Constructing Fantasy in Hitchcocks Vertigo Essay -- Alfred Hitchcock

Constructing Fantasy in Hitchcocks Vertigo The amount of critical analysis surrounding Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo is itself dizzying, but as the film has recently been restored, it seems appropriate to provide it with a fresh critical information. The purpose of this paper then, is to draw this film out of the past with a reading that offers not only a new way of understanding it, but a close look at the culture that produced it. Specifically, Vertigo offers its most kindle ideas when contextualized in a culture of consumerism. Consumerism shaped the film, and also shapes the way we view it. The desire of the consumer is the driving force behind not only our economy, but our vogue of seeing the world, and seeing films. As consumers, we are always looking for, and looking at, new commodities, especially clothing. We gaze at clothing in shop windows. We get it and wear it, making it visible to others. Indeed, the desire to buy clothing is linked closely to our desire to show it off. We shop in a optical 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 wandering male consumer of images who is, and was, particularly in the nineteenth century, the visual and economic agent 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 home in the public spaces. In the words of Baudelaire, for the perfect flneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the lower 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 noak was, according to Hitchcock, quite elevated of the fact that she didnt wear a bra during the filming of Vertigo (Truffaut 248). Works Cited Brand, Da na. 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 flick 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. New York Harper Collins. 39-57. Steele, Richard. Spectator No. 454 1712. The Spectator, A new edition. Cincinnati Applegate & Co., 1857.