Shock Corridor

The continuing (limited and selective) ramble in defence of Alfred Hitchcock's portrayal of women. A wee while ago I had a look at Rear Window (1954). Inspired by an article I read that reduced Hitchcock's portrayal of women thusly:   'Hitchcock's women are outwardly immaculate, but full of treachery and weakness. But, hurrah, he doesn't kill them all. He just teaches them a thoroughly good lesson.'  ( Bidisha, 2010 ).  In that post I intended to suggest that Hitchcock counterpoints male and female points of view and that ultimately the male point of view is the one that shifts (that was the idea, don't know if I pulled it off). Here I want to look at the women in The Birds (1963) and how these characters fit into a wider societal context. Bidisha distils the essence of The Birds to this: The message is that women (a) are all about men and (b) can't get along because they're so busy pecking and squabbling over men. Mitch's mum hates Melani...

Howdy. Offft! This one has been a long time coming but here's another wee post looking at some of Alfred Hitchcock's output...his filmic output, nothing else - certainly nothing biological that would be disgusting. It seems timely as a load of his films have had a digital makeover and Vertigo (1958) completes it's 30 year climb to the top of the BFI: Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time list. Anyhee, the gist is, I read an article in the Guardian recently which described Hitchcock's representation of women in a less than flattering light: 'the female characters in his [Hitchcock's] films range from stupid to cunning to traitorous' ( Bidisha, Guardian, 2010 ) and I thought...ohh, I don't know about that and immediately sprang into action, composing this response. In my own immutable, straightforward and succinct style, this is currently looking like two posts and it will hopefully end there. The crux of these posts is to suggest that the female charact...