Why Does The Birds Attack?: Teaching the Body in Hitchcock [abstract]

Abstract

The body is a central feature in Hitchcock both in the way he shoots and cuts it and shoots and cuts it. True, his bodies are shot and stabbed; they fall off Mt. Rushmore, get chopped up and carried away in suitcases on rainy nights. However, Hitchcock's attacks on the body are not, of course, only about flesh. It is not simply visceral. The body always reflects psychology and/or society; the body always holds larger intellectual meaning. For instance, the unseen body hidden in Rope's chest is inextricable from the socially marginalized homosexual. The new Mrs. De Winter is made a powerless little girl sitting in oversized chairs and reaching toward the oversized doorknobs of Rebecca's mansion. Jefferies' broken leg is his fractured masculinity.