The American culture is one that has been an enticing subject to be poked and prodded as it is both a local and imported issue. Alfred Hitchcock, one of the 21st century’s most renowned writers and filmmakers, has continuously outdone himself in the creation and development of movies that intensively dissect the understanding of the American culture through the close investigation of the emotions and conducts of the various characters and film locations. Within the critical world of film analysis and intertextuality, the issue of any analysis is not concerned with whether or not the film is adapted to be faithful to its source, context, or culture, but rather how the director chooses the specific sources and characters and how these infinitely affect the film’s ideology. In order to understand the ideology behind a film, it is important to first understand the era that the film was written as well as the cultural context at that time.
Yet, what characterizes Hitchcock’s presentation of sexual deviation and human perversity as an ideal is the way in which it is juxtaposed and entwined with its direct opposite- heterosexuality and culturally acceptable human behavior (Millington 135). In a seemingly Freudian manner, one would correctly assume that sexuality, and its divergence from that which is culturally accepted as being normal, is Hitchcock’s primary source of reflective societal anxiety (Millington 136). Though there might be many speculations about his own personal biography and sexuality, what is most interesting is the way that his work arises from his obsession with human perversity. In a factual, contextual sense, most of his work is linked to the perversity of the human psyche together with the fact that sexuality, in its own right, is well-thought-out to be a candid expression of the impulses that are supposed to be without any ethical or socio-cultural restraints.
As is noted by Richard H. Millington’s 1999 rendition of the book “Hitchcock and American Character: The Comedy of Self-Construction in North by Northwest,” Hitchcock makes several persuasive links to the cold war era and the cultural-political climate at the time in order to depict the anti-communist witch-hunts being carried out at the time. Thus, the analysis gives not only a psychological allegory of maturity but a historical or anthropological allegory of the relationship between the character of a person and the culture of the society at that time. As Millington argues, “… [A]t the center of Hitchcock’s Hollywood films stands a sustained, specific, and extraordinarily acute exploration of American culture” (Millington 138).
As Millington argues, the issues that define the decline of the American culture can, in a nutshell, be thought of being comprised of the “problems of self-making and sexual identity in a world of constraints” where freedom and creativity are not allowed and people are forced to live according to some set plan of socio-cultural expectations (Millington 139). The hysteria that is generated from the revelations of the “sexual deviation” from what society considers normal is used by the federal government to segregate people on sexual lines. According to Millington, men, and women, previously socially accepted as heterosexuals, could find employment in the federal government, infiltrating to its highest ranks in a similar manner that communist spies and assassins were thought out to (Millington 142). An analysis of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest film by Millington leaves the writer to suggest that it “invokes the homophobic categories of cold-war political discourse to secure its representation of Bruno as the emotionally unstable homosexual who threatens national security” (Millington 136).
The incongruous- that which is incompatible and seemingly out of place- characters and locations are Hitchcock’s most prevalent symbolic elements in the creation of the comedy, North by Northwest. From its analysis, it is obvious that the fantasy of his use of absurdities is the primary ingredient in his film making formula, using this style of humor to make the audience unconsciously question their own beliefs and values about what is culturally considered normal and what it is they really want to do.
Works cited
Millington, Richard H. “Hitchcock and American Character: The Comedy of Self-Construction in North by Northwest.” In Hitchcock’s America, ed. Jonathan Freedman and Richard Millington, 135–54. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.