The Persecution of Women in Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail and Frenzy

The Persecution of Women in Alfred Hitchcock's "Blackmail" and "Frenzy"

The issue of female persecution throughout many of Hitchcock’s films has been fiercely contested, none more so than the controversial issue of assault and the attempted rape of a woman. Views that Hitchcock represents the archetypal misogynist are supported, Modelski suggesting that his films invite “his audience to indulge their most sadistic fantasies against the female” (18). Through both the manipulation of sound and the use of language, none more so than in Blackmail and Frenzy, the idea of rape and violence does effectively silence and subdue not only the women in the films, but the also the women watching them (18).

It can be said that Hitchcock had in some regard, the upmost contempt and disregard for the female character and its expression throughout the majority of his films, showing both a lack of “incontrovertible evidence” (101) and a lack of restrainment in his depiction of a highly problematic and violent incident, the rape and the “attempted” (almost subsequent) murder of a woman. Regardless of how violently depicted the aforementioned incident was, it is the female’s inevitable exclusion through sound and language that leads to her inevitable downfall, displaying both films’ attempts “to appropriate femininity and to destroy it”, alluding to Modelski’s curious comparison of “sympathy and misogyny” (110).

It is this very comparison therefore that is the key to understanding why exactly the figure of the woman is so victimized. Despite the severity of the discrimination, and how it is depicted in either film, there appears to be an underlying sympathy due to the lack of communication the female has within “the man’s world” due to the individual’s exclusion from sound, as Yacowar states in his analysis of Blackmail, stating that “It works as a brilliant examination of the limits and problems of human communication” (103).

It is the purpose of this essay therefore to demonstrate that there is a profound influence in the use of sound and language in relation to the discrimination of women. By showing that the manipulation of sound and language in regards to the films’ narrative structure is responsible for this apparent persecution, a clearer understanding should be gained as to why the figure of the female is observed in this form.

In Blackmail, the discri...

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...are influenced by Although the uneasiness of relationships at the conclusion of Hitchcock’s films is a common theme, it is the deformation of sound and language by Hitchcock that creates the suspense and anxiety that his films are infamous for, allowing the female to become the centre of the discrimination, meaning that its only solution is the pursuit of “human communication”, an ideal that through careful analysis of both films, seems impossible for the female to ascertain.

Bibliography

Primary Reading

Modelski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. Great Britain: Methuen, 1988.

Spoto, Donald. The Art Of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Doubleday, 1976

Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side Of Genesis: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Ballantine, 1983.

Weis, Elisabeth. The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock’s Soundtrack. Great Britain: Associated University Presses, 1982.

Wood, Robin. Hitchcock’s Films Revisited. Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Yacowar, Maurice. Hitchcock’s British Films. Great Britain: Archon Books, 1977.

Primary Viewing

Blackmail. Alfred Hitchcock. British International Pictures, 1929

Frenzy. Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Studios, 1972