I leave now for class. So I'll let Kate Bush take this post.

It's a shame there's not a better video for this song. But I do like the juxtaposition with deep, dark water.

Strange dream. Thought I'd write it down before going back to sleep.

An impossibly massive room, stretching into infinity in all directions. The floor is polished obsidian, I can't see the walls or ceiling because I'm viewing this from miles above, looking straight down. There's an enormous, empty white bath tub, it must be fifty feet long. In front of it is an army of red coated toy soldiers, thousands strong, neatly arrayed in rows and columns. Only, the troops have been whipped into such a blood lust that they've started firing on one another. I can hear the cracks of their muskets, which are still fired in orderly rounds, despite the frenzy of their wielders.

Somehow I know that I'm the one who provoked all this energy, myself and one or two cohorts, before we went off to pursue our campaign alone. I don't remember any motive on my part except to return home, even though I had no idea where home was, and take a bath.

I can't get the theme from Police Squad out of my head.

Still not in quite the right headspace for a blog entry. I may get increasingly quiet as I work with this stuff. To-day I've been working on the history of one nation while mapping out the concurrent history of its official religion. I have two doc files open and I have to pause several times to decide which file the thing-I-just-made-up belongs in. I suppose this will all go in my wiki, but I'm starting to have second thoughts about using the wiki software. It's too difficult to change names. I may finish this all up in doc files and then transfer to wiki. I also don't like wiki's restrictions on images. It wants my maps smaller than I want them, making names of cities and forests illegible. But there's much I've yet to puzzle out about wikis . . .

I'm really glad to see the writer's strike is practically over. I was sorry to see Roy Scheider died (er, not because of the strike), though I haven't really been interested in his work beyond Jaws and Naked Lunch. Though I've been contemplating giving Seaquest DSV a re-examination, since it was created by Farscape creator Rockne S. O'Bannon. But probably not any time soon since I just downloaded a bunch of Akira Kurosawa movies last night.

I went with Tim to see No Country for Old Men again last night. I still love it. Though I think I appreciated it a little more the first time because I had to walk up the hill from downtown to see it. Sometimes, life's a journey, as Skeletor said once on Robot Chicken.

I haven't much else to say to-day. My head's firmly planted in my new project. So here's episode twelve of Neon Genesis Evangelion; "The Value of a Miracle"/"She Said, 'Don't Make Others Suffer for Your Personal Hatred'".

I think I got three out of five on the first quiz in this British Literature class I'm taking, which I find really annoying. I'd read the portion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that the quiz was concerned with, I understood it and I enjoyed it. But I misread Question One, which asked during whose reign the story was written, followed by the multiple choices (a)the Tudors, (b)the Normans, and (c) the Saxons. I read it as asking which group was in power during the events of the story, so I put Saxons.

The quiz also asked in what court did the Green Knight make his appearance. I wrote "The Round Table", since that's how the story constantly referred to it. But apparently the acceptable answers were "King Arthur's Court" or "Camelot".

I swear, I need an English to Setsuledese dictionary.

After class, I went to the Living Room and wrote for a while. Did I mention I abandoned that gangster noir thing I was talking about a while ago? Yeah, I kind of knew I was making a mistake when writing it by making it so personal. Now reading it just disgusts me. So I've gone back to work on that really big project I was in the middle of earlier in the year. When am I going to learn I'm lousy at multitasking?

Last night I finished coming up with all the background information I needed on one of the religions I've created for this project. I mean to have at least skeletons of five different religions before I get started on the comic. Plus, I want to develop at least six nations. I've so far developed two. I hope I haven't bit off more than I can chew. I have a feeling all I really need is patience.

I finished the evening with some Jameson and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, a movie that always calms me down. But you know what's been a primo balm lately? Jaime Hernandez's Locas comics. The Maggie the Mechanic collection was great, but The Girl from HOPPERS is shaping up to be one of the sweetest things in the world.

Very sleepy now, but I wanted to post this for Moira before I hit the hay;

It's been a while since I've posted some Fred and Ginger.

From Shall We Dance;

First of all, as a follow up to yesterday's entry, Caitlin now has a donation button set up. So, Sumner Redstone, as I've always suspected you've been a fan of this blog, I suggest you donate a billion dollars.

Seriously, though, to anyone reading. Help the lady out.

I managed to download another Mikio Naruse movie that's unavailable on DVD in the U.S., Meshi. Made in 1951, it's the first Naruse movie I've seen that has a genuinely happy ending. It's an ending that supports a woman's traditionally subservient role in the household, and yet, Michiyo, the protagonist played by Setsuko Hara, is a remarkably well drawn character, easily the most complex and interesting character in the movie.

Hara's performance employs a lot of subtlety. When Michiyo leaves for Tokyo without her husband, and stays away without explanation for months, we can see all the reasons in her face and gestures. We can see why she tears up, unsent, the only letter she writes to him. Not because she doesn't mean what she wrote, but because she doesn't know any more what she wants.

The more I think about the bulk of the movie, the less happy the ending seems, actually. And the movie seems more in line with Naruse's creative obsession with Mono no aware.

It's a good movie. A lot gentler than the other Naruse movies I've seen so far. It also features a tiny, adorable, tailless cat named Yuri;



Yesterday I started reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for class. I also watched Vertigo on TCM. Yes, despite having it on DVD and despite having watched it twelve billion times in recent weeks. I noticed there were some subtle differences in the TCM print compared to my DVD.

Afterwards, I went wandering . . .

I just ate what I suppose must count as my dinner; spaghetti noodles with butter and garlic, followed by a toasted croissant with butter and sharp cheddar cheese. I sense I could eat better, but this has more or less been my regular meal.

I tend to have the television on MSNBC's Morning Joe. This morning, I was amused to see how much better the show is without host Joe Scarborough, who had the day off. Scarborough has this amazing tendency to talk over people. It goes beyond annoying to sort of astounding. He'll start talking and just steam roll on, especially when Mika Brzezinski's trying to talk. Ms. Brzezinski seemed remarkably calm and relaxed this morning.

Scarborough probably still holds a grudge over this little incident.

It's just after 5am, and I don't have the wherewithal to say anything particularly interesting now. Have I mentioned how much I love Sarah Silverman?

You probably know I love the work of Caitlin R. Kiernan. She is a great writer. Unfortunately, we live in a country where the basic human right to proper health care is granted to no-one who does not have the cash, not even to great writers. And as she's recently pointed out in her Live Journal, she has a condition now that requires a great deal of expensive medical care.

So, I want to urge anyone and everyone reading to purchase as much as you can from her eBay auctions, and, if you haven't already, subscribe to her wonderful Sirenia Digest. I consider myself Caitlin's friend, and I would personally appreciate it greatly if any dragon reading would lay his or her hoard at Caitlin's feet.

Now I'd better get back to sleep. But I'll point out first that that Vertigo's on TCM to-night at 5pm PT (6pm MT, 8pm ET). Just in case I've whetted anyone's appetite for that movie . . .

I've watched the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I like the series. I feel slightly timid about saying that, as this show almost seems like it doesn't have a right to be this good. But it is.

The first good mark it has is that it's not annoying. When characters do things, it makes sense that they would do them based on their apparent or possible motives, capabilities, and perspectives. Unlike, say, Heroes where enjoyment of the series is dependent on how good you are at overlooking the writers' laziness.

On top of the fact that The Sarah Connor Chronicles isn't annoying, it has positive aspects (boy, I'm just a push-over, ain't I?). Summer Glau is excellent, and even though Lena Headey doesn't quite capture what Linda Hamilton did, she's still very good. The show has the pervading gloom that naturally comes from characters who know the world's heading for a terrible fate. And I like how Summer Glau Terminator is not obligated to follow John's or Sarah's orders. There's the constant threat of her killing someone innocent or of her allowing someone innocent to be killed.

The guy playing John Connor is pretty milquetoast, but I guess you can't have everything.

I went for a candy run last night. A two dollar bag of liquorice and a dollar bag of Atomic Fireballs. It's weird the things I'm in the mood for these days.

I see the Atomic Fireball was invented in 1954. Now I feel like I'm snacking on something Oppenheimer developed.

Matt Lauer's trying to be me;



It'll never work, Matt. Well, actually he looks pretty good. This probably the best example I've seen of the fedora's recent resurgence.

When I was looking for a good picture of Lauer in his, I came across this Live Journal post, and marvelled how someone could get 247 comments just for asking if the fedora thing is good or bad (incidentally, I don't think any of the fedoras in her collage are all that great, except maybe Terrence Howard's, but his crown is too thin for his head, making him look like a turnip).

Meanwhile, the blog of Diablo Cody, beautiful young former stripper whose screenplay for Juno is up for an Oscar, regularly receives no comments. How did this world get this way?

Apparently she married an internet boyfriend. I guess there's a message there about quality versus quantity.

To-morrow is the Super Tuesday. I'll be voting for Hillary Clinton. I really do like Barack Obama, and the recent flurry of baldly racist attacks on him have made me really like the idea of seeing him as president. But I still think Clinton seems a lot more on the ball.

One of those two is going to be president. I don't think there's much doubt about that. I guess McCain might have a shot if he changes his war stance. I have to say I've found his recent success pretty amusing. It's nice to see a guy who looks and sounds like the Mock Turtle, with no money, reaching frontrunner status in the GOP.

I'm feeling a bit lethargic myself, to-day. Not much sleep again. Fortunately I only have about sixteen pages of Beowulf left to read. Seamus Heaney's translation really is a vast improvement.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde

I watched Cat People (1942) again last night. Since Moira was posting John Donne poems the other day, here's the one quoted at the end of Cat People, his Holy Sonnet V;

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite ;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt ; alas ! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler ; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.

And I went to a sushi restaurant to read Beowulf. Not much else to say about yesterday.

I've been watching the new season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye, Teacher Despair), which probably explains why I was dressed like him in my dream last night.

So far the new season's an improvement over the last couple episodes of the previous season. Here's a particularly weird bit from the second episode. In case you're wondering, "Pari pari tun tun," is not Japanese.

I dreamt last night that I was walking a deserted, post-apocalyptic freeway with a few other guys. I don't remember what they looked like, except one was tall, muscular, bald, and wore a lot of black leather. I wasn't wearing anything except a towel. We came across a surf shop and we managed to convince the owners to let me take some clothes, but the only things available ended up being an extremely embarrassing Robin (from Batman) costume; tiny green speedos and green rubber slippers. For some reason the outfit came with a big, wide-brimmed, green hat. Like the people in charge of the surf shop had their own notions about how Robin ought to look.

There was more to the dream, but nothing I quite remember. The general atmosphere was like Fallout 2.

Vertigo (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Creation and control are the chief objectives for all the major characters in this movie, which is also about the different tactics people use in pursuing those objectives--generally employing systems of illusory or disingenuous roles. Ultimately, nothing works out as anyone plans, to the misfortune of three of the four main characters, as chaos and momentum warp designs past the thresholds of designers' parameters. What remains is naked need, people pleading for affection but stripped of the cunning they hoped would provide paths to satisfying need.

The movie's central relationship, between John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) and Judy Barton (Kim Novak), features the most painful example of thwarted designs because a side effect of the illusory constructs in this case was that they both fell in love. Whether or not they fell in love with each other is a more difficult question, and not one with a simple yes or no answer.

The character who most consciously orchestrates a scheme of manipulation and illusion is the one most infrequently seen; Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Instead it is mostly only the effects of his schemes--both intended and unintended--that are seen. One could say that the entire movie is a demonstration that luck is an important component to the success of any plan, and that true power and true freedom are no more than conceits. The most intricate plan must always be subject to the desires and perceptions of the individuals concerned. There's no circumventing free will, unfortunately for most of the people involved.



Elster's savvy enough to know that one has to account for human nature and desire when laying one's plans. It's useful for him that the people he's manipulating believe they're doing what they're doing for their own reasons, and not his. Elster manages this by making each step on the path he lays out for Scottie properly provocative in its own right.

When Scottie first meets with Elster at the shipyard, there's a small moment that very clearly demonstrates Elster's knack for this.

ELSTER: "Scottie, do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?"

SCOTTIE: "No."

ELSTER: "If I told you that I believe that this has happened to my wife, what would you say?"

SCOTTIE: "Well, I'd say take her to the nearest psychiatrist. Or psychologist. Or neurologist, or psychoan--or maybe just the plain family doctor! I'd have him check on you, too."

ELSTER: "Then you're of no use to me. I'm sorry I've wasted your time."

Scottie makes like he's about to leave, but then hesitantly turns back. This is where Elster's got his hooks into him.

Scottie says he's sorry to be so dismissive of the problem, and Elster convinces him to observe his wife, without her knowledge, at a restaurant.

What Elster did here was that he presented with conviction what he knew Scottie would find to be an utterly preposterous story, something to which Scottie could only react with loud disbelief. When Elster acts dismayed by Scottie's reaction, it naturally provokes a feeling of guilt in Scottie, which Elster is then able massage into a vague feeling of debt, only heightened when Scottie reflexively says, "I'm supposed to be retired! I don't want to get mixed up in this darned thing . . ."

Elster knows something else important about Scottie; Scottie's a romantic, though James Stewart's usual down-to-earth portrayal may not make that obvious. Which is of course what makes the casting of Stewart so ingenious. Bernard Herrmann thought that someone like Charles Boyer would have been more appropriate for the role, but in Stewart, we can't mistake the romanticism for something the character's aware of about himself. Scottie's an idealist, through and through. He sees himself as a sort of hero, and sees his primary goal in life as effecting justice. That's Scottie's agenda, which is thwarted by imperfections in his nature that he never thought to account for.

In one of the movie's first scenes, Scottie's having an idle conversation with his friend Marjorie "Midge" Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes). In a very deft bit of exposition, Midge mentions that Scottie had been a lawyer who switched to working as a policeman because he had decided that he was going to be chief of police one day. Scottie's not someone to be bound by a career path and indeed believes he lives in complete freedom. He mentions to Midge that he's retiring, and feels he can because he is a man of "independent means," which suggests perhaps an inheritance, or some other means of having acquired enough money to live off of so that he's not only able to abruptly alter his career path at whim, but he was able to retire as a plainclothes detective. Work has never been about survival for Scottie; it's been about pursuing his idealistic aims.

But there's one thing Scottie's never had, or had only briefly and many years ago--a lover. He and Midge had been engaged in college--for only three weeks, before she called it off. Now Scottie says, "I'm still available. Available Ferguson." There's a barely suppressed, bitter edge to Scottie's voice, leading one to believe that he may indeed have been single ever since college. And labelling himself "Available Ferguson" in itself suggests that he's been alone for so long that being single is something he believes is associated with him by his acquaintances. Considering the two very demanding careers he'd chosen for himself, one might suppose he kept himself busy entirely with work.

It's clear that Midge is still in love with him ("You know there's only one man in the world for me, Johnny-O"), so why did she call off the engagement, and why haven't the two of them been lovers again since? The answer is in a furtive look Midge gives Scottie when he says, with a mildly irritable dismissiveness, "Now, Midge, don't be so motherly."

Unfortunately, that's in one word the role Midge has settled into in their relationship; mother. In college, she had probably finally realised that Stewart was a romantic, so she had written an agenda for herself: love him, nurture him, but don't marry him unless and until he becomes your equal. Midge assumes her pragmatism makes her more of an adult than Scottie. Unfortunately for Midge, her agenda can't withstand the unpredictability of human nature, and the fact that no human is as simple as either of the roles in which she's cast herself and Scottie.

Scottie's irritation when he says "motherly" shows this isn't the dynamic he perceives as existing between the two of them, or wants to exist between the two of them. The discussion of their respective love lives follows a brief, candid discussion about women's undergarments, with a strange, lacy pink bra as a prop. To an audience in 1958, this would have seemed quite racy, and it would have been clear that Scottie and Midge are unusually comfortable discussing sexuality for a man and woman who aren't involved. They even seem to get a bit of a charge out of it.



They have no hope of going beyond this sort of provocative, relaxed friendship so long as Midge adheres to her agenda. So long as Midge's personality forces an inequality on the relationship, the two can't connect. Inequality is repeatedly shown to be the most destructive factor in the relationships featured in Vertigo.

Elster tells Scottie how he longs for the "power" and "freedom" enjoyed by wealthy men in old San Francisco. Through his actions in the film, it's revealed that Gavin prefers total dominance in his relationships with women and very little intimacy. He cares so little about his wife that he's hatched an elaborate scheme in order to kill her and claim her enormous financial assets. He's having an affair with Judy Barton, whom he uses to pose as his wife and mislead Scottie, and then abandons her when he no longer has any use for her. The ghost he decides to tell Scottie has possessed his wife may or may not actually be an ancestor of the real Mrs. Elster, but she is Carlotta Valdes, a young woman who went mad when her wealthy lover abandoned her and took her child.



Unlike Scottie, Elster is not a man of independent means, though he'd very much like to be and he's willing to do anything to attain that status, even marry a woman and kill her for her money. Perhaps because he doesn't understand the nature of truly loving human relationships, he doesn't anticipate Scottie and Judy falling in love. He assumes his money is power, he fails to anticipate that Scottie's earnest desire to protect her and help her would be more attractive to her. Like Midge, Elster errs because of his faith in pragmatism, but unlike Midge, Elster's agenda is not foiled by this unforeseen circumstance. Which shows that, while nature may not be controlled by the schemes of humans, it does not rebel in order to exact justice. This may indicate that Alfred Hitchcock did not believe in a benevolent god. In any case, nothing trumps free will here. The movie is distinctly existentialist, as all good films noir are.

No-one in the movie demonstrates the existential idea of free will that cannot be controlled by a chosen role or exterior influence better than Judy Barton.



When seen later in the movie with hairstyle and clothing she's presumably chosen for herself, Judy's style is brash and somewhat bizarre. Her form fitting green sweater is revealing, but bears a distracting pokka dot trim. Her hair and makeup are bold contrasts, but very strange, her forehead framed by obviously artificially arranged, flattened ringlets. From her appearance, one might deduce that Judy has passion, but lacks the sophistication required to craft a look that makes her as carnally attractive as she wants to be. This lack of sophistication also prevents her from hatching a scheme like Elster's; when she met him, she must have been something of a thug. She obviously didn't mind getting involved with a man for money, and she obviously didn't mind accepting the role of Mrs. Elster's impostor. The means and objectives of Gavin's scheme seemed reasonable to her; Gavin’s not likely to have gone ahead with any collaborator whose predilections he had any reason to doubt.



The makeover Gavin gives to the faux Mrs. Elster not only makes her resemble the real Mrs. Elster more, and seem more credible as a wealthy woman, it also provides a vehicle for Judy's passion and fulfils her desire to be attractive. The grey with blonde combination is bizarre and striking, like Judy’s own style, but much more effective. These are bold colour choices, but deployed with a more delicate sensibility, effectively creating excitement mixed with pleasure. Hitchcock's keen blocking contribute to this effect as well, as in the very first shot of Judy as Madeleine, where her bare back, contrasted with an elegantly draped green dress immediately captures the viewer's eye amidst the clutter of the rest of the restaurant's patrons;



But Judy's an independently thinking and feeling being, and whatever Gavin might think, or whatever she might think, she can't be merely his pawn. Especially not when the situation suits her more deep seated, personal motives.

First time viewers often find it a little jarring that Scottie, after rescuing Madeleine from the bay, takes the apparently unconscious woman to his home, strips her naked, and puts her in his bed. As with the story of demonic possession, this is a conceit of fiction, that a character has to be stripped when wet, and the casual viewer might overlook it as such. But since the demonic possession turns out to be a ruse, it might be beneficial to look at this more closely, too.

Why didn't he take her to a hospital? Perhaps he wanted to leave the decision up to her or Elster--Elster did say he didn't want doctors involved yet, but Madeleine jumping into the bay and losing consciousness seems more than enough cause to seek medical attention. Taking Madeleine to a doctor seemed the first reasonable course of action to Scottie when Elster just told him she was experiencing lapses in memory, so what's changed? Even if he didn't want to take her to the hospital after she jumped in the bay, he might have taken her to Midge, or perhaps another female friend. Perhaps none of them were available at the time, but it seems more likely that Scottie simply wanted her to himself. In any case, if he had been thinking clearly, he'd have realised that few situations could have been worse from the woman's perspective than waking up to find herself naked in the bed of a strange man.

But Scottie was not thinking clearly. His attempt at a reassuring smile when she "wakes up" and sees him comes out as something like an adolescent leer;



Scottie's sexual repression is getting mixed up in his self-image as a hero. As he tells her later, "I'm responsible for you now. You know the Chinese say that once you've saved a person's life you're responsible for it forever, so I'm committed." Scottie feels like she's his ward, and feels it's his role to explain things to her and sort things out for her--it's his role to know more than she, even if he actually doesn't. That's why the explanations he conjures of her visions become increasingly strained, to the point where he gestures at a small plastic horse triumphantly as though it explains Madeleine's visions of several, distinctly different, live horses. Scottie's not yet aware that the roles he's chosen for himself as hero and protector are not enough to define his whole personality, so he's more confident in himself than he otherwise would be and assumes all of his actions and impulses are the actions and impulses of a hero and protector.

After his experiences with Midge, Scottie's thrilled to be in a relationship where he is the dominant partner. Or so it seems to him. In fact, Judy’s in as much control of him as he is of her, though she may not be aware of it herself.

Gavin probably didn't anticipate that Scottie would take the unconscious Madeleine home with him and undress her. Judy could have chosen to "wake up" at any time, but instead she decides to observe Scottie carrying her and undressing her. Why? Perhaps she feels this will tighten her psychological grip on him, though it's hard to imagine Scottie not trying to chase her up the bell tower just because he hadn't seen her naked.

The more likely explanation is that Judy does it because she enjoys it. She's a kind of voyeur here, as she observes his naively perverse actions without his knowledge, making her more privy to his weakness than he is. It must be exciting also from her perspective as a criminal; Scottie's a cop, yet he's clearly at least as weak as she is.

She continues in this position as she watches him struggle to solve a riddle she knows has no answer.

SCOTTIE: "If I could just find the key and the beginning and . . . put it together."

MADELEINE: "So you can explain it away? There is a way to explain it, you see. If I'm mad, then that would explain it, wouldn't it? "

They kiss for the first time moments later. That's not part of Gavin's plan. It's certainly not a boon for Midge, either.

The next scene features Midge presenting a version she's painted of Carlotta's portrait to Scottie with her own face in place of Carlotta's. Midge doesn't quite realise it as she's painting, but this is a drastic and frantic attempt to preserve the roles she's assigned to Scottie and herself. Obviously it's an attempt to place her image directly in his current line of attraction, but, more significantly, the painting is a joke.

According to Midge's agenda, she, the pragmatist of the pair, has a clearer, more rational view of reality than Scottie. And comedic effect is produced by unexpectedly revealing reality juxtaposed with a fantasy that's been taken as reality for some time. If Midge were thinking clearly, she'd realise that Scottie takes this matter too seriously to find the joke amusing; what's ridiculous fantasy to Midge is a very sober reality to Scottie.



But Midge isn't thinking clearly. A fear is growing in her that she's losing their relationship, and in a frantic attempt to dispel her fear, she crafts a joke she thinks is funny and figures he will find it funny, too, because he's part of her team. Her fear has blinded her to the realisation that she's appealing to the wrong Scottie. The Scottie who was invariably on her side, ready to laugh with her, is not a Scottie that exists any more, if he ever truly did.

This is the first hard hint she has that the sort of master and disciple relationship she's outlined for the two of them was in fact her own fantasy. But the final blow isn't delivered to poor Midge until after Scottie's failure to stop Madeleine's death has brought him so low that he cannot even speak.

In the mental institution, Midge walks around Scottie, who's sitting, and outlines for him how she plans to treat and help him. But finally, she feels compelled to kneel beside him, look up at him, and plead;



MIDGE: "Oh, Johnny. Johnny, please try. Try, Johnny. You're not lost. Mother's here. "

Midge is reduced to directly stating her desired role. In the end, her pragmatism has been no more useful than Scottie's romanticism. A successful relationship between lovers is based on a mutual compulsion, not a philosophy or agenda, as Scottie and Judy themselves discover in the latter portion of the film.



The most obvious, unanticipated weakness Scottie meets in himself is, of course, his vertigo. Why is Vertigo the title of the movie? Because Scottie's debilitating acrophobia perfectly and succinctly represents what the movie's about; the existential horror of finding oneself voluntarily behaving in a way contrary to one's perceived or preferred personality, and to disastrous consequences.

Vertigo is not caused by psychological trauma in real life, but in the context of the movie it provides a neat shorthand for Scottie's despair at causing, because of his inadequacy, a fellow police officer to die. This is not how a hero's supposed to act, so what is he now? He can try to forget or rationalise what happened, but any visible, significant distance of empty space below him will instantly remind him that he's not what he thinks he is. Heights aren't merely an alarming mortal peril; they are his nemesis. A crooked and alien version of his self-image made real.



After seeing Madeleine die, Scottie has a rather terrible dream in which it appears that he has become Madeleine; he sees himself standing over Carlotta's open grave, as Madeleine did, he sees himself falling towards the red tiled roof of San Juan Batista, as Madeleine fell to her death. And this makes sense because Madeleine never existed except as a mutual, consensual fantasy shared between himself and Judy. Scottie's almost as much Madeleine as Judy was.

Of course, Scottie doesn't know yet that Madeleine was merely a role Judy was playing. Even when Judy decided to try to prevent Elster from murdering his wife, she didn't tell Scottie the truth. She was afraid both for his sake and hers; the blow to his self-image would be significant, and stepping so far off of her own prescribed route is too frightening to contemplate. But Judy's not interested in preventing the murder because she's suddenly developed a new moral compass; she wants to stop it because she's become Scottie's ally more than Elster's.

So why doesn't their relationship work when Scottie and Judy meet again? Is forcing her to dress a certain way any different than her relationship with Gavin, where she obviously tolerated it? It's very different for Judy, who seems tortured by the experience. As Hitchcock put it, "That scene in Vertigo where James Stewart forces Miss Kim Novak to alter her whole personality by altering her lipstick, hairstyle, even hair tint--for me it has the compulsion of a striptease in reverse. The woman is made insecure by being forced to make up, not take off."

Before, Judy dressed as Madeleine to serve her own purposes. Now, she's trying to take on a role to serve Scottie's confused compulsion.



JUDY: "Why are you doing this? What--what good will it do?"

SCOTTIE: "I don't know. I don't know. No good, I guess. I don't know."

JUDY: "I wish you'd leave me alone. I want to go away."

SCOTTIE: "You can, you know."

JUDY: "No, you--you wouldn't let me."

Once again, the existential concept of bad faith comes into play as Judy's superficial impulse is to blame Scottie for what she is in fact doing by choice. Like Midge before her, Judy's sacrificing herself for an agenda.

It's not only a woman Scottie's trying to resurrect through Judy; it's himself. The image of himself he'd retained throughout his adult life before the inability to prevent Madeleine's death broke him.

In one of the movie's most famous scenes, when Judy's "reverse striptease" is complete and she stands nakedly Madeleine before him, there is a powerful moment that seems, impossibly, to recapture what they had by some fey power as they're bathed in an unnatural green light.



The world seems to Scottie to dissolve into the San Juan Batista stables as Bernard Hermann's score becomes frantic before it crescendos with the pair's passionate kiss. It seems for a moment that they've actually resurrected the dream that initially brought them together and perhaps Scottie's reclaimed his own identity. Or is his identity stuck at San Juan Batista, the last place he saw Madeleine alive?

In the very next scene, Scottie's sitting comfortably and watching Judy put on some jewellery, preparing to go out to eat with him. Scottie's tone when he speaks to her is almost exactly the same tone he used to speak with Midge, earlier in the film. But one can only guess what Scottie's and Judy's relationship might have been like because it is here that Scottie sees Judy wearing Carlotta's necklace, and realises that Judy doesn't just look like Madeleine. She's in fact the same woman.

Realising he's been had, and so thoroughly, seems to enrage Scottie, but there's more to his reaction than rage. The final scene is nightmarish as Scottie takes her to San Juan Batista.

SCOTTIE: "One final thing I have to do. And then I'll be free of the past."

At the mission, Scottie drags Judy through the route of that fateful day.

SCOTTIE: "I need you to be Madeleine for a while."



He puts together the sequence of events even as he creates his own, new play as he drags Judy up the bell tower.

SCOTTIE: "You're my second chance, Judy."

And indeed she is. Because now that he knows the situations that shaped his personality before were false, he can see that the personality he saw himself as possessing was false, and the awful height of the bell tower is no longer any reflection of his weakness. His vertigo is gone. All that remains is free will.

Scottie and Judy are in a sort of identity free fall when they reach the top of the bell tower. When Judy falls from the tower after being frightened by the nun, it is a final statement about the absence of a benevolent agenda in the universe. A nun, supposedly a representative of a good and merciful god, inadvertently causes Judy's death. Scottie's left in a state of perfect zero. His identity is no longer trapped by the past, but he doesn't have one for the future, either.

I'll miss this man and his magical hair.


Mysterious Traveler Entrances Town With Utopian Vision Of The Future

Tired. Four hours of sleep again. Magic number, I guess. I actually had a full night's sleep to work with yesterday, and a fairly busy day. Reading for class, class, then I went to see There Will Be Blood with my sister and her boyfriend.

Not a bad movie. It could have used some cutting. The music was kind of annoying--sickly violins and harsh, strange percussion putting me in the mind of some Stanley Kubrick movies, except here the music was at more of a discord with the movie itself, and proved to just be distracting. Daniel Day-Lewis was great, though, as a man in a bad Catch-22 of desiring affection but being so afraid of losing control and affection, he repeatedly pushes away any opportunity to connect with another person at sometimes only the slightest provocation. And it was fun watching him beat the snot out of Paul Dano.

Then I came back and spent three more hours working on my ridiculously long Vertigo analysis. It's amazing--I'm still noticing new things about the movie, seeing things from new angles. I've been thinking so gods damned much. That's probably exactly why I can't sleep right there.

This morning I read the latest Sirenia Digest, I guess because I'm some kind of masochist. But it's a good issue.

"The Collector of Bones" was pretty, sweet, sexy, languid, drowsy. Or maybe I'm just drowsy. The final portion of "The Crimson Alphabet" was like being on a runaway subway car, careening from one wall to another, tumbling about with the walking egg from the old cholesterol commercials. I don't know what I mean, but this is four hours of sleep talking and the swig of Wild Turkey I took trying to make myself sleepy.

This "Crimson Alphabet" instalment shifts a bit from impersonal prose to sort of cosy conversational, which is interesting. "N is for Nanorobotics" does a great job of making personal what Caitlin imagines a nanorobotic infiltration of the nervous system might seem like.

Would someone just drop a piano on my head and stop these spinning brains, please? Any hungry zombies out there? U can has brains if I can has sleep.