A Second Gaze at Hitchcock’s Women

Paper by Michaela Pluskovich. Viewed on DVD.

Alfred Hitchcock has been called many names: Hitch, the master of suspense, a technical pioneer, and last but not least, a voyeur and misogynist. The latter is what feminist film theorist have devoted their studies to since the second wave of feminism, with Laura Mulvey and her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” leading the way. In this influential essay, the British feminist film theorist criticizes the classical Hollywood portrayal of women with a “strong visual and erotic impact,” resulting in female characters who merely embody men’s sexual desire while having no essential importance to the plot themselves (Mulvey 346). Subsequently, this puts the spectator in the position of the patriarchal “male gaze,” experiencing only a passive, and powerless female character. Having been part of this Hollywood structure most of his career, Hitchcock and his films were often made into a target of this theory, accusing him of repetitive violent exertion on his female characters with such a schematic routine that only sadistically dispositional women could be able to enjoy. While all of this might be true for classical and even contemporary Hollywood, which in fact have been greatly influenced by Hitchcock, his later films, such as Vertigo (1958), Rear Window (1954), and The Birds (1963) exhibit a complexity of the female lead characters that make it impossible for the film analyst to discount them as mere misogynistic portrayals of women. Indeed, even Robert Phillip Kolker, author of “Women as Genre,” has to admit that even though Hitchcock is “a misogynist at his core, … [this] was part of a greater misanthropy,” and the director is aware of, and also questions, his characters’ mistakes; an elaboration which reviewers often misinterpret (Kolker 140). This misinterpretation can be traced back to the complexity and diversity of the representation of women in Hitchcock’s films, which leaves us to assume that the director’s intentions lie in a deeper critic of gender roles in general. The examination of the mentioned films gives reason to believe that the male gaze and its related gender identification is one that the female characters are not only aware of, but the camera movement suggests that the films should not just be stigmatized as mere misogynistic portrayal of women, but rather a critic on these gender defined roles.

The diversity of women’s representation in Hitchcock’s films is evident in his most reviewed and criticized films Vertigo, Rear Window and The Birds. Vertigo and Rear Window have both been scrutinized by feminist theorist, and justifiably so. At first sight, there might be a clear structure and definition of female representation that contrasts the usual dangerous and mysterious femme-fatale, the embodiment of men’s sexual desire, with the independent and intellectually superior woman, whose intelligence is not recognized by the men. Such a contrast of characters can be exemplified with those in Vertigo, for example Scott’s ex-fiancée Midge (Barbara Geddes), whose motherly advice is belittled and exploited by Scott (James Stewart), and Madeleine (Kim Novak), the lead male’s embodied desire. However, while these portrayals look like misogynistic stereotypes, their context show that Hitchcock must have been completely aware of this, which suggests the need for a critique on the interpretation of these expected gender roles.

The scenes with Midge, for example, indicate that she is not only intelligent as a woman, but the use of various close-ups suggest a superiority even to the male lead Scott. Some theorists as Slavoj Zizek suggest that Hitchcock’s decision to portray female characters like Midge only fulfill “characteristic details which persist and and repeat themselves without a common meaning” (126). However, when looking at these details more closely, they also are a device to further disempower the male character, in this case Scott, who already is emasculated by his acrophobia. In the second scene of Vertigo, the viewer is introduced to Midge, a nickname for Marjorie that almost sounds manly, as well as Scott’s current situation after his detective related accident on San Francisco’s roofs. While the dialogue in the scene conveys a certain degradation of Midge by Scottie’s belittling remarks, such as “Oh, no, … Midge, don’t be so motherly,”, the camera movement gives way to Midge’s mind. Although Scottie presumptuously does not expect any reaction to his comment, the next shot is a close-up of Midge looking up from the sketches she is working on and glaring towards Scott. This quick moment gives the audience the chance to identify with Midge’s feelings and with the subsequent shot showing Scottie from Midge’s perspective, mindlessly fiddling with his cane and not noticing Midge’s reaction, with Scott looking fairly unillumined and ignorant to the viewer. Although this moment is rather unimportant to the plot, as it is to the male protagonist, we can find it several times throughout the scene, which emphasizes its importance to Hitchcock in order to give the viewer a chance to empathize with the female’s perspective and at the same time shift to a “woman gaze.”

The other woman, Madeleine, is actually composed of different characters and multiple identities, who are all defined through different representations of women. However, the overall concept of their characters is their sexual attractiveness, which leads Scottie into a nightmare. This desire of the man, which is portrayed as the fascinating beautiful Madeleine, is mainly conveyed through POV-shots from Scottie’s perspective. Except for the later flashback, which resolves the murder of Elster’s wife, and the scenes that we see from Midge’s perspective (which again shows the importance she has of questioning Scottie’s perspective), the viewer experiences the events exclusively from Scottie’s point of view. We continuously see Madeleine portrayed dreamlike through POV-shots and from a rather great distance, staring at the mysterious portrait and disappearing with her car so that the truth can be easily hidden from the spectator, and from Scott. However, these POV-shots also have another function, which is to convey that the dream of Madeleine really is nothing more than a dream, and to question Scottie’s “reality,” at the latest when we find out about the murder. An example that supports this dreamlike and unreal portrayal is when Judy finally shows herself as the costumed Madeleine, a shot in which she is shown through blurry vision in a glooming blue light, which make her appear like a ghost. Indeed, Scott’s obsession with Madeleine is merely one of that with a ghost, a ghost of a made-up identity that stands for the “eternal feminine,” as Tania Modleski calls it in her book “The Women Who Knew too Much” (93). The fact that Gavin Elster constructed this “eternal feminine” in order to mislead the detective, strengthens the awareness of and the critic on the gender roles, a construct of “male desire and male design” that in reality is nothing.

Rear Window has, similar to Vertigo, been an easy target for the male gaze theory, as it also shows the plot from one point of view. Even further, the lead male protagonist L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his wheelchair after an accident, with the story being seen through his eyes, or binoculars. This leaves the viewer with only a few opportunities to emphasize with any other character’s perspective, including that of the female’s. By being confined to a wheelchair with an enormous cast on his leg Jeff, a successful and adventurous photographer, is emasculated much like the character of Scott in Vertigo. This emasculation is important as it not only drives the story forward, but also gives the women in this film, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and Stella (Thelma Ritter), the insurance company nurse, the opportunity to prove themselves outside of their defined gender roles. In this respect, the gender roles even seem to be reversed, and Hitchcock himself points this out when he refers to the symmetry between Lisa and Jeff’s relationship and that of Mr. and Mrs. Thorwald’: on the spectator’s side we have a unsatisfied wheelchair-bound man and a loving care taking woman, while the opposite is evident on the other side of the backyard (Modleski 72). The reference to Lisa as the stronger and more active character is strengthened later when she takes the initiative to solve the murder, whereas Jeff can only stand – or better, sit – on the sideline when his girlfriend is in danger.

Women in danger is also a theme which has been an issue in Hitchcock’s films, and is the least justifiable one in feminist theory. Hitchcock’s The Birds is an example of such exerted violence on women, although here it is the danger that the hero of the story usually has to suffer from, regardless if man or woman. Indeed, it is the female lead character Melanie Daniels (Tippi Herden) whose point-of-view the spectator is looking from, and it is the psychological insight into the females’ character that makes it less misogynistic. In fact, Melanie is portrayed as a independent women and able to take care of herself; in the scene where she navigates the boat over the bay to sneak into her future lover Mitchell Brenner’s (Rod Taylor) house Melanie has no difficulties to maneuver the boat, an action that is not expected from a woman of her class. Mitch on the other hand, although also handy himself and the eventual savior of Melanie’s life, does not have the same importance to the plot that any of the women have, with the most important theme in this film seeming to concentrate around a mother/daughter relationship (Lincoln 615). This is emphasized with the scene in which Mitch’s mother Lydia, who extremely resembles Melanie physically, admits that she wished she was stronger, and therefore the power over Mitch shifts from the mother to Melanie, who is repetitively filmed from a lower angle than her female rivals.

While it was arguably not in Hitchcock’s intentions to make a feminist statement with his films, it has to be accounted for that his complex, round female characters need interpretation on a deeper level, where psychoanalytic explanations are supported by Hitchcock’s technical mastery, and most likely by his wife Alma Reville’s input. The 1950s, in which two of his most influential films were produced, was a time of extreme decline of women in film, with the decreasing popularity of musicals and “women’s films,” leading straight to the emergence of the “buddy films” in the ’70s, which had no need for major female roles (Lincoln 615). With films like Vertigo, Rear Window, as well as The Birds in mind, it would be too easy to dismiss Hitchcock’s work as mere misogynistic representations of women. Hitchcock did not choose beautiful actresses to simply play a flat passive character, but rather complex individuals who might need a second look in order to see their importance with respect to the plot and the film’s interpretation.

 

Work Cited

Gordon, Paul. Dial M for Mother. A Freudian Hitchcock. Cranbury: Associated University Press, 2008. Print.

Kolker, Robert Phillip. “Women as Genre.” Women and Film. Edt: Janet Todd. New Yorl: Holmes & Meiers Publishers Inc., 1988. 130 – 149. Print.

Lincoln, Anne E., Michael Patrick. “Double Jeopardy in Hollywood: Age and Gender in the Careers of Film Actors, 1926 – 1999.” Sociological Forum, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Dec 2004), pp. 611-631. JSTOR, June 26.

Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. 2nd edition, New York: Rouledge, 2005. Print.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Edt: Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Douglas M. Kellner. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 342 – 352. Google-books, June 26.

Zizek, Slavoy. “Hitchcockian Sinthoms.” Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan … But were afraid to ask Hitchcock. New York: Verso, 2002. 125- 128. Print.

 

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Published:
07.01.11 / 12pm
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Academic Papers, DVD, Films