No-one, I imagine, minds being called 'very shrewd'. Thanks Mike
Frank. Your own further comments about women in Hitchcock movies who
wear glasses (and at whom, presumably, men seldom make passes) are in
turn very stimulating. I've just a few points to add, if I may ...
Yes, I agree that glasses are sometimes 'designed to mark the woman as
UN-sexualised' (cf. previous parenthesis, above). You go on:
> [I]n that famous
> shot [in VERTIGO, of Midge's 'parody' self-portrait',] it is midge's
eye-glasses that > are the most blatant signifier of her
> absolute inability to achieve the feminine sexuality (or sexualized
> femininity) of which carlotta is the icon . . .
More specifically, glasses are de-mystifying. They're a homely object -
as also worn by young Ann Newton in SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) and Barbara
Morton in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951). By contrast, in VERTIGO
Madeleine-as-Carlotta is constantly mysterious, allowing Scottie to
place her 'in the position of an Imaginary [and therefore unthreatening]
identification' (cf. Robert Samuels, 'Hitchcock's Bi-Textuality', 1998,
p. 84). Robert Samuels notes how Madeleine is consistently associated
with archways and large curved spaces, making present 'the absence of
the Thing', i.e., the 'lost' Mother, but still as an absence, and
therefore acceptable (cf. Samuels, p. 88). Samuels likens this to how
the spaciousness of the church in the film 'makes God's absence more
present' (ibid), a haunting absence that 'we are induced to fill with
our religious beliefs' (p. 89). But Midge's gambit, or gamble, with the
self-portrait, whereby she attempts to win back Scottie's interest in
her, fails utterly, for all it does is REMIND him of her 'motherliness':
this 'subverts [the] process of erasing all traces of the original
maternal object', that which patriarchy cannot allow (cf. Samuels, p.
85). Reality, as they say in PSYCHO, mustn't be allowed to come 'too
close'.
> . . . what distinguishes miriam [in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN] from midge is that
miriam > is not willing
> to do what the unsexualized woman is always supposed to do in the gender
> economy of hitchcock's world: either to be subservient to men, or [as midge
> does in her last appearance] to walk off into the darkness at the end of
> the hall after [and as sign of] recognizing her total inability to deal
> with "real" [i.e. men's] problems . . . instead miriam insists on fighting
> for her "rights" and this makes her too dangerous to live . . .
Well, basically, I think Midge walks off into darkness at the end of her
own (private) corridor (cf. Madeleine's line about such matters) because
she knows that she is defeated in her attempt to win Scottie back.
Let's acknowledge that Midge as played by Barbara Bel Geddes is a warm,
pleasant woman - my Catholic friend, TG, obviously fancies her for
precisely those qualities, ones that the audience can see but that the
obsessed Scottie (a patriarchal patsy?) resists.
> . . . of course the lacanian angle fits [even if anachronistically] in
> that the eye-glasses [for both midge and miriam] signify the gaze, the
> woman's readiness to look back at the man and thus to challenge him with
> her own agendas as opposed to looking away or casting her eyes down, thus
> making her always the object of his agendas
That indeed fits (and figures).
> . . . and in hitchcock's world
> when the woman appropriates the power of pursuing her own agendas either by
> looking back [miriam, midge] or in other ways [alice white, melanie
> daniels] she has to be destroyed . . .
But I find that a bit strong, a bit too abstract.
> . . . by this reading miriam's glasses are not the signifier of female
> sexuality, they are the opposite, the signifier of the danger of the not
> [or no longer] attractive woman who nevertheless puruses her own goals
> rather than submitting to those of men
She has become a fast-and-loose woman, for reasons that may reflect back
on the ambitious Guy (cf. the ambitious Scottie in VERTIGO), and has in
fact SURROUNDED HERSELF with young men who clearly see something in her,
even if it's just 'easy pickings'. As I've previously noted, Miriam's
glasses say something about the self-centred, promiscuous creature she
has (been forced to?) become. Her 'better' self, though, is represented
in the film by her 'double', Barbara Morton.
An extra point: the gay Bruno's role in killing off this fast-and-loose
woman roughly parallels that of the dandyish Uncle Charlie in killing
the Merry Widows in SHADOW OF A DOUBT. In so many Hitchcock films,
going back at least as far as THE LODGER (1926), there's something sad
and inexorable and ultimately mysterious about the processes involved
here. It may remind you of the philosopher Schopenhauer's point, that
the world is ruled by Will, a life-force that is also a death-force.
(Schopenhauer did, though, suggest some panaceas ...)
> . . . of course the sexualized
> female is also dangerous [madeleine, marion, usw.] but that is another and
> already very well known hitchcockian story
Nonetheless, maybe next time, Mike? I think we may both feel that
there's more to be said/told!
- Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin').
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin
----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite
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