@thankyousirmayihaveanother on Tumblr

it's my bird day and I almost don't have cancer anymore 🎉

#surgery is in may!#hooray #keeping my titties for now #but they're on thin ice

Vertigo actually sucked so bad I gotta make a vent post about it. If you love Vertigo and wanna get mad please don't hate read this, but if you love Vertigo and wanna discuss it in earnest I'm not gonna flame you lmao.

Like after I finished it I immediately looked up critical reviews about why it's a classic because I was so baffled I wanted someone to explain it to me. People talked about the cinematography (fair) the score (true) and the acting (deserved) and then the tiny little juicy nugget of the big twist, which I think is one of those mind benders that sticks in your brain and that's 100% understandable.

But the film didn't earn the twist!!! It was clunkily delivered and I can't see any foreshadowing in retrospect. There was about a third of a good movie in the last act but I wasn't any richer for watching the first two thirds.

Because it wasn't Scottie's story!!! He's not interesting, he's not dynamic, he's an observer, and an absolute shit one. It was Judy's story, Judy was always the most interesting character, and yet the majority of the movie is this echoing boring hollow where his inner life is supposed to go. And it doesn't feel intentional, it feels like I'm supposed to be compelled by his search for meaning and I'm fucking not. I'm compelled by Judy and the narrative is fucking not.

I think Hitchcock wrote complex women by accident by writing complex plots and putting women in them. I don't think there's any intentional motive written into Judy except suddenly and inexplicably falling in love with this non-person, but holy shit the feminist narrative buried in Judy written and written over by men until there's nothing left, of Madeleine wherever she was and what led to her end, of Midge and her art and her stupid pointless torch and unceremonious exit from the story, even of long dead Carlotta, a toy put away in a toy box for a man to play with when he wanted until he got tired of her. Like it's all THERE but it's almost entirely unexplored while I'm supposed to worry about this Fuckin Cop.

As a pissy little side note did you really name the movie after a plot point that didn't seem to have any clear thematic resonance

thankyousirmayihaveanother

Listen, if we're insisting on Scottie being the focal character, My Perfect Remake establishes Madeleine, Midge and Judy as three different types of female relationships with men.

You've got Madeleine, an older woman whose life presumably has revolved around a man for some time and eventually that gets her killed.

You've got Midge, A PROBABLE LESBIAN, who has her own life without a man and is about as fulfilled as a person can be, Scottie is her best friend but because she's not a viable romantic option for him he severely undervalues the relationship and it's easy for him to ignore and push aside.

And then you have Judy, an up-and-coming actress from Little Old Kansas, two or three years into her endeavor to be discovered, not making much progress, and feeling less and less confident every day. The industry is dominated by men and it feels like the only way to get her big break is getting male approval, never mind that she plain and simply wants to be liked.

None of these women are the Madeleine that Scottie is chasing. That Madeleine is a ghost. We can maybe call her Carlotta, since whoever Carlotta was has been lost to the Spooky Legend of female hysteria she left behind. Carlotta is a damsel in emotional distress and Scottie is just the man to save her. Carlotta is a riddle that only Scottie can solve.

Madeleine's husband approaches Judy with a well-paying "acting gig", complimenting her good looks and acting skills and wooing her into something sketchy she might have otherwise shied away from. Maybe he even has connections that could help her if she does well with this job. If she suspects something sinister is happening, she ignores her gut instincts because clearly this Man In Charge knows what he's doing and she does not. This is the first instance of Judy's identity being written over by a man.

When Judy finally meets Scottie, he's swept away by her beauty and mystery. This is a kind of attention Judy's never experienced before. She's never felt the kind of singular fixation that Scottie places on her, and it feels like what she imagines fame is, but more importantly it feels like being wanted at all. After two or three years of being told no, of feeling like there's nothing about her anyone really wants, Scottie is OBSESSED with her. And she knows he's not obsessed with Judy, she knows he's obsessed with Madeleine (Carlotta), but he's still looking at HER.

By this point (probably long before now), we love Judy and we feel her pain. We see her dilemma, but we know from the way that Scottie can't appreciate his relationship with Midge that he's absolutely not worth her time. Maybe it's not enough to call him the villain, the villain is still Madeleine's husband because he's the one orchestrating the murder, but he's kind of a piece of shit. Maybe he's young (younger than 1958 Jimmy Stewart certainly) and impulsive and we can forgive him for that, but we still don't really like him.

Madeleine's murder is a complete shock to Judy. She leaves Scottie to his panic attack on the staircase just in time to watch Madeleine's already dead body be pushed from the window onto the roof below. Madeleine's husband convinces her no one will believe her story if she tries to go to the police, so now she's forced to go back to being Judy again, only this time she's burdened with guilt and trauma and more convinced than ever that no one wants her.

And I mean the rest writes itself. Scottie's still obsessed with Carlotta, the literal ghost of the story, and when he finds Judy, she's already primed to discard her own identity in favor of becoming the woman Scottie wants her to be. It's literally what happens in the movie as-is, but we've seen her journey leading up to this and the horror is in watching her LITERALLY become possessed by Carlotta, the spirit of male projection.

Bonus points for forging even an in-passing relationship between Judy and Midge, giving Judy even the slightest glimpse into what her life could look like if she learned how to like herself independent of a man's opinion.

Double bonus points for even briefly establishing Madeleine as a jaded bitch of a wife who's simply making the best of her situation, outwardly strong but regretful that she spent her life on a man because it's what was expected of her. Her death is tragic not only because we love her smart mouth but also because she was clearly capable of so much more than her circumstances allowed for.

If we have to justify keeping the title Vertigo, giving Scottie his fear of heights, I don't actually think he should ever overcome that fear. He's not the protagonist here. He doesn't change because misogyny doesn't change. Maybe it's his fear of heights that accidentally gets Judy killed, panicking in a precarious moment and tossing her over. Tbh maybe Judy even loves high places, some sort of representation of her striving for fame and greater things.

IT'S ALL THERE 🤷

#vertigo #put me on the line with hollywood #we're doing this