“Every cloud has a silver lining”:

Eroticized violence against women in Hitchcock

Christine Hoff Kraemer, December 2004

As Tania Modleski points out, of all of Hitchcock’s films Frenzy reveals most clearly that violence against women is not the solitary work of a psychopathic killer, but rather a tendency in patriarchal society that implicates everyone who lives in it (110-111). As in Psycho, under the influence of a devouring mother a man’s desire for women and fear of their sexual power leads to gruesome murder. In Frenzy, however, it becomes clear that Rusk is simply taking the repressed desires of men (and possibly women) to their logical conclusion. In a society threatened by the increasing political power and economic and social freedom of women, Rusk’s actions seek to restore patriarchal order and rob women of their agency.

Yet Frenzy suggests that women too may desire to view the violation of other women, even as it emphasizes the suffering and horror of Rusk’s victims. Women are among those in the crowd who flock to look at the dead body floating in the river in the film’s opening, and it is a middle-aged woman who asks the inspectors, with apparently prurient interest, “He rapes them first, doesn’t he?” Although she recoils from the offensive response that “every cloud has a silver lining,” it’s clear that the fact of the sex murders is a source of titillation and excitement, one that draws in tourists of both genders.

In addition to revealing the systemic workings of a patriarchal society threatened by women’s power, Frenzy also rubs the audience’s faces in the connection between eroticism and violence. As audience members, we are made participants in the assault scene with the full knowledge that this horror is what we paid good money to see. It’s not even necessary to postulate a specifically female masochism to suggest that both men and women might take pleasure in the terrifying intensity of Brenda’s strangling – perhaps all the more so because Hitchcock makes it clear she is an innocent victim who has done nothing to bring the assault on herself, thus avoiding the charge of misogyny on that count. By filming this graphic rape-murder, Hitchcock implicates us in the supposedly deviant desires of Rusk. As an audience, we are invited to confront our own pleasure in sexual violence, whether we find ourselves identifying with the assailant or with the victim.

Taking that perspective, the film’s black comedy becomes a way that Hitchcock jokes at the audience’s expense, playing with our lack of awareness in our involvement in patriarchal power dynamics. The film is sprinkled with misogynistic but cuttingly funny verbal satire, from the offhand conversation in the opening sequence about Jack the Ripper sending body parts to the press, to the reference to how “good, juicy sex murders” and the prospect of London being scattered with the bodies of “ripped whores” brings in the tourist trade. In response to this commentary on the lurid imaginations of otherwise respectable men, the film’s humor also centers on the domination of men by women. The conversation of the couple leaving the matchmaking service demonstrates that in return for sex and marriage, the woman is going to extort slave labor housekeeping from her new mate; in the home of the inspector, the inspector’s wife tortures him with strange French dishes in revenge for his sexual disinterest in her. We are intended to laugh uneasily at these exaggerated portrayals of gender dynamics in Western society, perhaps without fully realizing how they reveal the struggle for power that also drives Rusk’s murders. As Modleski observes, Rusk kills not because patriarchal power is firmly established, but because it is threatened (111). Hitchcock’s humor, as much as his horror, is intended to hold up a mirror to the audience, although whether we realize we are laughing at our own reflections is an open question.

Frenzy’s demonstration that violence against women is an expression of the deep structure of patriarchy can be found in some of his earliest films. In particular, Frenzy recalls The Lodger in its portrayal of ritualized, serial murders of women in London. In The Lodger, the seemingly upstanding and ethical Joe is implicated in the Avenger’s murders by his demanding, possessive pursuit of Daisy. Seeking to own her, and perhaps angry at her refusal of his advances, his sublimated violence comes out in his accusation and pursuit of the innocent but peculiar lodger. Daisy is the prize in this competition between men, with the murders of other young, blond women reminding us that she might also become a victim should she refuse the wrong man what he wants. In Frenzy, this competition is played out between Blaney and Rusk. Rusk rapes both Blaney’s ex-wife and his girlfriend, thus taking possession of the “prizes.” He is impotent, however; the women cannot give him what he wants, and in his rage at their perceived inadequacy, he strangles them. Unlike in The Lodger, where we neither witness the murders nor have access to the murderer’s motivations, here the desire to possess women and control their sexuality so that it may safely service a man’s pleasure is laid out on the film’s surface.
Frenzy also provides an exploration of the eroticism of violence that is foreshadowed in several earlier works, including Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho and The Birds. In Shadow of a Doubt, Charles’s attempts on Charlie’s life, Charlie’s threats in return, and her eventual murder of her uncle are all portrayed in terms of courtship and marriage. Charlie’s pushing Charles from the train is the consummation of the murderous romance she entered by again accepting Charles’s ring. The incestuous feelings between the uncle and niece are replaced by mutual homicidal urges, bringing them into a relationship as intense and intimate than a sexual one, if not more so. Further, as William Rothman observes, Psycho’s famous shower scene is also an example of highly eroticized violence (292-309). As the killer approaches the shower, Marion appears to be in a sensual ecstasy as the burden of guilt from her crime is washed away. The murder is shot in a series of tight close-ups of Marion’s naked, vulnerable body, the phallic knife repeatedly slashing down, though we never see it touch her. Modleski notes that the film teases us with the possibility of seeing Janet Leigh’s naked breasts (113), perhaps heightening the erotic tension. The scene of Melanie Daniels being attacked in The Birds is similar. Filmed in many short cuts, we catch brief glimpses of Melanie’s body being ravaged by birds as she emits soft, almost sexual cries. Before she faints, she sighs, “Oh, Mitch,” as if calling out his name in a sexual encounter. Hitchcock gives no hint of pleasure on Brenda’s part in Frenzy’s assault scene, but the camera tracks lovingly over her naked body during the rape and strangling. There is no doubt that Hitchcock is inviting the audience into a state of arousal, even if he also emphasizes Brenda’s pain and innocence.

Also as in Psycho, Frenzy inserts an apparently devouring, dominating mother as the immediate cause of Rusk’s psychopathic behavior (as opposed to the mere misogyny of the other male characters). Although as Modleski points out, this trope is only sketched through the presence of Rusk’s mother in his apartment and her picture on the wall, the reference to the intense, jealous relationship between Norman Bates and his mother is clear. Both mothers and sons, the films suggest, are locked in a vicious cycle perpetrated by patriarchy. Forced into positions of limited power, mothers are driven to dominate and manipulate sons as a substitute for claiming their own forbidden power and agency. In response to this smothering, sons develop a love-hate relationship with women that transfers onto the female objects of their desire. In Psycho, Norman’s sexual attraction to Marion leads “his mother half” to murder her, lest the intimacy with Mother be replaced by a mature sexual relationship with another woman. This is echoed in The Birds, where Mitch’s overly intense relationship with his mother threatens to destroy his romances, and Lydia’s fear of abandonment by Mitch and repressed rage may even provoke the supernatural response of the birds attacking Melanie. Frenzy suggests that the same dynamic of hatred of and loyalty to his mother may motivate Rusk. Yet Rusk, like patriarchal society as a whole, is determined to deny women the agency and freedom they need to claim their own power and break the cycle of devouring mothers and emotionally crippled sons. With a child’s sense of entitlement to pleasure, Rusk violates and murders the women who cannot give him the fulfillment he craves.

It is significant that one inspector in Frenzy cracks that the tourists want to see London littered with the bodies of “ripped whores.” The women that Rusk murders, after all, are not whores – but they are economically successful, sexually liberated, and (to men’s minds) disturbingly powerful. In Frenzy, as in many other Hitchcock films, violence against women serves as a way to stifle women’s power and restore patriarchal order – whether by denigrating powerful women as whores, or simply by killing the ones who get too uppity. In addition to revealing this dangerous dynamic of patriarchy, however, Hitchcock also confronts both women and men in the audience with the fact of their own pleasure in the violence. While I believe it is entirely possible to identify across gender lines in Hitchcock films – men may identify with victims, and women with assailants – Frenzy makes it clear that regardless of our gender, we are all implicated in patriarchal violence through our willing voyeurism.

Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. London: Routledge, 1988.

Rothman, William. Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Copyright © 2004 by Christine Hoff Kraemer