In the Name of National Security - Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in Postwar America

"Corber's argument is at once clear and rich. He makes clear that Hitchcock's films engage fundamental issues of sexuality and gender identity, and he also makes clear that these issues are in dialogue with the process of ideological struggle, including the mobilization of homophobia, in which Cold War Liberalism won its powerful place in the 1950s. The richness comes in the contexts Corber provides from that struggle and in the lucid imagination with which he reconceptualizes very famous films in relation to those contexts."--Jonathan Arac

List of contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1. Draped in the American Flag: Cold War Liberals and the Resistance to Theory 19

2. Reconstructing Homosexuality: Hitchcock and the Homoerotics of Spectatorial Pleasure 56

3. Resisting History: Rear Window and the Limits of the Postwar Settlement 83

4. The Fantasy of the Maternal Voice: The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Eroticization of Motherhood 113

5. "There Are Many Such Stories": Vertigo and the Repression of Historical Knowledge 154

6. Hitchcock Through the Looking Glass: Psycho and the Breakdown of the Social 185

Conclusion 219

Notes 227

Index 257

About the author

Robert J. Corber

Product details

• Authors: Corber, Robert J Corber, Robert J. Corber
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.10.1993
• EAN: 9780822313861
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-1386-1
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 215 mm x 20 mm
• Weight: 435 g
• Series: New Americanists; New Americanists
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Untersuchungen zu Homosexualität / LGBTQ, Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika, USA, Andere darstellende Künste