Vertigo: Falling in the Gender Whirlpool

VERTIGO: GENDER IS PERFORMATIVE

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) is still a remarkable film (perhaps one of the greatest films ever made) despite the fact that it was created in an era that is rightfully associated with repression and oppression (the 1950s). However, there was also a lot of subversion going on within 1950s culture if you knew where to find it. Vertigo (1958) is an interesting example of this subversion. Physique photographers of the 1950s such as Bob Mizer, Walter Kundzicz, and Alonzo Hanagan to name a few, were providing gay and bisexual American men images of semi-nude men under the guise of  promoting "aspirational" physical fitness culture and bodybuilding. I'll create a post about that phenomenon as well, I mention that because the 1950s is thought of as an almost "Victorian" time but, like the Victorian era this was a time where the dominant culture was actually quite obsessed with gender and sexuality. Before reading any further, I highly recommend that you watch Vertigo if you have not seen it. One term we should all understand before proceeding with analyzing Vertigo is hegemonic masculinity. Raewyn Connell defined this term in the following way:

“Hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to women and subordinated masculinities. These other masculinities need not be clearly defined – indeed, achieving hegemony may consist precisely in preventing alternatives gaining cultural recognition…confining them to “ghettoes”, to unconsciousness. The most important feature of contemporary hegemonic masculinity is that it is heterosexual, being closely connected with the institution of marriage; and a key form of subordinated masculinity is homosexual ( p.61).”

Also, let's ask Judith Butler why gender is performative, which is also important for understanding what's going with gender in this film. Follow the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc

THE PLOT

Now that we have those concepts defined, let us return to the plot of Vertigo, which seems relatively simple. A traumatized, retired cop Scottie (James Stewart) is hired by his old friend, Gavin Elster to keep an eye on his supposedly mentally ill wife, Madeline (Kim Novak). Gavin tells Scottie he is worried that she is going insane and may have begun to think of herself as Carlotta Valdez. He is skeptical of Gavin’s story at first but, once he sees Madeleine and rescues her, he is drawn into this swirling, dream-like adventure that appeals to his wounded hegemonic masculinity.

Scottie's friend and former girlfriend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) has been helping him recover from his trauma. He associates his psychological disability (acrophobia and the vertigo it causes) with a loss of masculinity or a “feminization” -(e.g. wearing a corset, walking with a cane, being dependent on Midge). Midge tries to help Scott reformulate his sense of self rather than recuperate his dominant masculinity but, her practicality, independence, and care for him are not what make him “feel like a man” in the hegemonic sense. Midge realizes that she cannot compete with the ethereal and fragile Madeline. Kim Novak's Madeleine is thought to be insane-femininity and irrationality are linked in this narrative. She is an ideal heterosexual white woman in the dominant masculinist ideology of the time. Madeline must be saved from her own mental frailty. She is both the “damsel in distress" & "femme fatale” that helps Scottie “recuperate” his masculinity instead of reformulating it in a more evolved way.

ILLUSIONS OF GENDER

Scottie also falls for this illusion because he believes that everything, he sees fits his interpretation. He is not actually a good detective (Midge is good at that) and he privileges the sense of sight and empirical observations over more imaginative interpretations that would have pulled the curtain down on this series of illusions. Scottie and Madeline walk through each piece of the Carlotta Valdez story and eventually they end up at a church bell tower. Madeline seems to throw herself off the top of the tower. Scottie is gripped by his acrophobia and cannot make it up the stairs to save her. At the court inquest into Madeline's death, everyone is led to believe Scottie failed to carry out his "masculine" responsibility to Madeline. Scottie is further traumatized by this and the death of Madeline.

Scottie leaves the asylum and sees women and objects (a green dress, the Jaguar automobile...) that remind him of Madeline. Then he sees a young woman (Judy/Kim Novak) who strikes him as looking very much like Madeline. He follows and stalks her right back to her apartment. He tries to figure out how she could look like Madeline and yet not be like her at all. This is when the film finally drops the illusions and Judy has a flashback revealing she is indeed the "Madeline" Scottie fell in love with. As per usual with Hitchcock, what you saw is not actually what you thought it was and the film is actually Judy's story. Judy was Gavin's mistress and he also employed her to be part of his scheme which Judy didn't seem to realize was going to go as far as it did (Gavin kills the real Madeline and throws her off the tower). The other problem is she fell in love with Scottie too and didn't want to hurt him or leave him but, as she said-"I must die."

A NIGHTMARE FOR HER, A DREAM FOR HIM 

Judy is clearly not Madeline; the fantasy woman Scottie fell in love with. So, Scottie goes on a mission to transform her into the "Madeline" that Gavin invented and that Judy performed. Judy resists Scottie's attempts to shape her at first but she decides she will do anything for Scottie's love even if it is painful for her and her self concept. Judy wears Madeline's grey suit and her dark auburn hair is bleached very light blonde. Scottie insists Judy put her hair up the way Madeline did and she emerges from the bathroom like an apparition of Madeline in the neon green lights that flood the room. This event leads to the consummation of their relationship.

However, Scottie's obsessive mission to craft a perfect illusion (just like Gavin Elster's) falls apart when he realizes that Judy was always pretending to be Madeline and that he was a pawn in Gavin's murder plot. The viewer's sympathies are with Judy now, so Scottie comes across as a monster and a hegemonic master just as Gavin is. In fact, Scottie repeats nearly everything Gavin did to Judy and sadly, Judy like the real Madeline dies because of her love for men who force her to  live according to their terms. Judy's relationships with Scottie and Gavin paralleled the relationships Hitchcock had with some of the leading ladies in his films (e.g. Tippi Hedren, Joan Fontaine, Diane Baker...). Vertigo could be interpreted as a metacommentary on nearly all of Hitchcock's films or Hollywood films of that time period more generally. The way Judy is manipulated and shaped by men in the film is also the same as the ways in which women have been influenced by the fashion and the "healthy living" industries for decades. The whole film is compelling evidence that gender is a performance whether you are a woman or a man and you pay a terrible price for not meeting those social, psychological, and physical expectations. Judy is not without agency in the film and in my opinion, she is one of the most complex and realistic female characters in Hitchcock's films along with Melanie (Tippi Hedren ) and Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) of The Birds. Kim Novak gives one of the greatest performances of her career here, aside from her role  as a fabulous sorceress in Bell, Book, & Candle (1958). Barbara Bel Geddes is also wonderful as the clever, artsy, and cool Midge, she reminds me of Velma from Scooby Doo. Tyrone Power would have been a better choice for the role of Scottie than James Stewart and apparently Hitchcock blamed Stewart for the film's unsuccessful performance. The film is magnificent formally using colour, wide angle shots, blurriness, and close-ups to reinforce the themes of mystery, lies, trauma, and illusion. The cinematography in the redwood forest scene was marvelous. Vertigo is a film you can watch five times and see something different (formally or in terms of the content) each time.



REFERENCES



Big Think. June 6th, 2011. Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc.


Connell, R. (1987). ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’. In Jackson, S. & Scott, S. eds. (2002). Gender: A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge.