In order to explain the re-identification of Madeleine implied by Scotty’s dream (when the actor Scotty met her again in the dream after Madeleine’s death), Freud wrote in "Mourning and Depression" (Mourning and Depression). Melancholia) provides us with some ideas. According to Freud, depression, the state of loss of a loved one, is different from mourning. Partly because the former involves an inexplicably weakened sense of self-esteem [of the depressed person], his ego falls into a massive impoverishment. "In mourning," Freud said, "it is the world that becomes barren and empty; and in depression, it is the self itself that is in trouble." Freud attributed this collapse of self-esteem to the depressive person’s internalization of the object of love, which was a source of disappointment and the object of condemnation for the subject. This accusation was due to internalization. As a result, it seems to be transformed into self-condemnation (it is not difficult to find that the judge in the interrogation so harshly pointed out Scotty's "weakness" is a thorough presentation of the condemnation that was subsequently internalized). In this regard, Freud believed, "self and abandoned object recognition (identification)", in fact, was established. "Therefore," he continued to say quite poetically, "the shadow of the object falls on the self, which can be judged by a special agent from now on, and the self is like an object, an abandoned object." (P. 249) Freud believes that the identification of lost objects peculiar to depression involves a retreat to the early narcissism stage, which is also the stage evoked by Madeleine in the mirror image of the flower shop in the film. "This practice of substituting identity for object-love...represents... regressing from a choice of objects to primitive narcissism. [Identification] is a preliminary stage of object selection ,...Is the first step-a contradictory way" (page 249).
Affected by the object, Scotty not only recognized Madeleine in his dream, but also became as crazy as her, and this kind of madness made him worry about it. When looking for the disappeared Madeleine, he talked to strangers in the street like "Crazy Carlotta" desperately looking for the kid who was taken away: After waking up from his dream, Scottie wandered in the city and kept other The woman mistakenly thought it was Madeleine, and then blamed herself in pain.
The key is that the film focuses on negating his vision at this time -and then negating our vision in multiple scenes . In each scene here, the movie puts a certain subjective shot Hitchcock used in the first half, highlighting Scotty's subjectivity, and then revealing the deceptiveness of this line of sight. To a certain extent, we have experienced Freudian depression through Scotty: on the one hand, we identify with him as before, but his suspicious perspective makes us have to be cautious, and the audience becomes more Have judgment. In addition, because Hitchcock often weakens the heroine's viewing ability in different ways, Scotty's misleading vision also proves his status as a woman .
Finally, Judy appeared on the street with some other women. A dark-haired woman in a cheap green tight skirt with heavy makeup, as Truffaut observed, she was not wearing a bra (that is, she did not return to the previous scene in the Midge apartment). Although we have not yet observed this change, Judy is indeed an "original" woman and will soon be reshaped again, becoming a complete fetishization and idealization of male desire and male "design" "Constructed" (constructed) object. When she bid farewell to her friends, the camera stopped at her silhouette, and the romantic background music played again, but at this time it did not fully work. This is not only because the previous wrong subjective shots made us wary of this "phantom", but she is also "not quite right", it is just a beautiful imitation of Madeleine, which is really disappointing. It is not difficult to understand that she seems to be a degraded old self in the film at this time. Freud said that the disappointment of depressed patients with their loved ones sparked hatred. "Hatred began to feed back on the substitute, insulting it, belittling it, making it suffer, and deriving sadistic satisfaction from its pain." (Page 251) However, before this abuse is completely released, Scotty tries to recall the loss by turning Judy into Madeleine: forcing her to wear the same clothes, shoes, and makeup, and changing her hairstyle. Love object.
But at this time we already know that Judy is Gavin Elster's evil tool for murdering his wife. This recognition makes us more sympathetic to this woman, because she finds herself constantly being denied and manipulated by men, which also makes us more and more inclined to condemn Scottie. In Hitchcock’s words, he has become a "Maniac (maniac)". As if to emphasize the change of viewing interest and viewpoint, Hitchcock added a scene in Judy's hotel room. In the beginning, this scene showed her profile, the camera moved forward, and the shot was similar to the subjective shot that madeleine dominated before the film. However, in the end, Hitchcock changed the position of the camera and put the camera in front of her, while Scotty was still on the side, so that we could see part of Marilyn, but he fell into a state of obsession with it. Turn a blind eye. As Hitchcock evokes and expands the audience’s sympathy for Marilyn, we fully appreciate the irony and bitterness of her situation—just like when Scottie begged Judy to transform herself, urging her: "This is for you. Say it doesn’t matter". Judy acquiesced to this behavior out of love for Scottie.
After dressing up, Madeleine appeared in front of Scottie who was waiting for her like a ghost; she walked towards him slowly, and the two hugged each other. This famous shot surrounded the couple, and they were placed in one (no Visible) in transition. Romantic music sounded, and the background at this time, namely Judy’s hotel room, almost unknowingly became San Juan Bautista’s stable. Ironically, this was where Scottie tried to heal her hallucinations by reconstructing Madeleine's real world, and now it turns to mark how Scottie's hallucinations defeated reality.
But the "real" woman does not seem to be easily conquered. Judy puts on herself the necklace in Carlotta's portrait, concealing herself. At this moment, Scotty's desire for abuse is at its peak, because he clearly realizes that he has never possessed this woman, and she has been avoiding his control. Scottie forced Judy to return to the crime scene, and what he said when he dragged him up to the tower reveals his all-time attempts.
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. And you jumped into the Bay! I bet you're a wonderful swimmer, aren't you… aren't you… aren't you! And then what did he do? Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do and what to say? You were a very apt pupil, weren't you? You were a very apt pupil! But why did you pick on me? Why me? I was the set-up, wasn't I? I was the made-to-order-witness. This is where it happened. And then, you were his girl. What happened to you? Did he ditch you? Oh Judy, with all of his wife's money, and all that freedom and all that power… and he ditched you.
Scottie’s pain was not only, or even mainly, because of discovering that Madeleine had deceived him, but because of the realization that she had been portrayed by another man who "rehearsed" and "trained" Madeleine. The way Scottie treats Judy is exactly the same. Just when Scottie consciously had the most control over this woman and possessed the "freedom" and "power" he had always longed for, which was associated with masculinity in the film, he found himself and got caught up with Judy/Madeline. The cycle of repetition like Carlotta, as Freud has shown, repetition is related to unfreedom, abuse, and death. The fact that Scotty has to face now is that he is like a woman, manipulated and used by Gavin Elster, and the latter's conspiracy has also come to Scotty. "You are a victim," Judy burst into tears and wrote in the letter-just like Judy, Carlotta and the real Madeleine Esther, they are all the ultimate victims of a male conspiracy .
Freud wrote: “What we men call the enigma of woman (the enigma of woman) may be partly derived from bisexuality in women’s lives." The existence of this bisexuality can be attributed to both The little girl has gone through the "sexual organ stage" (an active stage, in contrast to the typical passiveness of women), because she, like a man, regards her mother as the object of her first love. In order to form what Freud called "normal femininity" (normal femininity), women must stay away from their mothers and transfer their desires to their fathers, which is similar to the movie "Butterfly Dream". However, as I pointed out in the relevant chapters of that movie, Freud had to admit that the desire for mothers exists so frequently in a woman's life, affecting her relationship with the opposite sex and with other women. Therefore, women often fall into the "dual desire". Feminist film theory tries to reveal the meaning of this dual desire through women's viewing of movies. For example, when talking about "Butterfly Dream", Teresa de Lauretis believed that "the dual position of desire confirms the female Oedipus complex." Unlike the feminists who claim that female characters are either either or the other (either masochistic or transvestite) in movies, de-Lauretis believes that the identity of women is twofold. "This way of identification will support the two states of desire, namely the initiative and the passivity of the goal: the desire for others and the desire for others."
Translated from Femininity by Design: Vertigo 's discussion of Freud in the second half of the chapter
For details, see THE WOMEN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (by Tania Modleski)
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