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Psycho: Analysis of Feminism

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Psycho: Analysis of Feminism
‘Psycho’ Critical Film Analysis
Feminist analysis
Alfred Hitchcock is renowned as one of the single greatest pioneers behind modern film, particularly in suspense, horror, and sexual features of film such as forced voyeurism through one of his very own types of shots where one views the film through the eyes of one of the characters. Hitchcock is honoured as being an innovator in film through his specific and wide variety of shots and angles and innovative uses of film technology and lighting effects as well as being critically acclaimed for many of his different contextual, circumstantial and societal views and methods throughout his filmography.
One of the most critically acclaimed yet also criticized methods is that of the ‘modern’ views of the time towards women and their roles and stance in the society of the day. Hitchcock would often use different camera angles and shots as well as different habits and features of the women in his films to elaborate and further express the situations, views, and the standing of women on the societal ladder of the time. This was one of the very many controversial techniques Hitchcock used and was even more so in the time considering the Women’s Lib’ movements throughout most of the Western world. And this is a commonly occurring technique used by Hitchcock throughout his films and does not appear in just a few gimmicks and minor scenes throughout Hitchcock’s films it is rather a central theme of them. E.g. In most of Hitchcock’s films the female protagonists are often Blonde stylish types focused upon the usual stereotypical things of the time such as fashion and finding wealthy and well to do men for themselves etc. In Rear Window for example, this occurs in rear window in one of the initial scenes where Jeff labels all women as people who stay at home and nag all the time and that only when they are in the highest areas ‘possible for them’ are they perhaps civilised and educated to a point beyond ‘nagging’. It also

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