Russo examined the positive and negative portrayals in film history of queer characters, itself requiring deep readings of queer subtext and codification that still managed to present depictions of characters, be it as bachelors, sissies, old maids, butch, effete, or being uncomfortable in their own skin. Danvers from Rebecca and the self-styled murderous übermensches Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) in Rope. These problems in the readings, Wood notes, derives from the time it was made and that as a Hollywood movie, “… could not possibly answer a question it couldn’t even raise.” But queer audiences would, in searching for identification, grab and hold tightly onto hints of characters, in their gestures, their looks, their interpersonal relationships, their secrets, and, yes, their villainy.Īround the time of Wood’s essay post- The Celluloid Closet, both Vito Russo’s 1981 book and the 1995 documentary inspired from the book, there was renewed interest in looking back at Hitchcock’s villains, particularly Mrs.
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Wood mines through queer coding that lived in subtext and symbols due to homophobic norms and censorship, in effect making these readings not very cut and dry. In terms of Wood finding queer identification in Hitchcock films, Wood laid out the complicated cases throughout Hitchcock’s oeuvre in the 1995 essay for the gay and lesbian publication Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture called The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia. Robin Wood was not only the leading film critic on Alfred Hitchcock, with the book Hitchcock’s Films, but had also later in life commented upon his homosexual identity that became the essays collection Responsibilities of A Gay Film Critic. “I think it is significant that, despite the fact that I knew that I was gay myself, it never occurred to me for a moment that the characters in the film might be it was, at the time, literally unthinkable.”- Robin Wood on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope Wrong Men, Wrong Women, Wrong Time: Queer Characters in Hitchcock By Caden Mark Gardner