Undoing Gender in Hitchcock's Vertigo
Undoing Gender in Hitchcock's Vertigo
In Laura Mulveys essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, she uses psychoanalytic theory to show how the unconscious desires of patriarchal society position women as the “bearers, not makers, of meaning”(Mulvey, 15). She maintains that in Alfred Hitchcock's film, Vertigo, this notion is echoed through his use of film form. However, by only focusing on the binaries of active/male passive/female gaze in the film, this inhibits her analysis from recognizing the larger social order that is constructing these normative ideas of gender. In Judith Butlers book, Undergoing Gender, she states, “Psychoanalysis can also serve as a critique of cultural adaption as well as a theory for understanding the ways in which sexuality fails to conform to the social norms by which it is regulated.”(Butler, 14) Through this lens, I hope to reveal that Mulveys gender binaries are more complex than she claims. I will illustrate this by expanding on Scotties development of masculinity through three scenes. Through these examples, I hope to bring to light how race, class and sexuality are essential contributors to the analysis of gender and it’s reductive notion of masculinity.
As a starting point, I would like to look at this film in relation to the context of what produced it, being the extremely hetero normative ideology that dominated America in the 1950’s. At that time, an individual’s primary goal in life was to marry and reproduce a beautiful nuclear family. Vertigo reflects a lot of those narrow gender roles if looked at in those terms. However, those roles are not by any means natural in the sense that they are biological. Today, that is the last thing that the majority of my generation wants to do. These gender roles are a product of a larger social construction with multiple variables. Butler states, “It is crucial to understand the workings of gender in global contexts, in transnational formations, not only to see what problems are posed for the term of “gender” but to combat false forms of universalism that service a tacit or explicit cultural imperialism.” (Butler, 9) Once we can get past these universal stereotypes in Vertigo, the gender of the male characters becomes much more complex. The film can be read as the progression of Scottie’s masculine identity building in the literal sense as the film progresses. However, by looking at the broader influences of these scenes, these one-dimensional progressions are always undermined by a larger construct- a series of misdirections.
For example, in the beginning of the film, there is a literal foreshadowing of Scotties masculinity development to come. However, I wouldn’t just look at this “low point” in the spectrum; there is also a sort of interdependence on feminine structures. As the scene opens up to an establishing shot of Scottie sitting, it zooms into him trying to balance the phallic object in his hand being his cane. He then drops the cane and screams in pain because of the structure of the corset. This perhaps an introduction to his current state of masculinity as being unstable and weak as well as very dependent on this effeminate structure of the corset. Later on in the scene, Scottie states this theory that if he can progressively get used to heights, then he’ll be able to get rid of his acrophobia. As he says this, he raises his cane in small increments hinging from his midsection thus resembling an erection as he projects his theory into the future. But when he tests his theory by standing on various stool heights, he suddenly sees a flashback of his accident and a diegenic sound begins to absorb the close-up of Scotties face. Then we see a high-angle shot of Midge from Scotties point of view and then another close up of Scotties face embodying a damsel in distress as he falls off the stool into Midge’s arms. Thus, Midge and the corset echo a sort of effeminate structure that becomes an integral element of safety and support for Scottie. This scene becomes an important foreshadowing moment not for the narrative progression of Scotties masculinity, but for the interdependence of the two binaries.
Another example of Scottie’s masculine progression is when Scottie first meets with Ester and the class power dynamic between the two men is set in motion though body language, the environment and the camera angles. The environment is set with an establishing shot of the phallic cranes navigating the natural landscape behind the window where the men sit. As the camera moves inside, we see the room full of heavy mahogany furniture, large ship models and aggressively red carpet. The power relationship is then coded into the dialogue and camera shots. For example, Scotties first asks how Ester got into the ship building business. Ester simply states, “I married into it,” which doesn’t fit into the stereotypical American self-made man trope of the 1950’s. To be a man in America in the 1950s was all about the hardworking, war-supporting family man. Ester then goes on to explain that he thinks this job is dull and really doesn’t need to be doing it, but feels the responsibility because his wife’s family is gone. It’s also important to note that this scene is shot from behind Scotties back with the emphasis on Ester. This foreshadows Ester’s ulterior motives in the conversation and Scottie’s blindness to that. Ester also states, “the things that spell San Francisco are dying fast.” This can be read as a very literal way of hinting to his intentions of fleeing
, because his ties to the city will soon die along with his wife.
Literal and metaphorical hierarchies are also established between the two men in this scene, reiterating their class differences through their coded interaction in the ultra-masculine room. For example, when they’re looking at a serene landscape painting in his office. Ester describes it in terms of “color, excitement, power and freedom,” reiterating his intentions through the coded dialogue. Also, when Ester brings up Scotties acrophobia and asks if he would like to sit down, Scottie insists that he will stand up and overtly declares that this is not a permanent disability. His tone of voice is unnecessarily loud and dominating while the man who really holds the power is soft and even-toned. He says, “ I just can’t climb stairs that are too steep.” And “I’m a retired detective and you’re in the ship building business.” These comparisons are perhaps in reference to the class hierarchies established between the two. We also see this hierarchy echoed visually when Ester goes to ask for a favor and stands on a step above Scottie, now visually higher than him in the camera frame. As their conversation progresses they both shuffle around the room touching all the furniture as perhaps an effort of claiming ground or trying to find a conformability that doesn’t quite exist in the overly masculine room. Thus, their masculine gender performance is being largely undermined by their class and power relationship here.
In the end, Scottie reaches the literal “pinnacle” of his masculinity in the bell tower, as he comes to realize the fictional elements of these gender roles though recognizing Judy’s constructed identity. Scottie says, “You played his wife so well, Judy! He made you over, didn't he? Just as I've done. But better! Not just the hair and the clothes! the look! the manner! the words! Those beautiful phony trances!” This is a critical part where Scottie points out that Judy’s identity as Madeleine is entirely constructed by both of the leading male characters. This identity construction was used as a manipulation tool casting him, the real Madeleine, and even Judy as victims. He continues, “Oh, Judy!! When he had all her money, and the freedom and the power... he ditched you? What a shame! But he knew he was safe. You couldn't talk. Didn't he give you anything?” This statement sort of circles back to what Ester said about the picturesque painting during their first meeting, full of “color, excitement, power and freedom.”
This scene in the bell tower marks the point in the film where the idea of a woman’s role in film is totally subverted. In bell hooks essay, Oppositional Gaze, she mentions Burchell who examines “the intersection of race and gender in relation to the construction of the category “women” in film as object of the phallocentric gaze.”(hooks, 292) By acknowledging Madeleine’s identity as a social construction, Scottie points out this obsession with the female, white, blond film star as being a construction of the phallocentric gaze, thus debunking it through acknowledgment. Burchell further deconstructs the obsession that viewer had with white, blonde women film stars as a choice made to perpetuate this idea of white supremacy. Something Mulvey points out about this topic is this desire of the spectator to identify with the character—which is not always the case. She states, “ Black female spectators who refused to identify with White womanhood, who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession, created a critical space where the binary opposition Mulvey posits of “women as image, man as bearer of the look” was continually deconstructed.”(Mulvey, 295) This deconstruction from the view of the Black Female spectator is another example of the importance of taking into consideration the larger surrounding structures of power and noticing who is being excluded.
By pointing out examples of the seen and unseen structures of power, we are able to dismantle the binaries of male/ female gender roles. I hope to bring to light the importance of doing this when discussing gender. Through these examples, I have illustrated how race, class and sexuality are important contributors to the analysis of gender and crucial to the transformation of reductive active/male passive/female gender norms.
Old Tropes New Tricks: Repetition in Reassemblag
Old Tropes New Tricks:
Repetition in Reassemblage
In Edward Said’s book, Orientalism he defines the term as several interdependent interests. He maintains, “The relationship between the Occident and the Orient is one of power, domination and of various degrees of complex hegemony”(5). The site of hegemony is where this idea of Orientalism is re-enforced through culture and its interests. Trinh Minh-ha questions how to diverge from these Orientalist representations of Senegal through various forms of deconstruction in her 1982 film, Reassemblage. She does this by trying to locate where the reproduction of hegemony happens in representation and the parallels it has with repetition. By utilizing a similar poststructuralist lens of looking at the “Other” through various filmic translations described in her 1989 interview with Scott MacDonald. She states, “Translation, which is interpolated by ideology and can never be objective or neutral, should here be understood in the wider sense of the term- as a politics of constructing meaning”(Minh-ha, 127). By taking into consideration the construction of familiar western representations of Senegal, she is able to deconstruct and de-familiarize them through various modes of representation. In this essay, I examine the experimental film strategy of repetition that Trinh Minh-ha uses to create a post colonial critique of representations of Senegal and how the film is able to breakout of Orientalist/ Africanist discourse by drawing attention to Orientalist depictions. I will be illustrating my point through examples of how Minh-ha uses repetition in the film form, image tropes and sound with specific examples in Reassemblage.
The repetitive use of blank screens is a crucial element throughout the film that gives the viewer a chance to establish and reflect on their relation to the various forms of representation. This tone is set in the first forty-five seconds of the film where there is a full black screen with the music of Joola drums playing in the background. It sounds like a celebration with the various volumes of chanting, laughing and rhythmic music. We hear a combination of instruments working in rhythmic harmony and a sense of community is felt through the conversing voices in the tribal languages that even the viewer, presumably, can’t understand. Since there are no subtitles either, this allows for the viewer to simply focus on what these sounds remind them of. One may then ask, what about this music makes me think of Africa? And what do I see when I think about Africa? Here, Minh-ha gives the viewer a moment to acknowledge their own pre-conceived associations with the music and possibly open up a dialogue for examining where those notions stem from.
Through her editing process she is able to craft an incomplete and decentered representation of several tribes by over-using classic experimental film techniques such as jump cuts, close-ups and panning. This, I think, reflects the complexities and impossibility of depicting an accurate representation of another culture in a lot of ways. She does this through the pans by sticking to either a vertical or horizontal axis. This makes the viewer constantly aware of the limits of the camera frame and the inaccuracies of depicting space. Within the cameras fleeting unstable pans and fractured images, the possibility of grasping this way of life visually, becomes apparent. She mentions in her interview that “...No reality can be captured without transforming” (Minh-ha,115). By acknowledging that everything we experience is a translation through our own filter of experiences, this opens up a space for the viewer to examine the specifics within their own tropes. “The subject stays in its world and you try to figure out what your relationship to it is. It’s exactly the opposite of “taking a position”: it’s seeing what different positions reveal”(Minh-ha,115).
About thirteen minutes into the film, the viewers are again confronted with their own projected representations through the jump cuts between the blank screen and the naked breast. At first we hear drumming and laughing in the background of the blank scene. Then it cuts to a close up of a naked breast and then pans out to two women using long wooden poles to crush what looks like corn. By associating a naked breast with the everyday banal task of crushing corn, she normalizes it. Later on in the film, we hear Minh-ha’s voice say, “Nudity does not reveal- the hidden- It is it’s absence. A man attending a slide show on Africa turns to his wife and says with guilt in his voice: “I have seen some pornography tonight.” By associating the breast with the absence of the hidden, this makes the viewer think about the openness of breast in Senegal versus its sexualized associations in America. Here, it would be against social norms for women to do their every day jobs topless, and not much would probably get done, needless to say. This is a result of our own cultural hegemony and we project this onto representations we view.
Along with the naked breast, Minh-ha uses animal carcasses as another stereotypical “Africana” image. At one point in the film, the carcass of a dead cow became juxtaposed against the dry roots of a tree. The carcass has a dry, grey tone and protruding bones that look almost identical to that of the tree roots. Both of the forms became almost indistinguishable through the abstraction by removing the surrounding context. This shot perhaps echoes the idea of life (represented by the tree) within these seemingly dead and lifeless tropes, such as the abundance of dead animals. In the interview with Minh-ha she states, “The term “experimental” becomes questionable when it refers to techniques and vocabularies that allow one to classify a film as “belonging” to the “avant-garde” category”(114). These ideas of classifying, categorizing and questioning modes of representation are something she continues to bring up in various ways though out her film, and I think is reflected here. It’s extremely difficult to use not only common methods of making experimental films but also the commonly seen depictions of Africa, like these dead animals. Through using these images such as the naked breast and animal carcasses, she defamiliarizes the familiar and criticizes it.
Another way she uses repetition is through the looping of sound, not just for the purposes of fragmenting or emphasizing effects but as an effort to bring out the subtleties and nuances in hegemonic images of Africa through repetition. She was more interested in how these sounds would come back to her throughout her shooting across Senegal. For example, about thirteen minutes into the film there becomes a sound that vaguely resembles, “a-goot-goot-goot-ah-con-telli-toko.” Again, it seems absurd to try to pin down what it sounds like but after about the fifth listen you start to recognize the subtleties and that each time this phrase is repeated there are nuances within it. Sometimes the “goot-goot-goot” part only has two, “goot-goot” and the tone of voice changes from sounding far away, to extremely close and from a single voice to multiple voices in tandem. In her interview, Minh-ha says, “Each language has its own music and its practice need not be reduced to the mere function of communicating meaning. The repetition I made use of has accordingly, nuances and differences built within it, so that the repetition here is not just the automatic reproduction of the same, but rather the production of the same with and in differences”(114). Here, she points out that by not assigning a meaning to every single “sign”, one becomes open to the nuances within language while also finding the nuances within Orientalist depictions of culture. By being attentive to these subtitles and being ok with not being able to grasp, package or even fully understand a culture, is to accept that there is complexity in the stereotypes and complexity in the seemingly banal.
Minh-ha responds to these cultural legacies of colonialism by putting a mirror up to the viewer through various forms of repetition. She makes us confront these symbols of underdevelopment by over using them and thus is able to deconstruct these seemingly concrete ideas by acknowledging them in various ways. I believe this film provides insight into the broader questions of the production of the “Orient” and how to diverge from that. Said states, “To say nothing of historical entities—such as locales, regions, geographical sectors as “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made. Therefore, as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that has given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect on each other”(5). By acknowledging that these ideas of the “Orient” emerge from European discourse, are man-made and depend largely on representation rather than a natural occurrence, we also recognize that these have the capability of change, and that change starts with being aware of them and sharing that awareness with others like Minh-ha has done through her film.