A Psychoanalysis of Milk: The Case of Alfred Hitchcock

In memory of Roland-François Lack Like Lina’s, the viewer’s suspicions are centred on glass milk. And it is this milk, putatively poisoned, that focal point my attempt in article, pursuing hints to be found writings both Gaston Bachelard and Jean-Paul Sartre, outline a psychoanalysis peculiarly blank substance. Milk liquid that, symbolic sense, superficially secure its identification with innocence purity (‘pure as milk’ phrase for instance, Sartre uses, calculated ironic effect course, his account politics Jean Genet’s childhood).11 Genet: Actor Martyr, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, 1963), 6. See also Roland Barthes, ‘Wine Milk,’ Mythologies, Annette Lavers (London: Vintage, 2000), 60: ‘[milk’s] purity, associated child, token strength, strength which not revulsive, congestive, but calm, white, lucid, equal reality.’ It could said consideration milk substance contrary corruption, revulsive turbid, turbulent and… black. And, part, I hope displace apparently instinctive or spontaneous association one can lead us misapprehend phenomenological complexity. But, more importantly, propose distil extract sense milk’s ontology. The here, using Hitchcock case study, thus principally concerned interpreting object like blood, water wine, inevitably traversed by individual collective fantasies various kinds – above all so far these relate maternity, nourishing nurturing. Instead, excavating what might identified concealed occluded ontological meaning. What innermost being milk? alchemical significance, speak, chemical composite consisting fat protein particles dispersed fluid containing, among other things, water, sugar minerals? secret secretion? On several occasions, couple will canvas detail later section, alludes shocking he takes from poem Jacques Audiberti: ‘the blackness (la secrète noirceur du lait). ‘secret blackness’, materialized poison viewer assumes present taken Johnnie Lina Hitchcock’s Suspicion, provides concentrated form truth One occasions mentions milk’, fourth final have been able locate, piece wrote catalogue accompanying an exhibition North American sculptor David Hare 1947. ‘Hare told me day,’ reports paragraph, ‘that wanted render properly sculptural means natures analogous Audiberti reveals famous phrase, “the milk”.’ goes argue Hare’s works, influenced surrealism reducible it, Audiberti’s image ‘oscillate[s] perpetually’ between destruction creation. ‘For after all,’ observes, ‘it’s true exists, word “blackness” gratuitously destroys essence milk.’22 ‘N-Dimensional Sculpture,’ Writings Volume 2: Selected Prose, ed. Michel Contat Michael Rybalka (Evanston, IL: Northwestern 1974), 170. purpose article explore, through films Hitchcock, particular latter’s hypothetical claim some exists demonstrate idea ‘blackness’, perceived presence, conventionally understood.33 Note do address racialized dimension ‘blackness’ discerned others relation said, cinematic remarkable, once-famous milk.’ well-known scene Suspicion am reconstructing, set fashionable ultimately unaffordable house has rented them idyllic village near English coast, carefully darkens romantic comic moods characteristic film far. begins Johnnie, who presumably dismissed servants, quits kitchen and, switching off electric lights ground floor, crosses villa’s cavernous entrance hall dark. He delicately balanced circular silver tray itself left hand. going beneath surface? Is pure poisoned? rakish, rough-edged hero or, Bruno Strangers Train (1951), sociopathic villain?44 Richard Allen notes ‘Suspicion draws brilliantly upon Cary Grant’s own star persona: transformation Archie Leach cockney lad into “Cary Grant” always seems contain under skin’ see ‘Hitchcock, Pleasures Metaskepticism,’ October 89 (1999), 76. sort comedy typical performances early 1940s, fact experiment noir?55 According William Rothman, ‘designs pose question, likewise leaves unanswerable, whether thriller remarriage’ Must We Kill Thing Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism Films Alfred (New York: Columbia 2014), 72. Does film, short, blackness’? smooth, continuous motion, precise eerily mechanical, proceeds ascend grand, gracefully curving central staircase Lina’s bedroom (Figure 1). His face mask. As silently glides upstairs past series sentimental pictures appear portray flirtatious couples, dense black mass silhouetted against pale wall prominent dado-rail it. surface dramatically latticed shadows bannisters, if entire caught net. Or spider’s web. publicity stills included following caption: ‘Cunning, suggested spiderlike shadows, climb stairs hand Grant carries (poisoned?) Miss Fontaine.’66 Quoted Rick Worland, ‘Before After Fact: Writing Reading Suspicion,’ Cinema Journal 1: 4 (2002), 20. Johnnie’s shadow, spider weaving way web, appears then disappears background. resembles shadow shadow. This mounts ahead neat, self-contained silhouette, looks stunted deformed. rough beast slouches alongside polished figure elegant suit: Mr. Hyde Dr. Jekyll. visual focus coolly choreographed shot ascending Milk, bottles glasses, features powerful striking number particularly, perhaps no accident, black-and-white ones. count, makes appearance, aside Lodger (1927), 39 Steps (1935), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), To Catch Thief (1955), Trouble Harry Wrong Man (1956), Psycho (1960). list already implies, recurs oeuvre compulsive insistence neurotic symptom. reason Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian language, identifies example sinthom; is, signifier though meaning remains mobile ambiguous, necessarily changing movies’ narrative contexts, nonetheless fixes materializes ‘a certain core enjoyment’, resistant interpretation. him, ‘glass full white drink’ those ‘characteristic details’, painter’s signature mannerism, ‘which persist repeat themselves without implying common meaning.’77 ‘Hitchcockian Sinthoms,’ ed., Everything You Always Wanted Know about Lacan But Were Afraid Ask Verso, 1992), 125-6. ‘From Symptom Sinthome,’ Sublime Object Ideology 1989), 55-84. There something excessive movies. Elusive even when performs self-evident function, somehow intrusive insistence. Gilles Deleuze responded quality when, 1 (1983), instance called démarque ordinary, often domestic first gull strikes heroine’ Birds (1963), mysteriously, violently, detaches disrupts ‘customary series’ signs make seem spontaneously susceptible interpretation, suddenly becoming extraordinary, alien.88 Deleuze, Movement-Image, Hugh Tomlinson Barbara Habberjam Continuum, 203. Hitchcockian motif overdetermined enigmatic associations plays especially important role Suspicion. appears, camera, positioned cinematographer Stradling Sr., according instructions, landing outside bedroom, tracks across hallway, motionless ascends staircase. Franz Waxman’s musical score offers variations Strauss’ waltz Wiener Blut, composed royal wedding, loses lightness here becomes ominous darkly ironic. When reaches landing, walks directly lens discomfort viewer, repress impulse retreat looming, threatening form. At point, instant before cuts sitting apprehensively her bed, float front shape body, ghostly independence, become detached him. Throughout shot, rises up towards contains oddly unmoving, gleams unnatural upsetting brilliance. context, then, ‘focus’ does fully convey disturbing troubling intensity attracts attention. For indeed hints, destined brought Lina, standing only witness. forced making almost investment positively rivets their light placed inside glass, unprompted comments indicate, impossibly, preternaturally bright. radioactive. producing luminosity, enhancing highlighting intrinsic properties. monograph representation work postmodernist artists photographers, Kenneth Hayes explains because composition, scattering rays within gives appearance luminous’. on: ‘Milk’s unique receptivity causes shine forth internally illuminated, brightness were made fluid. shares allure possessed glowing things.’1010 Hayes, Melancholy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Prefix 2008), 29. attraction repulsion … too good true. comfortably emblematic innocence. If, time Hollywood films, ‘milk was staple middle-class home hygienic, healthy living,’ Casey McKittrick points out, relishes adulterating corrupting benign associations.1111 McKittrick, Appetites: Corpulent Plots Desire Dread Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 82. foreign matter secretly supposedly most natural substances. had case, historically speaking, at least century. From opening decades industrial production United States, 1830s 1840s, unhealthy additives virtually constituent wholesome rising demand cities such Boston New York during period, became foodstuff replacement breast rapidly led production. Mark Kurlansky recorded, ‘large stables holding hundreds cows established adjacent breweries, big, profitable business.’ run-off beer-making process, known ‘swill’, fed cows, kept overpopulated disease-ridden stables, via wooden chutes. produced thin, blue-tinted needed supplemented increased volume liquid, annatto chalk, enriched colour texture. resulting product, ‘swill social reformer Robert Milham Hartley cause unprecedented rise infant mortality Manhattan centres cities.1212 Kurlansky, Milk: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas Bloomsbury, 2018), 163-4. proved ‘dangerous, deadly’, contaminated bacteria prior introduction mandatory pasteurization twentieth century, spread scarlet fever, tuberculosis diseases.1313 E. Melanie Dupuis, Nature’s Perfect Food: How Became America’s Drink 2002), 5-6. Peter J. Atkins, ‘White Poison? Social Consequences Consumption, 1850-1930,’ History Medicine 5: 2 (1992), 207-27. Poison closely moment product marketed healthiness. me, Alex, three droogs, Pete, Georgie Dim we sat Korova milkbar trying our rassoodocks evening. Bar sold milkplus, plus vellocet synthemesc drencrom drinking. would sharpen you ready bit old ultra-violence.1414 Stanley Kubrick, Clockwork Orange: Screenplay available at: https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/A+Clockwork+Orange.pdf name uncomfortably close conjunction pus’, places corruption violent juxtaposition (cows infected mastitis are, fact, risk releasing pus play words entirely inappropriate). Burgess’s Kubrick’s dystopian society adulterated, added plus’ idea, suspicion, never merely milk; identical itself. Jackson Esther Leslie put subtle, supple, shifting, ever than itself’.1616 Leslie, Deeper Pyramid Banner Repeater, 3. certainly, plus. inherent surplus; supplementary supplements, same constitutes excess implicitly exposes original entity intrinsically incomplete. Orange, lost purity. Alex returns ‘manky quarters’ block flats, novel, finds mother, sleep, supper, ‘tinned spongemeat’ cold moloko’, table. since mother’s ‘no knives dremcom it’. terminally tainted: ‘How wicked, brothers, innocent must now.’1717 Burgess, 25-6. Kubrick high-school student movies, average drinking pint day. renders life, rich nutritional nurturing associations, strange, dangerous deadly once again, century before. ensures ingenious technical innovation stairs, luminosity inordinate milkiness, paradoxically evokes hidden presence opposite: poison. Beneath innocent, aqueous transmit faint allusion earlier script novel adapted, pregnant there evil, viscous substance.1818 censorship details Production Code Administration (PCA), Fact,’ 10. noticeable children infantilization room them. respect, photographic negative, Ray’s images, reverses monochromatic coding stairs. For, where distinguished glance radioactive core, contrary, invisible lava. Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s tragedy, invokes ‘spirits/That tend mortal thoughts’, demanding they ‘unsex’ her, she asks them, ‘take [her] gall’ (1. 5. 30–1, 38). She take bile, clotted medical theory four humours, melancholia (melaina kole; literally, ‘black bile’). gall interpret thin-white, thick-black, corrupt one. Excessively occult identity, bile. human kindness cruelness. Julia Kristeva, discussion Aristotle melancholy, observes froth (aphros), ‘white mixture air (pneuma) liquid’, ‘euphoric counterpoint bile’. adds, ‘brings out sea, well sperm man’.1919 Black Sun: Depression Melancholia, Leon S. Roudiez 7. brings doesn’t mention conversely, bile dysphoric counterpart If physically cloudy thick suspended matter, content casein proteins, defined spiritual disturbance two root Latin turbidus. Perhaps Freud impossible whiteness fundamental nonidentity itself, perceptible. No doubt accident sedative rather poison, ‘psychoanalytic’ probably dream sequence Salvador Dali designed film’s lengthiest artfully shots, fatherly psychoanalyst Brulov (Michael Chekhov) laced bromide John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck) who, traumatic subsequently revealed, irrational fear objects surfaces. concoction dope another recipe fears grip title calls ‘devils unreason’, younger man harm older former pupil, Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman). Once Ballantyne’s hand, frames very slightly focus, floats disconcerting proximity cut-throat razor sharply catching light, holds right 3) (In surely director’s sly tribute celebrity designer, blade recalls notorious Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929).) blade, foreground, left, relates background, right, opposite, Surrealist variant game ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’, sign inner logic. latent danger though, spite soft, warm innocence, hard potentially lethal. therefore functions, unconscious. language containing ‘knives’. ‘story hand’ Charles Laughton’s Night Hunter narrated preacher impersonated Mitchum, sinister effect, dramatized terms Love Hate These items initially stand in, respectively, masculine paternal principle female maternal neat opposition complicated drink, thereby preempting use intended, bromide. ‘victory’ over one, sedating him sending entails emasculation. too, castrating knife; indeed, knife apparent surprisingly, implicated process poisoning startling reverse cut, constructs point-of-view drains 4). published 1946, director explained camera moves back audience behind eyes drinks. get impression obscuring sight tilts glass.’2020 ‘The “Hitch” Touch,’ Hitchcock: Interviews, Vol. 2, Sidney Gottlieb (Berkeley, CA: California 2015), 80. visible bottom subsides. paradoxical tipping tide away. climax frankly fill screen, finally, albeit briefly, square 5). completing Ballantyne, consciousness abstraction, sedated. sensation, dissolve, dissolving helplessly capitulating, dream, comforting cosy, fatal premonition potential deadliness. Whiteness, signifies unconsciousness; extension, death. screen cinema ‘Our story,’ announces sententious tones, ‘deals psychoanalysis, method modern science treats emotional problems sane.’ Psychoanalytic practice, uncovers dark drives covertly motivate innocuous gestures, represented, colourful metaphor, secreted Freud, all, relationships, supposedly, relationship mother sometimes symbolized child imbibes breast, beginning shaped forbidden desires. ‘Three Essays Theory Sexuality’ (1905), discussing autoerotism, traces sucking adult sexuality child’s lips’, ‘behaved erogenous zone; stimulation flow pleasurable sensation’.2121 Sigmund Three Sexuality: 1905 Edition, Ulrike Kistner 42. subject’s birth autoerotic economy. satisfaction subject bound arouse resistance disgust to-day. familiar trivial instructive model change mind. eagerly sucked likely few years display strong dislike upbringing difficulties overcoming. increases skin forms drink cannot exclude possibility, perhaps, conjures ardently desired. Between situations, however, lies experience weaning, effects.2222 Paths Formation Symptoms,’ Introductory Lectures Psycho-Analysis, James Strachey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 412-13. lips touch harmless, thin sheet cigarette paper, pitiful nail paring gagging sensation still farther down, spasms stomach, belly; organs shrivel provoke tears increase heartbeat, forehead hands perspire. Along sight-clouding dizziness, nausea balk cream, separates father proffer ‘I’ want none element, desire, listen, assimilate expel food ‘other’ ‘me’, myself, spit myself abject motion establish myself.2323 Powers Horror: An Essay Abjection, 1982), 2-3. Kristeva prohibition cultural, culinary, parts Bible (e.g., ‘Thou shalt seethe kid [Exodus 23:19]) metaphor ‘prohibition incest’ (105). transpires attempting murder Lina. milk.2424 Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), crude compelling melodrama leans heavily predecessor casts Nigel Bruce alcoholic, Godfrey Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart) bring Sally (Barbara Stanwyck) killed wife, poisoned. least, assumption tested tastes