An Oldie But A Goodie

In response to the "Masculinity and Genre" readings ...

Last year I took Casper's class on Hitchcock. At the end of the semester, Pat and her daughter (his granddaughter) came in to talk to the class. The granddaughter told an anecdote about her enrolling in a class at LMU on the Master of Suspense himself ... a lot of stories came out of this, but the relevant one involves her professor giving a detailed lecture (similar to Casper) about the symbolic significance of the chair placement in a scene in Rope ... how this subtly indicates so much about the characters, their motivations, etc. Hitch's granddaughter came to visit him, informed him of this lecture, and asked whether her professor was right -- was all this intentional?

"Nope", said Hitch.

Now, this man is known for unreliable interviews ... but I still wonder how this plays into the articles for that week, specifically "John Wayne's America", but uber specifically "The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit".

I wholeheartedly believe that Hitchcock set up those chairs symbolically, significantly, and any other s- synonym -ly you can think of. His Britishness just doesn't allow him to admit that. However, his granddaughter's anecdote calls into question some of what I read in the "Spy" article. Some of the arguments put forth -- sure, make sense: Cohan's assertions about North by Northwest's concern with identity (it doesn't exist, it's all performative and determined by which theatricality is best presented), and marriage as a stabilizing force (this is the only way Roger will ever fully mature). But others appear more far-fetched: Eve's reference to Roger's face as familiar on the train being a self-referential wink to Cary Grant's stardom (Hitch was not one for self-referentiality ... he always made his infamous appearances within the first fifteen minutes of a film so as not to distract the audience from the rest of the plot.), and the poster art representing masculinity in crisis rather than a man in crisis. These seem harder to buy.

But what I wonder, is whether the artist's intention matters. Say Hitchcock had no interest in exploring anything gender related with North by Northwest -- he merely wanted to recover from the economic chaos that was Vertigo. Fine. How does all this metaphor find itself in the film, then?

1) Hitchcock was unconscously incorporating these issues into his work because of a personal interest in them only subconsciously expressed.
2) The conditions of the culture at that time were such that any work representing the period in any real way had to include similar questions, regardless of whether it wanted to or not, because these questions were such a part of the societal fabric that they would pop up regardless of effort.
3) Cohan is crazy and reading wayyyyyy too much into the movie, as are other critics.

I'm including to disregard 3) (when it comes to most of his and others' arguments about the film, anyway), accept 1), 2), and assert that Hitch was consciously including a smidgen of what Cohan etc. assert him to be.

And the same goes for John Wayne, and Willis' writing (not an article -- a preface/introduction) about him. I do not believe that Wayne set out to become the ideology that Willis refers to him as -- indicated by his reference to "John Wayne" as separate from John Wayne (very clever!). But, again, I don't think it matters. The number one take-away from this class, so far -- I think -- is that actors become stars due to things outside themselves. This is not to say that they do nothing to deserve this ... acclaim? name, rather ... but merely to assert that they represent values, problems, etc. of the time, and become so significant for that metaphorical value, not their acting ability alone. So, following this logic, if a star becomes a star -- something more than one person, more than one actor, even -- by something outside oneself, then John Wayne is a star regardless of whether he attempted to achieve status as an ideology or not.

And so, I come to my questions:

1) Does an artist's intention matter? If it can be read into the work, is it just as valid if it's intended as it is if it's not?
2) How much are critics over-analyzing these works?
3) Is becoming more than oneself -- more than an individual, more than an actor, even, but an ideology -- bad in any way? ("I don't want to achieve immortality through my work ... I want to achieve it through not dying." - Woody Allen)