Intimate Violence: Hitchcock, Sex, and Queer Theory

Intimate Violence explores the consistent cold war in Hitchcock's films between his heterosexual heroines and his queer characters, usually though not always male. Decentering the authority of the male hero, Hitchcock's films allow his female and queer characters to vie for narrative power, often in conflict with one another. These conflicts eerily echo the tense standoff between feminism and queer theory. From a reparative psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven merges queer and feminist approaches to Hitchcock. Using the theories of Melanie Klein, Greven argues that Hitchcock's work thematizes a constant battle between desires to injure and to repair the loved object. Greven develops a theory of sexual hegemony. The feminine versus the queer conflict, as he calls it, in Hitchcock films illuminates the shared but rivalrous struggles for autonomy and visibility on the part of female and queer subjects. The heroine is vulnerable to misogyny, but she often gains an access to agency that the queer subject longs for, mistaking her partial autonomy for social power. Hitchcock's queer personae, however, wield a seductive power over his heterosexual subjects, having access to illusion and masquerade that the knowledge-seeking heroine must destroy. Freud's theory of paranoia, understood as a tool for the dissection of cultural homophobia, illuminates the feminine versus the queer conflict, the female subject position, and the consistent forms of homoerotic antagonism in the Hitchcock film. Through close readings of such key Hitchcock works as North by Northwest, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Spellbound, Rope, Marnie, and The Birds, Greven explores the ongoing conflicts between the heroine and queer subjects and the simultaneous allure and horror of same-sex relationships in the director's films.

Arts & Photography

Greven, David

Photography & Video

Oxford University Press

Intimate Violence explores the consistent cold war in Hitchcock's films between his heterosexual heroines and his queer characters, usually though not always male. Decentering the authority of the male hero, Hitchcock's films allow his female and queer characters to vie for narrative power, often in conflict with one another. These conflicts eerily echo the tense standoff between feminism and queer theory. From a reparative psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven merges queer and feminist approaches to Hitchcock. Using the theories of Melanie Klein, Greven argues that Hitchcock's work thematizes a constant battle between desires to injure and to repair the loved object. Greven develops a theory of sexual hegemony. The feminine versus the queer conflict, as he calls it, in Hitchcock films illuminates the shared but rivalrous struggles for autonomy and visibility on the part of female and queer subjects. The heroine is vulnerable to misogyny, but she often gains an access to agency that the queer subject longs for, mistaking her partial autonomy for social power. Hitchcock's queer personae, however, wield a seductive power over his heterosexual subjects, having access to illusion and masquerade that the knowledge-seeking heroine must destroy. Freud's theory of paranoia, understood as a tool for the dissection of cultural homophobia, illuminates the feminine versus the queer conflict, the female subject position, and the consistent forms of homoerotic antagonism in the Hitchcock film. Through close readings of such key Hitchcock works as North by Northwest, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Spellbound, Rope, Marnie, and The Birds, Greven explores the ongoing conflicts between the heroine and queer subjects and the simultaneous allure and horror of same-sex relationships in the director's films.

Maurice, James Ivory's 1987 adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel, follows an Edwardian man's journey from the awakening of his desire for and love of men to self-acceptance. One of the most politically resistant films of the 1980s, Maurice dared to depict a young man's coming-out story and a happy ending for its lovers, Maurice and Alec. James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, a couple whose cinema is synonymous with period film adaptation, released Maurice during the first AIDS decade, a time of flagrant transatlantic homophobia. Criticism following its release described Ivory as a superficial and staid director, while the film was received as a regression to the uncinematic and overly faithful style that characterized the early adaptations by Merchant Ivory Productions. Offering a close reading of Forster's novel and an analysis of Ivory's distinctive visual style, Richard Robbins's indelible score, and the performances of James Wilby, Hugh Grant, and Rupert Graves, David Greven argues that the film is a model of sympathetic adaptation. This study champions the film as the finest of the Merchant Ivory works, making a case for Ivory's underappreciated talents as a director of great subtlety and intelligence, and for the film as one worth recuperating from its detractors. Understanding Maurice as a fully realized work of art and adaptation, this volume offers insight into how a stunning novel of gay love became a classic of queer film.

Maurice (Volume 8) (Queer Film Classics)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

McGill-Queen's University Press

Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror

The theme of female transformation informs the Hollywood representation of femininity from the studio era to the present. Whether it occurs physically, emotionally, or on some other level, transformation allows female protagonists to negotiate their own complex desires and to resist the compulsory marriage plot. A sweeping study of Hollywood from Now, Voyager, The Heiress, and Flamingo Road to Carrie, the Alien films, The Brave One, and the slasher horror genre, this book boldly unsettles commonplace understandings of genre film, female sexuality, and Freudian theory as it makes a strong new case for the queer relevance of female representation.

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush

A struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood defined Hollywood masculinity in the period between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. David Greven's contention is that a profound shift in representation occurred during the early 1990s when Hollywood was transformed by an explosion of films that foregrounded non-normative gendered identity and sexualities. In the years that have followed, popular cinema has either emulated or evaded the representational strategies of this era, especially in terms of gender and sexuality.
One major focus of this study is that, in a great deal of the criticism in both the fields of film theory and queer theory, masochism has been positively cast as a form of male sexuality that resists the structures of normative power, while narcissism has been negatively cast as either a regressive sexuality or the bastion of white male privilege. Greven argues that narcissism is a potentially radical mode of male sexuality that can defy normative codes and categories of gender, whereas masochism, far from being radical, has emerged as the default mode of a traditional normative masculinity. This study combines approaches from a variety of disciplines—psychoanalysis, queer theory, American studies, men's studies, and film theory—as it offers fresh readings of several important films of the past twenty years, including Casualties of War, The Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, The Passion of the Christ, Auto Focus, and Brokeback Mountain.

University of Texas Press

A struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood defined Hollywood masculinity in the period between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. David Greven's contention is that a profound shift in representation occurred during the early 1990s when Hollywood was transformed by an explosion of films that foregrounded non-normative gendered identity and sexualities. In the years that have followed, popular cinema has either emulated or evaded the representational strategies of this era, especially in terms of gender and sexuality.One major focus of this study is that, in a great deal of the criticism in both the fields of film theory and queer theory, masochism has been positively cast as a form of male sexuality that resists the structures of normative power, while narcissism has been negatively cast as either a regressive sexuality or the bastion of white male privilege. Greven argues that narcissism is a potentially radical mode of male sexuality that can defy normative codes and categories of gender, whereas masochism, far from being radical, has emerged as the default mode of a traditional normative masculinity. This study combines approaches from a variety of disciplines—psychoanalysis, queer theory, American studies, men's studies, and film theory—as it offers fresh readings of several important films of the past twenty years, including Casualties of War, The Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, The Passion of the Christ, Auto Focus, and Brokeback Mountain.

Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin

Bridging landmark territory in film studies, Psycho-Sexual is the first book to apply Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy to three key directors of 1970s Hollywood—Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin—whose work suggests the pornographic male gaze that emerged in Hitchcock’s depiction of the voyeuristic, homoerotically inclined American man. Combining queer theory with a psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven begins with a reconsideration of Psycho and the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much to introduce the filmmaker’s evolutionary development of American masculinity.Psycho-Sexual probes De Palma’s early Vietnam War draft-dodger comedies as well as his film Dressed to Kill, along with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Friedkin’s Cruising as reactions to and inventive elaborations upon Hitchcock’s gendered themes and aesthetic approaches. Greven demonstrates how the significant political achievement of these films arises from a deeply disturbing, violent, even sorrowful psychological and social context. Engaging with contemporary theories of pornography while establishing pornography’s emergence during the classical Hollywood era, Greven argues that New Hollywood filmmakers seized upon Hitchcock’s radical decentering of heterosexual male dominance. The resulting images of heterosexual male ambivalence allowed for an investment in same-sex desire; an aura of homophobia became informed by a fascination with the homoerotic. Psycho-Sexual also explores the broader gender crisis and disorganization that permeated the Cold War and New Hollywood eras, reimagining the defining premises of Hitchcock criticism.

Bridging landmark territory in film studies, Psycho-Sexual is the first book to apply Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy to three key directors of 1970s Hollywood—Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin—whose work suggests the pornographic male gaze that emerged in Hitchcock’s depiction of the voyeuristic, homoerotically inclined American man. Combining queer theory with a psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven begins with a reconsideration of Psycho and the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much to introduce the filmmaker’s evolutionary development of American masculinity.
Psycho-Sexual probes De Palma’s early Vietnam War draft-dodger comedies as well as his film Dressed to Kill, along with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Friedkin’s Cruising as reactions to and inventive elaborations upon Hitchcock’s gendered themes and aesthetic approaches. Greven demonstrates how the significant political achievement of these films arises from a deeply disturbing, violent, even sorrowful psychological and social context. Engaging with contemporary theories of pornography while establishing pornography’s emergence during the classical Hollywood era, Greven argues that New Hollywood filmmakers seized upon Hitchcock’s radical decentering of heterosexual male dominance. The resulting images of heterosexual male ambivalence allowed for an investment in same-sex desire; an aura of homophobia became informed by a fascination with the homoerotic. Psycho-Sexual also explores the broader gender crisis and disorganization that permeated the Cold War and New Hollywood eras, reimagining the defining premises of Hitchcock criticism.

Studying the Star Trek myth from the original 1960s series to the 2009 franchise-reboot film, this book challenges frequent accusations that the Star Trek saga refuses to represent queer sexuality. Arguing that Star Trek speaks to queer audiences through subtle yet provocative allegorical narratives, the analysis pays close attention to representations of gender, race, and sexuality to develop an understanding of the franchise's queer sensibility. Topics include the 1960s original's deconstruction of the male gaze and the traditional assumptions of male visual mastery; constructions of femininity in Star Trek: Voyager, particularly in the relationship between Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine; and the ways in which Star Trek: Enterprise's adoption of neoconservative politics may have led to its commercial and aesthetic failure.

Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek: Allegories of Desire in the Television Series and Films

Science Fiction & Fantasy

McFarland Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greven, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Greven, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greven, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Intimate Violence: Hitchcock, Sex, and Queer Theory

Intimate Violence: Hitchcock, Sex, and Queer Theory

Maurice (Volume 8) (Queer Film Classics)

Maurice (Volume 8) (Queer Film Classics)

Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror

Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush

Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush

Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin

Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin

Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek: Allegories of Desire in the Television Series and Films