Constructing Fantasy in Hitchcocks Vertigo Essay -- Alfred Hitchcock

Constructing Fantasy in Hitchcocks vertigo The tally of critical analysis surrounding Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo is itself dizzying, entirely as the bring has recently been restored, it seems appropriate to provide it with a fresh critical edition. The figure of this paper then, is to draw this film out of the past with a reading that offers not just a new expressive style of generaliseing it, but a close look at the culture that produced it. Specifically, Vertigo offers its close exciting ideas when contextualized in a culture of consumerism. Consumerism shaped the film, and also shapes the way we view it. The zest of the consumer is the driving force behind not only our economy, but our mode of seeing the world, and seeing films. As consumers, we are incessantly looking for, and looking at, new commodities, especially array. We gaze at clothing in condescend windows. We purchase it and wear it, making it visible to others. Indeed, the desire to buy clothing is lin ked closely to our desire to show it off. We shop in a visual economy, a visual culture of consumption. To understand this culture it is important to understand the historical figure of the flneur. The flneur is a wander male consumer of images who is, and was, particularly in the nineteenth century, the visual and economic broker at the center of consumer culture. He is also at the center of Vertigo, personified in the main character, Scotty. The flneur is an inveterate urban wanderer and voyeur who is at al-Qaida in the public spaces. In the words of Baudelaire, for the perfect flneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an commodious joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb out and flow of movement (qtd. in Brand 5). Walter Benjamin, in his work on the... ...lso of women displayed in windows. 3 Sometimes coincidence aids criticism. Kim Novak was, according to Hitchcock, quite proud of the fact that she didnt wear a bra during the filming of Vert igo (Truffaut 248). Works Cited Brand, Dana. The Sectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1991. Gleber, Anke. The Art of Taking a Walk Flanerie, litera ture, and Film in Weimar Culture. Princeton Princeton UP, 1999. Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley U of California P, 1993. Simmons, Patricia. Women in Frames The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture. The Expanding Discourse. Ed. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard. smart York Harper Collins. 39-57. Steele, Richard. Spectator No. 454 1712. The Spectator, A new edition. Cincinnati Applegate & Co., 1857.