I've just wrapped up my Hitchcock critical studies class, except for the final next week.
Early, early on, my professor insisted to his 100+ obedient students that "the feminists" who insist that Hitch has a problem with women are wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Wrong. Exhibit A: He put interesting, vital female characters in his movies over and over and over again.
Yes, okay. Now can we go back and take a look at "Frenzy"? Or "Psycho"? Or "Topaz"? Or "Family Plot"?
As a fundamental litmus test, can you imagine Grace Kelly playing roles in those movies? No, I submit, you cannot. For the fundamental reason that Hitch wouldn't have asked her. But once the great beauties of the 40s and 50s stopped making films, Hitch had a problem on his hands. He needed actresses, but he couldn't find any that took his breath away, so he had to do the best he could, i.e. Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren.
If I haven't mentioned it before, I am a firm believer in the Myth of the Nice Guy, having witnessed first hand the stranglehold it can have on male/female relations in modern society. Here's how it functions:
1. Guy can't figure out women. Maybe he doesn't know any. Who knows?
2. Guy wrongly forms the opinion that women want nice guys.
3. Guy constructs a nice guy persona and uses this persona in all his interactions with women.
4. Many women sense that this is a persona and not the actual guy, and squicked out, they make their escape, often via anything with a pulse in the vicinity.
5. Guy comes to believe that this proves that women do not like nice guys, and prefer jerks.
6. Guy goes through life convinced women are totally inscrutable and makes no effort to interact with them as sane human beings.
(Yes, I've known "nice guys," and the well-known variant, "compulsive asshole guys." Last semester, a total stranger grilled me about Ian Fleming, then dismissed my answers as mistaken, despite having never read a single Ian Fleming book himself. In retrospect, I think he wanted my seat.)
I'm sorry to say that I think Hitch suffered from the Myth of the Nice Guy. I know he had a long, happy marriage with Alma (or so my professor insists), but I'm guessing that Hitch thought Alma was a one-in-a-million lucky shot, and that most women were neurotic monsters, nymphomaniacs, harpies or some combination of the three. And once he stopped working with women whose inescapable beauty and (ha ha) grace forced him to repress these beliefs, his films get crueler and crueler and crueler.
Of course, I can't say any of this on my exam, so I'll have to content myself with screaming it to the internet.
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2 comments:
"Wanted your seat"? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Re Hitchcock and women: I know less than nuthin', but he wouldn't be the first devout Catholic male of his generation to develop a madonna/whore complex. When you blame a woman for the entire fall from Grace (ha ha), it's only logical to consider them a species of chaos-sowing, occasionally housetrainable demon.
"Chaos-sowing, occasionally housetrainable demon"?
MG, if you want me to stop leaving my socks on the floor, just say so. Jeez.
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