Marion Keane, A Closer Look at Scopophilia:

Mulvey, Hitchcock, and Vertigo

Keane disagrees with Laura Mulvey's interpretation of Vertigo. Keane
draws upon the theories of Stanley Cavell and his ideas about the
role of film within society, film form and the notion that Hitchcock is
an Auteur. to critique Mulveys ideas about Vertigo, the Male Gaze,
Voyeurism and Scopophilia:
Mulvey's thesis, as summarized by Keane:
Vertigo is about the active/looking, passive/looked at split in terms
of sexual difference and the power of the male . . . encapsulated in
the hero.
Cavell's view as supported by Keane: film presents displaced views
of real human beings who are simultaneously active and passive.
She sees this throught he way in which the characters are
represented on screen.
James Stewart's film persona (according to Cavell) includes
capacity for suffering and the company of women
Kim Novak's persona:
- Judy's flashback begins with Novak looking into the camera: she
acknowledges her identity as Madeleine, and also establishes a
deep bond between her and the camera that is not broken for the
reminder of the film. We no loner view her as a passive object but
the protagonist of the film and we question our feelings about
Scottie as he attempts to transform her into Madeline.
- Stewart/Scottie never possesses a similar level of knowledge of the
camera.
- Mulvey is wrong in ignoring this active aspect of the Madeline/Judy
split.
What is wrong with Mulvey's use of psychoanalysis, according to
Keane:
-

What is shown to be brutal in Vertigo is the nature of human

desire and need, not some function of a particular phase of male
development
- Mulvey claims that film offers two pleasures that she sees as
active and male: scopophilia and identification.
- Keane feels Mulvey's understanding of Freud by showing that
Freud thought scopophilia was always ambiguous about these
ideas and that active and passive forms always appear together.
So, one doesnt take superiority over the other but they are both
required in order to provide balance.

Film and the world: Keane argues that that film has the ability to
call attention to something, but also the ability to let the world
happen. She suggest that:
- Hitchcock understands the camera as both active & passive;
both must be acknowledged.
- Hitchcock's camera lets the world happen:
- Hitchcock uses the camera's power to penetrate its subjects to
their deepest cores
- Hitchcock uses the camera's capacity to display on the screen
its (human ) subject's inner desires or fears
Central meditation[s] of Hitchcock's camera:
1. Stewart/Scottie at end of his nightmare: this man's dread is
that he is nothingness, that he can be penetrated completely. . . .
his fear that he too is a ghost
2. Stewart/Scottie's sustained violations of Novak/Judy:
- Judy emerging from the bathroom is a dream apparition.
- These shots realize the fears and wishes that dwell in the
deepest regions of Stewart/Scottie's being.
- They are also displays of Hitchcock's authority.
Mulvey places Vertigo among film noir (a male-oriented genre).
- Keane disagrees: By allying himself with and privileging the
woman's story in Vertigo in a way no film noir has ever done,
Hitchcock breaks with the genre's characteristic absorption in the
man's dilemma.
- Cavell also associates Vertigo with woman's films.
3. Final drive to the Mission: Judy's pov of Scottie's profile is
reminiscent of Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Both shots
announce the man's villainy.
4. Judy's final look at the camera: This look declares her
knowledge.
- What Judy sees emerging from the darkness on the tower is a
representation of herself as a spectre, a consummate denial of
her existence.
- Judy realizes that the relationship can never break from
Scottie's preoccupation with and attachment to nothingness.
- Her leap from the bell tower is both her declaration that she
refuses the violations, . . . and her final and decisive proof to him
that she is not a ghost but a human being. - Hitchcock's camera
endorses Novak/Judy's leap because it certifies, as no other act
can, her actual existence.
Vertigo acknowledges its medium's ontological condition of

tragedy
Although Mulvey doesn't recognize this, Freud's central subject
is loving, and this is true of Vertigo also.

source: http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/keanevertigo.html