HITCHCOCK's
SEARCH FOR LIMINALITY
Hitchcock's films are the
liminal expression of an experiential journey. As rituals, movies and other
expressions of art offer reversals of the structured and rigid principles
of the social order and create communitas. This by definition does not
apply to commodity made for consumption on the basis of market inquiries
of taste. It does not, therefore, apply to most movies Hollywood currently
produces.
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Additionally,
in the films of Hitchcock the heroes are submitted to a process of liminality,
a drama that takes them from somewhere to somewhere else, the beginning
and end of which are inadequate to communicate the experience of the artistic
outcome.
A Hitchcock movie is not
exhausted by reference to the story told. Instead, the prime element is
the experience of the inter-structural journey through which the heroes
must go, through which Hitchcock makes them go, and shows them to go. |
| The centrality
of a hitchcock film is the adventure in which the heroes are caught "betwixt
and between" a previous and next phase in the social order. As guilt and
innocence are constitutive principles of a society's formal order of law,
liminality in this context infuses the order of guilt and innocence with
ambiguity and fluidity, or even creates reversal. |
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The liminal personae are
on the run because they are publicly condemned. Heroes who are clearly
victims in some respect are guilty of wrongdoings on another level of normativity.
| In Hitchcock's
war movies there is a striking lack of ambiguity over guilt and innocence.
The Nazis are guilty; those fighting them are innocent. In Rope, we notice
the same motif. Although there was ambiguity over Rupert's involvement
in the killing, in the end it is Rupert who calls upon society to bring
the killers to justice.
Also, the consequences are
clear: the evil-doers must pay for their terror, and the victims must be
able to return to a life of harmony and happiness (which later Hitchcock
will show to be but an illusion). |
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Rope and the war movies are
a-typical for Hitchcock. They are justified for exceptional reasons. In
Rope, the killers are condemned not because they killed, but because they
killed without passion or motive (also, the story is based on a real event).
In the war movies, rigid boundaries of morality are introduced because
war is an exceptional state of turmoil, a shocking if temporary horror
that precludes liminality. But in Hitchcock's other works, reality is quite
different...
The
Punishment She Deserves
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The single-most
ridiculous thing that has been written about Hitchcock is that his films
are the result of some deeper psychological state, a mental disorder almost,
oriented at inflicting pain, particularly upon females. Naturally, this
viewpoint is often couched in highly sexually charged terms. In reality,
Hitchcock's supposed torture of his subjects represents a ritual of affliction
that is a necessary component of the quest for a new existence. There is
shame, loss, and moral guilt in order to accomplish a new life. |
In The Birds, the rich woman
in the end looks like the most beat up, most hurt of all the characters.
But she is also the one who gained the most, as she escaped from the constraints
of her bourgeois existence to find a happiness she earlier could not even
phantom.
In Marnie, the woman
is liberated of the psychological disorder that prevented her from experiencing
love after she kills her horse, the only being she was capable of loving.
To heighten the sense of loss
and disorder, Hitchcock typically introduces the liminal subjects in a
setting of complete order, a surrounding filled with familiar symbols.
In Saboteur, the villain falls to his death from the Statue of Liberty.
In Shadow of a Doubt, Uncle Charlie's guilt is uncovered in the sunny town
of Santa Rosa. In North by Northwest, the hero's journey ends on the cliffs
of Mount Rushmore. In The Birds, the beautifully quiet coastal town of
Bodega bay is under attack.
To accomplish a new existence,
the final phase of the ritual performance must end in some tragedy which
in other respects represents liberation. In many of Hitchcock's most famous
chase movies, the adventure ends literally in a theater.
Hitchcock's movies connect
to fundamental principles of the normative order of society. The films
contain --must contain-- elements of a social and cultural identity, not
that of the director, but of society. Thus Hitchcock's films reproduce
a social order from which we successfully part during the experiential
process of cinema. Parting from society's order, we relate to it.
Happiness
In search of a new reality,
Hitchcock continually attempted to escape from the normative bounds imposed
by society. That was the purpose of his movies, of all art. The success
of the filmic accomplishment of spontaneous communitas in which the artist
involves the audience is Hitchcock's genius. For Hitchcock happiness is
a clear horizon.
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