount of depth of the scene, mainly focusing on the suicide and audience reaction. I would like to look further into the psychology of suicides, and see what information I can find on the effect of those witness to them, and possibly the reaction of an audience to a filmed suicide (fabricated or real). I might look at any information I can find on the documentary ‘The Bridge’ (2006, Eric Steel).

After this I may look down a different path which this leads me to, or look at the portrayal of protagonists and/or romantic leads in films, as both Scottie and Madeleine are not your typical Hollywood choice for romantic leads.

Vertigo

The clip I have chosen to analyze is from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnpZN2HQ3OQ

The fields I am hoping to look at as a starting block are the music, the setting, the way romance is used, the portrayal of the characters and the camera work, and how all of these things are used to construct tension and classify this film as a thriller.