Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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considered indicative of the consideration given each statement. This disparity in the
two explanations also raises questions regarding Wood’s consideration of
“worthiness”: he seems to consider Hitchcock’s films more worthy, artistic and
complex than the 1980s slasher films he addresses in Hollywood from Vietnam to
Reagan... And Beyond which he only considers sadistic. In discussing the
problematic ideologies expressed in mainstream horror from the 1980s, Wood uses
and attempts to justify similar problems in Hitchcock’s work: “...the films obliquely
express what Hitchcock’s films, for example, have consistently dramatized – the
anxiety of the heterosexual male confronted by the possibility of an autonomous
female sexuality he can’t control or organize.” (2003; 174) By asserting that 1980s
horror “obliquely expresses” these anxieties, Wood implies that these are, either
unconscious or conscious, reflections of the ideologies of the filmmakers, yet by
stating that Hitchcock’s films “dramatize” the anxieties, Wood suggests that this is
knowingly portrayed, and is therefore more complex.
Lucy Fischer and Marcia Landy take a position similar to Wood’s argument
about the complexity of point of view. In response to James Monaco’s analysis of
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978; dir. Kershner) in which he accuses the film of being more
stylistic and less substantial, Fischer and Landy write that “the problem is not, as
Monaco indicates, that the film says nothing but that it says everything.” (1987; 71)
This statement, while pointing out a primary weakness in the film, indicates the
complexity of eye/camera usage in both the narrative and visual design of Eyes of
Laura Mars. This particular summary of the film succinctly indicates that, while the
film itself may inadequately develop the very points it raises through using the
eye/camera, the eye/camera is such a complex device that it becomes difficult for an
entire film narratively centring around its usage to comprehensively and