christine malkowski

I’d like to take a look at the construction of femininity in Vertigo, particularly through the character of Madeleine/Judy, in light of the assertions that Molly Haskell makes about Bette Davis’ transformation from “superfemale” to “superwoman” in her FTC article “Female Stars of the 1940s” from From Reverence to Rape. First, to reiterate what Haskell says in her article, literature provides the two models for extraordinary women, that of the European “superfemale” and the American “superwoman”. On page 624 of Film Theory and Criticism, Haskell identifies the superfemale as “a woman who, while exceedingly “feminine” and flirtatious, is too ambitious and intelligent for the docile role society has decreed she play.” The superwoman is also intelligent and imaginative, “but instead of exploiting her femininity, adopts male characteristics in order to enjoy male prerogatives, or merely to survive.”

Haskell’s description of the superfemale sounds a lot like the role of Judy/Madeleine in Vertigo. Judy uses her ability to allure and attract Scotty in order to manipulate. Judy’s had a kind of hard-knocks life, as we get from her brief story about her aversion to her mother’s new husband and decision to move out to California where she doesn’t know any one, where she hooks up with Gavin Elster and becomes complicit in his wife’s murder. The superfemale, like Judy, is aware of her limitations in a patriarchal society and tries to use her status as object of male desire to her advantage. Haskell says the superfemale, “plays on her assets, becomes a self-exploiter, uses her sex (without ever surrendering it) to gain power over men. Romantically attractive, even magnetic, she is not sexual…she is repressed more from Victorianism that puritanism and instinctively resists any situation in which she might lose her self-control” (624). Judy agrees to change herself, to actively objectify herself in order to gain control over Scotty, who she loves. This is not her original intent, though. Judy first takes on the role of Madeleine in order to please Gavin and control Scotty.

Another thing about Judy that identifies her as a superfemale is that she is an actress for hire, playing the part of Madeleine and then later playing the part of Judy, girl who has never met Scotty and knows nothing about Madeleine, though this time not as a hired actress but acting in her own interest. Haskell says that the superfemale, “is an actress by nature; what is flirtation, after all, but role-playing? Coquetry is an art…” (625) . Judy adopts her role depending on what she believes men want. Her first role is intended to please Gavin and is the one through which she gains Scotty’s love. Her second role, which I like to refer to as Judy the Innocent, is intended to try and win Scotty over on her own terms and prevent him from learning the truth of her earlier deception. However, she learns that in order to succeed at winning Scotty “back”, she must take on her first role again, as Madeleine.

Haskell discusses the transformation that occurred in the performance of female roles in the 1940s from the conniving and false superfemale to the more progressive superwoman. Speaking particularly of Bette Davis’ progression over her career, Haskell points to the growing number of women in the workforce, due to the war, as a catalyst for this change in the way women were portrayed on the big screen. This is an important gain for feminism, however, Haskell claims that, “For the most part, the superwoman, with her angular personality and acute, even abrasive, intelligence, begins to disappear in the fifties” (632). Considering this rise and fall of the superwoman, it is interesting to view Judy/Madeleine’s similar progression in the film.

One of the examples that Haskell gives of a superwoman is Viola from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In the scene in which Scotty follows/is led by Judy/Madeleine to the Empire Hotel, there is a neon sign for bar next to the hotel that is visible in the shot that reads, “Twelfth Knight”. Perhaps this is a coincidence and I am reading too much into it, but it seems that there may be a significant connection between Judy’s relationship with Scotty that develops under the guise of Madeleine and Viola’s relationship with Duke Orsino under the guise of Cesario. Both Judy and Viola are faced with the difficulty of loving one who does not know the “real” them. In Judy’s case there is not the added complication of having to pretend to be another gender. Yet in many ways, her plight is even more difficult because she is disguised as another woman; Scotty falls in love with that other woman and thus Judy cannot know if it is really herself or the act that Scotty loves.

The scene in which Scotty follows Judy to her room and first speaks to her, Judy seems to have progressed to the superwoman role, like Bette Davis did in her roles over her career. She is assertive, defensive, aggressive and apparently, independent from male control. She refers to her job, saying that she cannot meet Scotty for breakfast because she has to work. She left home on her own and lives a man’s life, independently. Her tone of voice, and her manner towards Scotty when she first receives him at her door is, to use Haskell’s word, “abrasive”. She opens the door, stares at him defiantly and says, “Well, what is it?”. When he requests to ask her a few questions, she responds with, “What for? Who are you?”. Already, the viewer can perceive a dramatic change in her demeanor from the soft, elegant Madeleine. Judy, in this screen, meets the male gaze and answers his questions with questions, not allowing him to put her in the subordinate position, maintaining her ground like a man.

Her physical appearance reflects this change, too. Her hair is brown now, instead of the idyllic blonde “bombshell” look. Even though she is wearing more make-up, she is more “herself” than she was when she was Madeleine. As she is calling him out for trying to “pick her up”, she continually attempts to close the door in his face. She is actively pushing him away. Over the course of the time that has past between when Madeleine was “killed” and Judy re-appears in the film, she achieved the Bette Davis transformation from superfemale to superwoman.

And then she retreats. On the screen, physically and in her resolve be the superwoman, Judy retreats. We see her slowly stepping backwards into her room, allowing Scotty to enter and giving him the dominant position. Her tone softens. Her hands, instead of in front of her pushing the door shut in front of him, are behind her back. Her method of answering questions with questions is dropped and she answers him faithfully, though still with a slightly abrasive tone, like a schoolgirl.

When she moves toward the dresser to show her her drivers license, she seems to be gaining back her superwoman role, firmly moving towards him, thrusting her license at him defensively. However, something happens when she is standing in front of the dresser, when she is doubled in the mirror behind her. At that moment, her tone and demeanor soften the most toward Scotty, evoking the superfemale role she played before. It is as if the double in the mirror, her superfemale side, comes out in place of her superwoman self. There is a cut to a shot of just her, visibly shrinking back and then a cut to Scotty, looming over her.

Then they turn to look at the pictures on the dresser. It is interesting that there are two separate photos, one with the man and the other with the two woman. This seems to mirror Scotty and Judy, with her double identities. This is when Judy reveals that she disliked her stepfather and set off on her own three years before. Again, it almost seems as if the superwoman is making her return. Judy’s story shows how independent and assertive she has been in her own life. She stands her ground and Scotty walks away from her, as if defeated in his hopes of regaining his superfemale. It is as if her words have made him realize that she is a superwoman now and no longer willing to play the role of the coquet to please him.

He turns back for one last try. She responds with her superwoman abrasive questions. But she’s been breaking her defenses throughout the scene and he appeals to her vanity, telling her he wants to have dinner with her because he likes her and not because she looks like the superfemale he wants her to be. At the end of the scene, she is no longer abrasively accusing and pushing him, but is instead agreeing to go on a date with him. And there dies superwoman Judy.

Thus marks the transition of 1940s screen-gal Judy to 1950s Judy. No more assertive, abrasive, mannish Judy. She completely gives in, letting Scotty transform her back into the superfemale ideal that she once embodied for him. She regresses back to Madeleine, back to the superfemale, and the result is a total loss of self and, ultimately, life. Scotty, patriarchal rep in the film, comes back from war, so to speak, and wants his woman out of the factory and back home making pies and pretending to be perfect. Haskell refers to this the, “tremendous tension in films of the time[post world war two], which tried, by ridicule, intimidation, or persuasion, to get women out of the office and back to the home, to get rid of the superwoman and bring back the superfemale” (628). Scotty does just this, using persuasion which is empowered by Judy’s already existing love for him. No more superwoman for Scotty. He gets her to comply, to completely regain her superfemale role.

And then she wears that necklace. Scotty’s illusion is broken. The superfemale is only desirable when the man cannot see her tricks, when she maintains her illusion of submission. The realization that both Madeleine and Judy have been controlling him, rather than he controlling her/them, is enough to make him snap. He cannot live with the idea that he has been deluded. Thus, he drags Judy to the tower where Madeleine died, in order to right his perception of the world.

The tower is where Madeleine/Judy reached her highest (pardon the pun) appeal for Scotty, because she became physically, literally unattainable. The tower is the ultimate pedastle; Scotty’s vertigo issues prevent him from reaching the same heights that his ideal woman can. When Judy’s superfemale role becomes undone for Scotty, his only resource is the pedestal where he last saw his true superfemale illusion. He is compelled, like the men returning to war in Haskell’s article, to recreate his ideal, his superfemale, even if by force. Judy tried to stop him, telling him, “You can’t, you’re too afraid!”. Scotty responds by saying, “We’ll see…we’ll see. This is my second chance!” Scotty is, on one level, talking about his second chance to climb the stairs, his second chance at saving Madeleine, but on another level he is talking about his second chance of having his superfemale.

There are some other turns of phrases that Scotty uses in this scene that I think support the claims that I am making very well. Scotty grabs Judy and starts shaking her, yelling at her, “You played the wife very well, Judy. He made you over, didn’t he? He made you over just like I made you over, only better. Not only the clothes and the hair, but the looks and the manner and the words. And those beautiful phony trances!” Scotty is giving himself away in this speech; he is telling the viewer that he is not mad at the fact the Judy tricked him into thinking she was Madeleine, but that he is mad that she played a part that he found appealing, that she actively tried to influence, to control him and that it worked. He goes on, saying, “And then what did he do? Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do, what to say? You were a very apt pupil too, weren’t you? You were a very apt pupil!” Scotty cannot come to terms with the idea of the superfemale being a construct. It is in his best interest that he believe that he is the one constructing Judy/Madeleine, not that she is constructing herself in order to influence him.

She pleads with him, trying to argue that what matters is that the second time, she let him construct her, because she loved him. His response is crucial:

“Too late. It’s too late. There’s no bringing her back.”

He’s referring to the bygone superfemale, who, once unmasked, cannot return. It is interesting that, at the moment that Scotty realizes that he can never again obtain the superfemale, Judy jumps to her death. If Scotty represents patriarchal society, who wants to believe the illusion of the superfemale and, once the mask is drawn, can never love the woman underneath, then what other option is there for Judy? Judy knows this and that is why she jumps to her death. Then, is Hitchcock damning the superfemale? Or is there a deeper meaning to it all? If Hitchcock kills off Judy after she has tried again and again to gain some footing in a man’s world, maybe it is because of the method that she ultimately reverts back to, that of the superfemale. Hitchcock is demonstrating that this method is futile, extinct in the world of men. But in the end, Judy only wants to be loved on her own terms and it is Scotty who holds on obsessively to the ideal of the superfemale, even after he realizes “there’s no bringing her back.” So, why not kill off Scotty and let Judy live on as the superwoman? Why does Hitchcock leave things this way?

I think the answer to these questions lies somewhere in the idea that, at the time that this film was made, there was no answer in society to the growing tensions between the patriarchal forces and the changing roles of females, both on-screen and off. I think Hitchcock is illustrating that, as things are, with the Scottys in control, there can be no existence for the “extraordinary women” (Haskell 624). I think this film demonstrates a need for change, a warning against the disastrous results that could ensue if there is no change. Maybe it is just optimistic thinking; maybe I would rather interpret it that way because I’d like to think that Hitchcock is a supporter of feminist views and that this work is really ground-breaking in that sense. But there is also a lot of evidence to support my reading of the film. Hitchcock draws the viewers’ attention to the constructed nature of femininity to point out the fact that these constructions no longer function in the society that has created them.

Now I’d like to talk about some blog posts that deal with the topics that I have been discussing. The first I’d like to point out is Mark’s blog post that was meant to be a comment on Amanda Rutstein’s Sylvia Plath Independent Study blog. Mark blogs about a Ryan Adams song about Sylvia Plath that plays into the construction of her myth, which is an idealized entity and not the real Plath at all. Mark ties this song to our class discussion about soul mates and whether or not one can be in love with the idea of a soul mate, with an idealized myth that one constructs and that only exists in one’s head. I have to agree with Dr. Campbell that this post transitions excellently into a discussion of Vertigo and especially into a discussion of the topic that I have chosen for this blog post. The demise of Judy, Scotty futile attempts to regain the constructed superfemale, his ideal soul mate that does not truly exist in reality all demonstrate that, at least in Hitchcock’s view, Mark is right and one should not try to dream up a soul mate.

Another blog post that touches on my subject of interest in an interesting way is Stephanie H.‘s post on Midge and Judy. Stephanie identifies Midge as the ideal female and Judy as a kind of dangerous “shadow” of the ideal female, which is what, according to Stephanie, make her so intriguing to Scotty. I think that she makes an interesting point and even though she identifies Midge rather than Madeleine/Judy as the ideal female, I think it is because she means something different by “ideal” then I do in my treatment of the film. I think that what Stephanie means by ideal is that Midge is the woman that Scotty should want, that he should be going after, because she is the superwoman and our modern, feminist perspective makes us (me, Stephanie, and most other educated individuals living in 2007) view the superwoman as the healthy, “right” choice, the better woman than the superfemale. As, for the 1950s and for Scotty, the ideal lies in the superfemale Judy/Madeleine and that is the problem that leads to the tragic ending.

On the other hand, Mary-Carolyn’s blog post complicates this idea a great deal. If Midge really is the superwoman, then why does she attempt to mold herself, to construct herself in imitation of Madeleine, into the superfemale? Why isn’t Scotty as intrigued by the transformed, constructed Midge as he is by the transformed, constructed Judy/Madeleine? I think the answer to this question is that Midge has only ever been known to Scotty as the superwoman. She was never a superfemale to him; she cannot switch now, he would know that she was acting and the key to keeping Scotty happy with his superfemale is that he not know it is all an act. But I think it is also important to note that Midge does try, just like Judy, though unsuccessfully, to revert back to the superfemale. This supports my assertion even farther that this film is about the societal trend and serves as a warning to the disastrous effects that trend will have if change does not occur, if there is not a revolution of societal expectations for women.