Psycho-Sexual

Bridging landmark territory in film studies, Psycho-Sexual is the first book to apply Alfred Hitchcocks legacy to three key directors of 1970s HollywoodBrian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkinwhose work suggests the pornographic male gaze that emerged in Hitchcocks 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 filmmakers evolutionary development of American masculinity. Psycho-Sexual probes De Palmas early Vietnam War draft-dodger comedies as well as his film Dressed to Kill, along with Scorseses Taxi Driver and Friedkins Cruising as reactions to and inventive elaborations upon Hitchcocks 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 pornographys emergence during the classical Hollywood era, Greven argues that New Hollywood filmmakers seized upon Hitchcocks 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.