Final Paper for Theory - Enoch Arden Gender Bender Complications in Gender representation in twin narratives: My Favorite Wife and Too Many Husbands

Punishing Feminine Desire in Vertigo

In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Scottie Ferguson is performed as a quintessentially Freudian Male, with deeply narcissistic impulses pervading his relationship with the 2(3) women in the film he maintains relationships with.  Though as Mulvey[1] points out, his narcissistic voyeurism creates a perfect opportunity for both the scopophilic pleasure and the narcissistic impulse of the cinematic audience.  For both Scottie and for the audience he carries with him, Madeleine/Judy is the object that brings that scopophilic pleasure in looking.

While Scottie’s rather pathological infatuation with Madeleine is treated sympathetically as par for the course, (after all, he’s given the task of spying on Madeleine and Linda Williams[2] explains that, in cinema, too look is too desire.) But the desires of the women in the film (Midge, Madeleine / Judy) are all punished in the course of the film.  While their desires are not treated as inexplicable (they are, after all, falling in love with the normative heterosexual hero/optimized alter-ego of the viewer) they are not treated as justified in their desire in any instance.  Whereas Scottie’s only potential turpitude, pursuing a married woman, is blotted out by the revelation that he’d really been interacting with Judy, pretending to be Madeleine. 

In his desire, and his three-dimensional action as he pursued Madeleine-then-Judy and then manipulated her as an object-to-be-viewed for his pleasure, all the narrative devices seem to sympathize with him.   Only an analysis removed from the language of the screen might find him rather guilty of Judy’s accidental death.  By contrast, Midge is punished for her unreciprocated desire by continual dehumanizing rejection, especially after her satirical self-portrait is poorly received, and ultimately by Scottie refusing to recognize her or return her gaze during his hospital stay. Scottie clearly views her as a mother figure (even calling her mother), and treats her advances as Oedipal.  Theoretically Judy as Madeleine is punished for desiring Scottie by being separated from him after the murder of the real Madeleine is completed.  While Judy’s death at the end of the film is also a narrative punishment for her complicity in Madeleine’s murder, it is also more effectively a punishment for her desire for Scottie, and for the wrenches she threw in his scopophilic enjoyment by allowing him to “fall in love” with a non-entity.

 

That non-entity is telling.  At the end of the film we still know next to nothing about Madeleine Elster or Judy Barton, both dead.  We are acquainted only with how their deaths have impacted Scottie.  As Mulvey quoted Budd Boetticher, “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does.  In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”  Any further backstory or explanation of Judy Barton’s relationship or interactions with Gavin Elster might have made her more of a three-dimensional character, but in this narrative she functioned purely as an object for exhibitionist pleasure, so such character development was foregone.

In a way, Scottie is excused for having fallen in love with a murderer, because as she was pretending to be Madeleine, and portraying a person given to fits of possession or insanity, that insanity had the same effect that “blindness” had on the silent-film heroines discussed by Williams.  Her trance-like state portrayed the same lack of autonomy and desire that Williams correlated to literal or figurative blindness in virginal heroines.  The Madeleine/ Judy character doesn’t even speak until almost 40 minutes into the film.  She is simply viewed, and is certainly on display (on about 6 levels). With her bleached blonde hair and her white coat, she oscillates between appearing virginal and ghostly.

Judy’s guilt narratively justifies Scotties’ rather bizarre behavior. Mulvey explained that “The power to subject another person to the will sadistically or to the gaze voyeuristically is turned onto the woman as the object of both. Power is backed by a certainty of legal right and the established guilt of the woman.”   Thus her role as a murder-accomplice becomes symbolic of the threat of castration.  The guilt or shame universal to women.

“The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment, or saving of the guilty object.”  Mulvey here describes every motivation of Scottie’s character in the second half of the film.  As he finds Judy, then literally forces her to re-enact the death of Madeleine.  He also punishes her as a guilty object, both through the process of grooming her to re-perform her role as Madeleine, and then by making her re-enact Madeleine’s death with him by going to the top of the tower, and ultimately by placing her where she would re-enact Madeleine’s death with her own death.

But Judy’s guilt never takes too much precedence.  If she were too inexcusably wicked she’d be more powerful or more interesting than Scottie.  Her threat is lobotomized, to where she’d be almost sympathetic if she were allowed to be real.  But the softening of her guilt ultimately functions only to justify Scottie’s attraction to her as an object, and his exhibition of her to the audience.  “The beauty of the woman as object and the screen space coalesce; she is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylized and fragmented by close-ups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator’s look.”

 

Judy is even seen to be participating in her exhibitionism (both as Madeleine and as Judy) willingly, with the motivation of desire for Scottie.  Once she actively pursues this desire, telling Scottie she’ll conform to all the changes he demands if he’ll “just like me.”  Then Scottie’s masochism kicks into high gear.  That this scene coincides with the necklace clue that allows Scottie to solve Judy’s mystery, and punish her for it, suggests that perhaps Judy was being punished for desiring Scottie, and for having foiled his sadistic infatuation by having attracted him under false pretenses and having rendered the already threatening female object too threatening by making it a deceit.

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[1] Laura, Mulvey. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. N. pag. Print.

[2] Williams, Linda. "When the Woman Looks." The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: University of Texas, 1996. 15-34. Print.

Response: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure via the Introduction to Theory and Criticism

Looking at the 4 pillars of film history (Film History: Theory and Practice) it is tempting to extol the aesthetics and technology of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) for a light hearted approach to the text, but I'm probably going to stick with "film as society" or social film history, especially regarding gender representation, to which I am sensitive.  This film seemed to deconstruct male stereotypes with gusto, but was markedly timid in its willingness to deconstruct female stereotypes.  The women in this film were all typical stereotypical objects obliging neatly to the angel or sexual object dichotomy.

But let's allow for the expectation that an 1980's-1990's era audience may have been resistant to realistic representations of women and that any attempt to do such could have put a damper on the heightened raucous tone of humor used to facilitate the deconstruction of male stereotypes.  They tackled the one and not the other, and if only one pony could be roped, they chose the one and did it thoroughly.

In the entirety of the film, there are only two male characters that do not seem conflated with hyperbole.  The one is George Carlin's Rufus character, who serves as a passive narrator.  He is absent for almost all of the kinetic action of the film, and his presence serves as an omniscient bookend to the beginning and end of the "adventure" within the narrative.   He seems the character most likely to be identified with by the audience, due in large part to the blank slate created by his absence during the majority of the film.

Bernie Casey's Mr. Ryan, the history teacher, was the only other male character in the film that was identifiable as a representation of human reality rather than stereotype.  His performance seemed distinctly Sidney Poitier-esque and I wondered whether the choice to keep his character relatable was related to race.  It is possible that in the deconstruction of male stereotypes it seemed prudent to circumvent the deconstruction of racial stereotypes, while still giving a nod in that direction.  I find this interesting in contrast to the Ben Stein character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Clearly a stereotypical, or comedic character would have worked here, but not perhaps with the added weight of racial context.  So they chose race over humor in the balance of the roll, and I find it an interesting foil for the remainder of the male characters. (Interestingly, the futuristic group leader, the only other black character, was also placid.)

Both father figures in this story are deeply dysfunctional, and both seem to fit obvious male and father figure stereotypes.  Bill's Father is entirely oblivious, emotionally unavailable, and preoccupied with sex.  Ted's Father is the picture of uptight, militant, unforgiving and unrelatable.  Both are clearly shown to be a detriment to the well being of their sons, and their parenting is proved utterly ineffective.  Compare this with other roles where these stereotypes are viewed more favorably; many protagonists in westerns and most male anti-heroes created since the 1960's share some of these traits.

Each of the historical male figures visited or collected by Bill and Ted play against their expectation or type in at least minor ways.  Napoleon is the first and most blatant of these, proving to be a ninny, an ineffective bully, and generally childish in the worst senses of the word.  While this view of him as a historical person is possibly consistent with a number of narratives emerging from his life, it stands in humorous contrast to the picture of an effective military leader, strategist, and willing soldier that Napoleon branded himself with as he attempted to design his own place in history.

Billy The Kid, probably playing the least against type of any male character, proved helpful, cooperative, and a providential schemer.  This is in slight contrast to the generally accepted description of William McCarty as being unlucky in his associations, and cantankerous and quick to make enemies.

The general interpretation of Socrates is that he was a great thinker and a teacher of impressive profundity.  But when he encounters Bill and Ted, Socrates is made to look consistently silly, first impressed by Kansas lyrics (even if they were, in turn, inspired by Emerson), and then buffooning in his toga in San Dimas.

Ghengis Khan is the easiest target for male stereotype deconstruction.  His wanton childishness exceeds even Napoleon's and his self-serving gluttony is capitalized as he is led into the time-traveling phone booth by a base-level Twinkie bribe.  His toddler-level tantrum in the sporting goods store in San Dimas also helps to show him as an infantile excuse for a man, relying on fear mongering and brute force to satisfy his most base desires.  This seems to be based on Ghengis Khan's reputation for slaughtering civilians in times of war, but ignores that part of his legacy that included unifying language in his kingdoms, promoting written literacy, and establishing religious tolerance.  Still, the stereotype of the male warrior is made to look utterly infantile with this representation.

Freud is largely left alone, allowing for jokes primarily.  Freudian jokes are hard to resist, and they worked well in this context.  His interaction with the two young women in the mall made his freudian analysis of their behavior appear utterly uninformed and oblivious.

Beethoven is primarily played against type musically, as his character is largely non-verbal.  But his proclivity for rock music plays humorously against his place as a revered figure in the pantheon of classical music, his stone bust adorning the top of many a militant piano teacher's sound board.

Abraham Lincoln is almost an afterthought here, but his whole hearted embracing of Bill's not-actually-so-profound mantra of "party on, dudes," serves to make his character far less solemn than is generally expected.  And fighting over whether his signature silk stove-top hat is actually his shows a sliver of pettiness in a generally idolized figure.

There is a suspicious lack of any real villain among the cast of characters in the entire film.  This serves an interesting function narratively as the male figures contrast with each other.  It sort of levels the playing field and allows all characters to be considered, ridiculed, and dissected equally.

Bill and Ted themselves are pretty clearly not representations of any real or likely persons, but rather appear to be a construction of the polar opposite of stereotypical "manly" traits.  They are not smart, not eloquent, not tough, not "too cool" to show emotion or fear, not quick or quick witted, not hard working or dedicated, not cruel or terse, not judgemental.  They are entirely inactive characters.  Throughout the film they seem more prone to be acted upon than to act.  Their primary virtues are their passivity and lack of malevolence, which is pretty thoroughly summed up in their axiomatic, "Be excellent to each other."  Despite their vapidity, Bill and Ted are likeable because of what they are not.  And what they are not is any measure of a typical male stereotype.   This thorough deconstruction of what it means to be a male protagonist very nearly makes up for the fact they they are given female objects as a prize, almost in the same breath as being given a guitar, a possession, an object, as a reward for completing their adventure and passing their history class.   Baby steps, Bill and Ted.