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Masculine Positioning 1

Gaze and Masculine Positioning in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

A Review and Critique on “The Male Gaze”

Samantha Young

Communications 402: Gender and Film

Dr. Jason McKahan

November 30, 2011


Abstract

“…cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire.” –Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Feminism can be defined as “the movement to eradicate gender equality.” In the threat of

castration, female characters must be found guilty. In this complex, the guilt is ended by

punishment or salvation. Films involving this plot include the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Shown

throughout these films are two available endings. The woman must either die or marry. By

wearing femininity as a mask, the female spectator can create the necessary difference between

herself and the represented femininity on the screen. Interpretations of female spectatorship

suggest that the female look is impossible and that the gaze is dominantly male. However, it can

clearly be argued that the gaze is possibly in the “masculine position.”


Gaze and Masculine Positioning in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

Do interpretations of female spectatorship suggest that the female look is impossible and

that the gaze is fundamentally male? It can be argued that gaze is not essentially male, but in the

“masculine position.” The Female Look aspect, which is a sub category of Feminist Film

Theory, is a mysterious one indeed. There are various methods to looking at this aspect of film

theory. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the position of characters and the ways in which camera

angles are used can be considered in arguing that this “masculine positioning” can be discovered

throughout film.

In this paper, I will argue that characters Judy (Madeleine) and Scottie can be seen in

different lights and that the male gaze is not always predominant. In order to prove this, I will

elaborately consider the theories of Laura Mulvey, Mary Anne Doane, and Teresa de Lauretis. I

will also consider a decent amount of Clifford Manlove’s “Visual Drive” which is a Lacanian

critique on Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Considering these critiques, I will

therefore seek to portray the many views in which this film can be read.

In order to understand “masculine positioning” in Vertigo, one must first take a look at the

second part of the film. The second part of the film is based on Judy’s point of view. In showing

this, Judy is taking on the masculine position by serving as the one who is gazing. “Who is she?”

the viewer wonders. The fact that Judy is in fact Madeleine shows that she is in control, hence

taking on the masculine position because Scottie is unaware.

“There is no denying the violence in Scottie’s entire project, in the second part of the

film, of making Judy over into the semblance of Madeleine. Yet before condemning

Scottie, it is best to keep a number of points in mind. First, Judy is Madeleine. Although


Scottie cannot bring himself to touch Judy until she acknowledges the Madeleine in her,

from the outset he glimpses the woman he loves in Judy. When Judy writes the note she

never sends to Scottie—and what a remarkable gesture it is for Hitchcock to let us in on

Judy’s secret, apparently breaking all the rules of the Hitchcock thriller—she

contemplates staying and lying and making him love her ‘for herself’ and thus ‘forget the

other, forget the past.’” (Rothman, 1988, p. 229)

As Rothman acknowledges, Hitchcock reveals Judy’s secret to the audience which makes her

“gaze” even more masculine since she is now in control of what the viewer will see. Another

way to prove that Madeleine/Judy’s position and gaze are masculine is that her character is

extremely enigmatic. Because this female character is so mysterious throughout the film, the

viewer may find it difficult to read her thoughts.

“The camera’s relationship to Kim Novak/Judy/Madeleine/Carlotta is more intimate and

ambiguous: She is an object of desire to the camera, but they are also attuned. This point-

of-view shot and Madeleine’s reaction to it do not allow us to read this woman’s

thoughts; they reveal only that she is meditating, as Scottie is not, on the mystery—the

mystery of birth and death and freedom and love and entrapment—that lies at the heart of

Hitchcock’s films.” (Rothman, p. 226)

The viewer cannot read Madeleine’s thoughts in certain scenes. This shows that a woman’s

dominance in a camera shot therefore becomes a masculinized position. Here, she is powerful

because she is so mysterious. Another thing to take into account is Kim Novak’s mysterious

ways in which it dominates over the ending of the film.


“In plunging to her death, Judy acknowledges the conditions of her existence, the

conditions of any being condemned to the gaze of Hitchcock’s camera. Scottie has

banished his vertigo, shaken off his intimations of the truth that stares Judy in the face.

Kissing Judy, he genuinely believes that happiness is within their grasp—and Judy loves

him for his innocence. But Scottie has no access to Judy’s vision, no idea of what haunts

and ultimately claims her. Vertigo is not a melodrama of the unknown woman, although

an “unknown woman” in precisely Cavell’s sense—a woman who apprehends her

condition more deeply than the men in her world, who possesses deeper vision,

intelligence, and depth of feeling—plays an essential role in the film and in the Hitchcock

thriller generally.” (Rothman, p. 237-238)

This shows the power of Judy dying in the end. In this sense, Judy’s position is masculinized in

the idea that Scottie has no power or freedom over keeping Judy safe. The fact that Judy’s death

and its mysterious dominance over the ending of the film; can affect the viewer so intimately

shows that the gaze is not male, but masculinized. This also relates back to the Narrative of

Feminist Film in which there are two traditional endings in which the woman takes. The woman

must either die or marry. In this case, Kim Novak’s character dies. But in this sense, there is an

enigmatic power that she conveys over her death because the male protagonist has no control.

There are various responses to “Visual pleasures which particularly argue about

Mulvey’s understanding and choice of psychoanalytic texts. Marion Keane argued against her

reading of Vertigo which challenged her definition of scopophilia and fetish. Joan Copjec also

critiqued the Foucaldian influence that she saw on Mulvey’s theory in the “theory of visual

power relations” in film and fought for the Lacanian theory of the gaze. Clifford Manlove’s

“Visual ‘Drive’ and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and


Mulvey” is a critique on Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure” argues that her “account of the visual drive

in psychoanalysis overemphasizes the role of pleasure.” Manlove argues that the “transgressive

power” is the result of pleasure and repetition’s alliance throughout film. Manlove shows us the

gender neutrality in the Lacan conception of the gaze as well as the “split between perception

and eye” in Vertigo.

“Mulvey’s theory that visual pleasure contains an unpleasurable “threat” is quite different

from Freud and Lacan’s theory that Eros/pleasure is subject to repetition/death. Mulvey’s

explanation of the gaze focuses on the intersubjective characteristics of pleasure, whereas

Freud and Lacan’s theories focus on the interaction of pleasure and repetition necessary

for subjectivity itself, whether masculine or feminine” (Manlove, 2007, p. 90,)

Here, Manlove is proving that the gaze can in fact be either masculinized or feminized. This

shows that Mulvey’s theory can be critiqued. Within different contexts, the masculine

positioning can be read. Lacan’s understanding of the gaze gives a source for various critical

theories in analyzing the world visibly and broadly. The split within the active subject is

therefore gender neutral.

“The gaze, rather, indicates a prior, more radical split within the apparently active

subject. The gaze, and its effects, are not gender (or biologically) specific.” (Manlove, p.

90)

There is an obvious split between the gaze and the eye of the viewer. Mulvey’s interpretation of

Vertigo portrays Scottie to be part of the conspiracy. However, when Scottie discovers that Judy

and Madeleine are “manifestations of his own desire at the level of ego,” the gaze shifts and no

longer focuses on what is gazing at Scottie. Here, Scottie’s desire and presence as the subject is


announced as he is the one being gazed at. This shows that the gaze is not male, but that

Scottie’s existence can be viewed from various sides.

“Vertigo offers an example of the formative split between the eye and its gaze; it is about

the period of time in Scottie’s life following a near-death experience, and how this causes

him to see the world anew. The viewer shares this visual transformation.” (Manlove, p.

91)

To argue Mulvey’s correctness, Scottie can indeed be portrayed in the masculine position and as

an active male. The “look” is in fact male as Mulvey describes it. This can be seen as Kim

Novak’s character is forced through her physical appearance. Scottie is also a very active male

character as he is very masculine through his control for Judy to dress a certain way for him.

However, although his look is controlling, his overall character is not.

“Mulvey is correct to point out that Scottie possesses an active male look—‘He

reconstructs Judy as Madeleine, forces her to conform in every detail to the actual

physical appearance of his fetish’—yet he is also a passive victim of another, more

powerful gaze. The professional police detective is lured, willingly, into a fantasy world

of which he is ignorant. Not only is Scottie a complete dupe—not of a “castrating”

woman, but of a college chum, affable Gavin Elster—he also believes that it is he,

Scottie, who is in control. Like Scottie, Mulvey mistakenly believes he is in control.”

(Manlove, p. 91)

This quote shows the division between the conscious and unconscious and the castration of

Scottie as he is himself a “passive victim.” Ideas of the real are brought about in this Lacanian

sort of gaze. As Manlove points out, Scottie cannot stand to see his failure to “reach out” to


someone for whom he feels responsible.” In that sense, it’s not Judy’s suicide that bothers him as

much as his failure to play the one who saves her.

“Although Scottie clearly feels anxiety, he still cannot understand what is wrong with his

desire or pleasure; or as Lacan puts it, “of all the objects in which the subject may

recognize his dependence in the register of desire, the gaze is specified as

unapprehensible.” (Manlove, p. 94)

During a specific scene in which Judy and Scottie are in a hotel room, the male gaze becomes

distorted. Scottie and Judy stand in the hotel room kissing after she has had her “makeover.” The

male gaze is distorted as Scottie “feels the gaze,” but cannot clearly see it for himself until he

finally sees Carlotta’s (Madeleine’s great grandmother’s) pendant. This scene becomes

significant because here he finds that the woman he loves never truly existed. It also shows that

in this particular scene, Scottie’s masculine position can be questioned since he is so confused by

Judy’s mystery. It is as if he is being watched by a gaze that is not male at all. Here, Scottie

becomes vulnerable in a sense.

“On the other hand, Judy is so traumatized by the gaze (close proximity to that part of the

real in it), that she commits suicide rather than face the enormity of her complicity. The

final shot of the film shows Scottie, arms at his side, standing in the bell tower over the

dead form of his fantasy lying on the tiled roof below, his Vertigo ‘cured.’ Again, the

body stares accusingly up at him, a ‘stain on the love that was and should have been.

Vertigo not only demonstrates the split between the gaze and the eye, but that the gaze

has effects on the material world; it can kill. If Scottie could simply have spoken the

narrative without also reenacting it, would Judy have lived?” (Manlove, p. 95)


The nun serves as a return of Judy’s guilty conscience. She decides to kill herself rather than face

the reality of what she was a part of (a murder). She feels as if she is being watched by her own

guilt which reveals that the material world kills her as a character. “Although the gaze can be

veiled by an object, it leaves a stain nevertheless, a trace of its passage as a line leading back to

the real source.” Mulvey’s theory, nonetheless realizes the dominance of the current gaze in the

political gender aspects and culture in film as well as the art of the film itself. Manlove’s essay

clearly critiques Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure” and explains how Vertigo can be described through

Lacanian theory in distinguishing between seeing the objective and subjective means.

“Analysis of the gaze in cinema from a Lacanian point of view can be useful for

understanding more about the visual dimension of power, gender, and subjectivity in

human cultures. Rather than being about image, light, and surface identities, the Lacanian

gaze travels along the real, cutting edge that it knowledge.” (Manlove, p. 104)

Another critique on Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is Susan White’s

allegorical reading of Vertigo. White shows us that Mulvey refuses to condemn Vertigo as she

asserts that the movie is made strictly for the male gaze.

“Although it seems to exemplify what she sees as the rigidly dischotomized pattern of

male voyeurism and scopophilia, Mulvey refrains from finally condemning Vertigo. She

asserts, rather, that the film goes further in the right direction than do most Hollywood

films, because it turns the processes the viewer employs back on “him” self, thus showing

how the woman is ultimately made to suffer for the man’s visual and narrative pleasure.

Other critics defend the film in even stronger terms.” (White, 1991, p. 913)


In the same sense, I also agree with Karen Hollinger’s theory that in order to truly reveal the

affects for a female spectator, feminist and psychoanalytic critics will do better by moving above

and beyond Mulvey’s theory that “the place of the look defines cinema.” As Hollinger states “It

does not, but is rather one element in a larger narrative and visual whole that represents the rich

and variegated experience that is film.” (Hollinger, 1987, p. 27) Hollinger’s essay shows that

Mulvey’s analysis is not a good representation in encountering narrative text of Vertigo to its

fullest. I agree in the sense that Hollinger is proving Mulvey’s narrow focus on visual

dimensions which restricts the film’s importance if the spectator is female.

“The character of Judy appears to provide a new figure of identification for the female

spectator, but again it is an uneasy identification because Judy is a vulgar, cheaply

proactive, and seemingly unintelligent department store clerk. She is still, however,

represented as a real woman, not as an ideal image like Madeleine, and thus she fills the

space in the diegesis left vacant after Midge’s departure.” (Hollinger, 1987, p. 24)

Another point to bring up here is that Kim Novak’s character becomes masculinized in the sense

that Judy takes the place of Midge’s character (after Midge leaves). Not only is this giving the

female spectator the power of the gaze, but it is also creating a “masculinized positioning.” Judy

represents a “real” woman as opposed to the “male” gaze’s ideal image; for example, Madeleine.

The portrayal of Kim Novak’s Judy is a powerful one because it shows what was once a

feminine woman becoming more active and therefore in the masculine position. Notice that Judy

dresses a lot plainer, much like Midge from the first half of the film. The reality of making Judy

inscrutable makes her character a pioneer in playing a more active role. One could also argue

that just because Kim Novak is dressed feminine doesn’t mean that she can’t take on the


masculine role portrayed by Judy. She does not take on the masculine positioning in the fact that

her feelings for Scottie are shown as she writes him her confession through a goodbye letter.

“The break from Scottie’s perspective is complete because Judy, unlike Madeleine, is not

at all inscrutable, and immediately after the flashback, the film investigates in some detail

her feeling for Scottie as she prepares to run away and tries to write him a confessional

farewell letter.”(Hollinger, 1987, p. 24)

Once the flashback has destroyed any visual thread between Scottie and the spectators, the film

cannot continue to involve the spectator in Scottie’s point of view entirely because they have

been allowed into Judy’s thoughts and provided with information that Scottie cannot access.

Here, the position of the female has affected the spectator’s viewing of the movie because it can

no longer only be in Scottie’s point of view. This equality between the male and female gaze

allows the liberation of female gaze as it is now equal to how the male gaze works by being in

the masculinized position. She shows the reader the female being’s suppression as the

impossibility of being portrayed as masculine becomes problematic when serving as the male’s

subject. Hollinger’s essay also mentions the woman’s “seduction into femininity” as Vertigo

serves as a

“re-enactment of the male and female Oedipal dramas. Both the male’s entrance into the

Symbolic by breaking his union with the Mother and the woman’s ‘seduction into

femininity’ are represented. Also enacted are the dilemma of the female spectator in

watching the film, which tries to position her in the situation of the male subject, and her

attempts to shed her ‘transvestite clothes’ and assume a more appropriate identification.”

(Hollinger, 1987, p. 26)


Nevertheless, although the masculinized gaze of a woman attempts to outshine femininity, it

does not succeed in doing so. However, the female spectator is in fact taking on the masculinized

position as she is watching the film through a male’s positioning. This goes back to the

subcategorized element of the Masquerade. As Doane has it:

“theories of female spectatorship are thus rare, and when they are produced, seem

inevitably to confront certain blockages in conceptualization. The difficulties in thinking

female spectatorship demand consideration.” (Doane, 1982, p. 77)

The notion of the female subject then seems to be a contradiction in terms. DeLauretis

sometimes refers to the female subject as a ‘non-subject.’ DeLauretis states that

“woman is fundamentally unrepresentable as a subject of desire; she can only be

represented as representation. Were it not for the possibility of this second, figural

identification, the female spectator would be stranded between two incommensurable

entities, the gaze and the image. Identification, that is, would be either impossible, split

beyond any act of suture, or entirely masculine.” (DeLauretis, 1986, p. 39)

Madeleine’s mysterious impossibility and Scottie’s insecurity as a subject prove that a woman

can indeed take on the masculine position. Being Scottie’s love object makes Kim Novak’s

character more powerful. Because she is so ghostly and impossible, she predominately becomes

strong whereas Scottie is weak. Scottie becomes the vulnerable one in that he needs to overcome

his vertigo. In this sense, the object (Madeleine) becomes masculinized in that Scottie becomes

reliant on the woman who is ultimately his reason to live. Throughout the film, one can read that

Scottie is ultimately the subject in need of his object. When the film shifts to Judy’s view,


Scottie’s vulnerability is even more apparent. He is in this way a feminized subject leaving his

object to be none other than masculine.

“Madeleine’s unattainability is made even more emphatic when the movie gives us—and

Scottie—reason to suspect that she is not only possessed by the ghost of an ancestor, but

that she also may be a ghost and not a real woman. How else are we to explain the

strange scene when Scottie sees Madeleine enter the McKittrick hotel (once Carlotta

Valdez’s home) and stare out of a second-story window—after which Scottie is informed

by the hotel manager that she has not been in that day.” (Fabe, 2009, p. 352)

Just because the male gaze becomes blocked within this sequence; it does not conclude that the

positioning is not masculine. Because Kim Novak as portrayed so ghostly, she can therefore be

looked at as not woman at all. In this sense, her image becomes distorted and therefore not

completely feminine because a ghost is not a “real” woman.

In the end of Vertigo, Kim Novak’s character does indeed die. This proves that her “guilt” is

ended either by the traditional punishment or salvation. These two harsh endings are

unfortunately the only ones obtainable. In Vertigo, she is however in charge of her own death

which makes her passing an exception to the narrative of traditional feminist film.

In conclusion, I have proven that women’s roles in film can indeed be in the masculine

position as opposed to Mulvey’s theory that the “gaze” is strictly male. The fact that in Vertigo,

Kim Novak’s mysterious character contradicts that of a “real” woman proves her ability as an

overall insecure object. However, once we see the second part of the film, Judy plays a very

active role as the subject. If one thinks about it, the role of Judy is masculinized in the sense that

the viewer sees the film through her point of view during the second half of the film. This


investigation proves that although Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema may be

correct to some; others can indeed rationally suggest other ways of critiquing Feminist Film

Theory. The gaze is not always male in the sense that we can see Judy playing as an active

female while Scottie is insecure and naive as a character. In Vertigo, the woman is the one saving

the man in a way. The man’s weakness to a woman proves how vulnerable and arguably

feminine Scottie’s personality is portrayed. As an investigation and critique I have elaborately

analyzed the differences between the “male gaze” and the gaze in the “maculine position”

portrayed in the work of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.


References

DeLauretis, T. (1986). Oedipus Interruptus. Wide Angle,7, 36, 38.

Doane, M. A. (1982). Film and the masquerade: theorising the female spectator. Screen, 23(3-4).

Fabe, M. (2009). Mourning vertigo. American Imago 66(3), 343-367. Retrieved January 22, 2011, from Project MUSE database.

Hinton, L. (1994). A “woman's” view: the Vertigo frame-up. Film Criticism, 19, 2-22. Retrieved from Art Full Text database.

Hollinger, K. (1987). "The Look," Narrativity and the Female Spectator in Vertigo. Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 39, No. 4, Spectatorship, Narrativity, and Feminist Revision (Fall 1987), pp. 18-27.

Manlove, C. (2007). Visual “Drive” and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and Mulvey. Cinema Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3, (Spring, 2007), pp. 83-108.

Mulvey, L. (2000). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In E. A. Kaplan (Ed.), Feminism and film. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rothman, W. (1988). “The River Vertigo: the unknown woman in Hitchcock.” In: The “I” of the camera: essays in film criticism, history and aesthetics. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press.

White, S. (1991). Allegory and Referentiality: Vertigo and Feminist Criticism. MLN, Vol. 106, No. 5 Comparative Literature (December, 1991), pp. 910-932.

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