(She observes astutely that Hitchcock's obsession with his actresses enabled him to function more effectively in "the environment of commercialized eroticism that defined the Hollywood style.") Wexman superbly elucidates the social implications of the Madeleine-Judy contrast and of the role of tourismĪnd travelogue in fiction film, and in Vertigo in particular. Wexman cites Donald Spoto's Hitchcock biography to establish that in making Vertigo, the director was concerned primarily with the stars and the locations. But theory that emerges in a context that does not determine it or on an occasion that has not been called to summon it for some end, may still surprise writer and reader alike.Īs its title indicates, Virginia Wright Wexman's article is concerned with the practices of film analysts and text interpreters, whose work she posits as shaped by "concrete historical processes." She classifies them according to Antonio Gramsci's distinction between (1) traditional intellectuals who serve the dominant group by rationalizing its social hegemony and (2) a more "organic" function "by which a rising group theorizes its own entrance into the upper reaches of the social power structure." Those who argue Vertigo 's status as pure cinema serve the power structure by "rationalizing particular cinematic institutions at work in the film." Vertigo 's feminist critics belong to a larger group of women intellectuals "who have elaborated a discourse on women at a moment when women have been entering high-level positions both within and outside of the academy." In the eighties, and so far in the nineties as well, there is still theory, or anti-theory, that proceeds from a prior, fixed position and therefore issues mechanically.
On the other hand, there is virtually no occasion or writing mode in which theory might not occur. Each essay must pose the question of theory anew no method or context can guarantee its occurrence. The five articles in this section are theoretical in different senses, which is congruent with the changed nature of theory in the eighties, the decade in which they all appeared.
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