Superbitch! Alfred Hitchcocks 50-Year Obsession With Jack the Ripper and The Eternal Prostitute: A Psycho-analytic Interpretation

Throughout this study, I use the shorthand term Hitchcock and Homosexuality for the homosexual component in Hitchcock's films; that is, for viewing his films from the perspective of homosexuality. This component was first pointed out by Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol in their famous little book on Hitchcock, to which every Hitchcock scholar since must be happily indebted. It was a short book but brimming with insights, and it pretty much revolutionized Hitchcock film criticism.

They had really only a few pages on the homosexual component in Hitchcock's films; in fact, they did not look on it as a component but simply pointed out that one could look on three of Hitch's films- Murder! (1930), Rope (1948), and Strangers on a Train (1951)-as a homosexual "triptych." Ever since, these three films, and especially the third, have been viewed in a new and more interesting light.

And once one is on the look-out for that component in Hitchcock's other films, one finds it everywhere! In one way or another, it simply pervades his work. So strong is my evidence for looking at various Hitchcock films in this way, from the Hitchcock and Homosexuality perspective, that some readers may conclude that it is the only component, or at least the chief component in his films, and that Hitch's films are really all and only about homosexuality. They may also conclude that this is the way I feel too.

I certainly do not. This is a trap that right at the start I should like to keep anyone from falling into. My contention is that Hitchcock and Homosexuality is a sub-head, a special case, of the misogyny component in his films (that component of Hitch's work that is recognized by just about everyone), and that this component itself is an element, or a reflection, of what I contend is the chief component of Hitch's work: the theme of Jack the Ripper and the Superbitch Prostitute.