Colleagues,
Thanks for a great first week of Hitchcock class, all. Few things will bring us more joy this week than everyone in the room being such a Hitch-super-fan that we all knew exactly what was going to happen with the shovel in Torn Curtain...
We wanted to pass along the readings for next week and make sure we have everyone's proper email.
These readings are to be completed to the best of your ability by our next class "Mastery, Nietzsche's Übermensch and Queer Theory" on Tuesday. Despite the name, you do not need to be "masters" of the text-- just be as familiar as your time and mind allows, and bring any questions or thoughts you might have to the next class.
Texts are attached, along with page numbers and descriptions. Reach out with any Qs.
Required:
Screening of Rope (in previous class or at home)
"Prologue" and "On the Higher Man" from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche, pg. 3-16 & pg. 230-239 (PDF)
“The Murderous Gays,” Robin Wood (PDF)
Optional:
Cinema 1: the movement-image, Gilles Deleuze - pg. 200-205 (PDF)
"Plot Formations," Robin Wood (PDF)
In Rope, we uncover that our killers were motivated by a perversion of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch, often translated as "the overman" or "superman." What is the origin of this notion? In "Thus Spoke Zarathusra," Nietzsche adopts the mysterious Zarathustra as his mythical mouthpiece and promulgates the concept of the overman, that is, someone who has embraced the inherent will to power such that they overcome humanity itself. In these selections ("Prologue" and "On the Higher Man"), Zarathustra offers us parabolic meditations that will shed light on key philosophical concepts in Hitchcock's Rope. We will discuss the eternal return, will to power, and the infamous ubermensch at length in class.
In "The Murderous Gays" from Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Robin Wood interrogates a recurring character type in Hitchcock, that of the homosexual killer (who in Hitchcock is very often also a psychopath). While acknowledging Hitchcock's probable personal homophobia, Wood also reads some of these movies against the grain, particularly emphasizing the way that these gay killers strive for control/mastery (as murderers) in a similar fashion to Hitchcock himself (as a film director). The essay concludes with a reading of Rope that emphasizes Hitch's probable empathy with the character of Brandon, and reads the relationship between Brandon and Phillip in a manner that is informed by Wood's own experiences as a young gay man in the 1940s & 1950s UK. This reading will be discussed in class and will function as our starting platform to discuss Hitchcock and queer theory at large.
*optional* A philosopher, film theorist, and critical theorist, Deleuze essentially turned to the philosophy of Henri Bergson and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce to analyze cinema as an art form and make the claim that (paraphrasing) cinema is the new philosophy, i.e. filmmaking is a form of expressing thoughts and concepts to an audience. He notes the early/classic predominance of the "movement-image" versus the later/art-film predominance of the "time-image" as representing two different phases of cinematic thought. For Deleuze, Hitchcock is privileged as being one of the greatest artists of the movement-image, who pushed the form to its limit to a point that almost created an artistic crisis. Very optional if not your cup of tea! Fair warning: Deleuze is a tough read for just about everyone, but it's a good time nonetheless.
*optional* In "Plot Formations" from Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Robin Wood interrogates a recurring character type in Hitchcock, that of the homosexual killer (who in Hitchcock is very often also a psychopath). While acknowledging Hitchcock's probable personal homophobia, Wood also reads some of these movies against the grain, particularly emphasizing the way that these gay killers strive for control/mastery (as murderers) in a similar fashion to Hitchcock himself (as a film director). The essay concludes with a reading of Rope that emphasizes Hitch's probable empathy with the character of Brandon, and reads the relationship between Brandon and Phillip in a manner that is informed by Wood's own experiences as a young gay man in the 1940s & 1950s UK. This represents the full version of the type breakdown passed out in class.
Cheers,
S + D
