Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho: a Gender Studies Perspective

Abstract

[Abstract] This undergraduate thesis pursues a gender study of the renowned Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960), the masterpiece of his filmography. The personality of the director will also be analyzed due to his turbulent relationships, especially with actresses, which highly affected his way of working. To pursue this objective, Laura Mulvey’s theory about the male gaze will be used, together with other theories from Gender Studies (e.g. Tania Modleski’s and Camille Paglia’s), as will be the biography of the director written by François Truffaut. After presenting a general overview of Hitchcock’s world, I will explore his methods of working, paying attention to the production of Psycho and to the film itself in relation to gender issues over the course of the different sections of the dissertation. The object of this analysis is not to discredit Alfred Hitchcock’s prestige, since his work is exceptional, but instead to ascertain whether Psycho is indeed as misogynist as his filmmaker’s reputation.