A Disussion of Robert J. Corber's "In The Name of National Security"

The following is a discussion of many things: politics, movies, gender identity, and Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The discussion uses Robert J. Corber's nonfiction work In the Name of National Security as its launching pad.

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During the Fifties, individuals involved themselves in the process of establishing cultural hegemony and fortifying ideological concepts that they regarded as threatened. Filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock actively participated in this effort. In In the Name of National Security, Robert J. Corber argues that during the Cold War, Hitchcock used film as a method of extending the ideological control of the national security state and supporting the Cold War Liberal consensus. Corber's broader intent is the linkage of film in general with the political discourse of the Fifties. He implies that the majority of Fifties films supported the postwar ideology of consensus and, as part of this support, attempted to contain femininity and reclaim traditional masculinity[1] within the context of the filmic text. While Corber's arguments are persuasive, in focusing on the details of visual spectatorship and political ideology, he fails to observe other long-standing motives for the reclamation of masculinity.

Corber's analysis of Hitchcock's Fifties films rests in part upon his analysis of contemporary events and policies, as well observations regarding the methods used by male characters to silence women. He provides an excellent narrative of the effort of Cold War liberals to reclaim the political momentum from the extremes of McCarthyism and firmly establish an acceptable post-war consensus, in which rigidly traditional views of gender and socio-political hierarchies were encouraged in the belief that they were essential to the fight against communism. Liberals were dismayed by the hysteria incited by McCarthyism, which they felt threatened consensus and the stability of the nation while in the midst of the ideological struggle between communist Russia and the United States. They publicly attempted to distance themselves from McCarthy while continuing to condemn communism. In their opinion, the hysterical, frantic and very public pursuit of suspected communists destabilized the nation in an era of ideological warfare when they felt that national political and cultural cohesion was necessary. In order to reclaim anti-communism and the post-war settlement in the name of the liberal consensus and cultural cohesion, Corber argues that Cold War liberals created a framework that, while repudiating the hysterical policies of McCarthyism and their own place in it, also denied history and any genuine consideration of it in post-war settlement rhetoric. History contained inconvenient and uncomfortable trends and associations. It had to be contained.

Not limited to the level of international politics and the struggle over communism, the practice of containment was played out on a domestic, cultural plane, ensuring that certain issues and populations remained carefully controlled. Cultural hegemony was deemed essential if the country was to unite and defeat communism; factionalism caused by social challenges was deemed a threat. Among those issues that were deemed in need of containment were gender and sexual identity. When the decade of the Fifties arrived, notions of gender identity had been experiencing dramatic shifts for many years. The industrial mechanization of the work place, the onset of the Depression and high unemployment, and gains made by an increasingly visible women's movement all challenged traditional notions of masculinity and familial identities.

This gradual breakdown of traditional identities threatened the stability and hegemony that Cold War liberals were striving to achieve. The traditional family was considered to be an important component of the post-war settlement. As a result, women were often actively discouraged from pursuing careers outside the home during the Fifties. Many women already in the workforce were fired - often to make room for men. As journalist David Halberstam notes, "within two months after the end of the war, some 800,000 women had been fired from jobs in the aircraft industry; the same thing was happening in the auto industry and elsewhere... The new culture of consumerism told women they should be homemakers."[2] As Halberstam quite aptly notes, post-war American culture actively discouraged independence among women; instead, it suggested that they lend their efforts to supporting the family unit and the broader cultural hegemony.[3] Halberstam, however, fails to make the critical connection between the cultural reemphasis of the female domestic sphere, familial unity and the post-war emphasis on the importance of a stable social framework in the struggle against communism. This is where Corber's analysis of Hitchcock's films proves most interesting and useful.

In discussing Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Corber argues that the director utilizes visual and auditory techniques to reclaim the male identity and male sphere, to stave off the threat posed by femininity, and ultimately to support the post-war settlement, in which minority groups restricted their demands for recognition in order to combat greater threats to society. In his text, Corber is critical of those who evaluate Hitchcock's work as a thematically and stylistically consistent whole rather than a body of films whose techniques evolved with changing social and political circumstance. Corber argues that critics who subscribe to the auteur school as elaborated by Andrew Sarris underestimate the power of historical conditions and influences on the creation of film. The original Frensh proponents of the auteur theory defined it as a director's ability to establish a unique style independent of studio or social manipulation. Sarris elaborated further, defining auteurism not only as a director's unique style, but as his ability to produce interior meaning from the conflict between his or her personality and the proscribed subject matter. Corber argues that while filmmakers may have consistent themes throughout their careers, their styles and manner of addressing those themes shift with the political current.[4] In both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, for example, Hitchcock deals with issues of marriage, family and gender - yet Corber argues that his approach and his emphasis are altered in the remake as a result of the changes in contemporary world politics. In short, the director is not wholly in control of his or her own work; rather, the work and the director are affected and shaped by the surrounding world. In the case of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock's exploration of gender themes was shaped by the evolution of the post-war settlement and the national security state. In remaking the film and readdressing the issue of gender relations amidst the Cold War, Hitchcock acted in accordance with and endorsed the containment view of gender.

In his original version of the film, Hitchcock relies more heavily upon visual strategies and body language to contain women. The central female character, Jill, engages in activities in which she is physically required to perform actions outside the traditional female role. She participates in a shooting contest, and flirts with a number of men, deliberately placing her body in a position of desire. As Corber notes, she has not ceded control of her physical person to her husband Bob. She attempts to physically occupy positions of authority to such an extent that she has become the dominant partner in the marriage. It is not until her daughter is kidnapped and saved by the end of the film that Jill is relegated to the subordinate position. In the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock deploys several different methods, particularly the human voice, to contain women and "to discourage [them] from pursuing careers outside the home by stressing the importance of the bond between mother and child during the child's earliest years."[5] Corber quite convincingly argues that female independence posed a threat to the ideological coherence of the Fifties, and that Hitchcock's film actively tried to renegotiate the boundaries of gender in favor of men and the consensus view. Within this particular film, Stewart's character of Dr. Ben McKenna repeatedly asserts control of his wife's voice, preventing her from expressing her opinion or attempting to reshape the meaning of her words. When it becomes apparent early in the film that his wife, Jo (Doris Day), is increasingly uncomfortable with her choice to give up a successful career as a singer to raise her child, he attempts to silence her, discrediting her suggestions that the family move to New York so that she can start working again. [6] Early in the film Jo is recognized by a couple that introduce themselves as fans of her professional self; Ben quickly, and pointedly, introduces Jo as Mrs. McKenna rather than by her professional, and maiden, name. In doing so, Ben denies his wife access to her name and an individual identity apart from him. Later, when their son is kidnapped, Jo attempts to make a series of suggestions that Ben silences in favor of his own opinions of how to proceed. Perhaps the most obvious example of the male's desire to silence the female is the scene in which Ben sedates his wife against her will in order to prevent a hysterical reaction when he tells her of their son's kidnapping. Jo's vocal independence and pursuit of a career threatens the Cold War emphasis on patriarchy and family because a career would take her time away from her family.[7]

Corber's analysis of the repression of the female voice as a means of limiting her independence is persuasive, due in large part to his decision to emphasize the film's place within the context of a historical era and ideology. The emphasis on conformity in American culture was pervasive. Traditional gender roles and the American family were continually emphasized as core components of the broader culture and necessary elements in the fight against communism, which had been increasingly identified with effeminacy. Communists, intellectuals, and individuals who were though to be soft on communism were often seen as emasculated, thus occupying the subject position traditionally reserved for women and homosexuals, the latter a minority who, because of their same sex relations, violated accepted notions of masculinity and assumed designated female roles. Joseph McCarthy phrased it graphically when he equated communists and opponents of his anti-communist crusade with "cocksuckers," [8] thus effectively stripping them of the authority of manhood, and in so doing reaffirming the perceived necessity for virile masculinity in the Cold War. While postwar liberals did make efforts to distance themselves from McCarthy, their rhetoric of settlement and consensus did not necessarily reject the connection between communism and effeminacy. As the rhetoric of the postwar settlement developed, any divergence from the proposed norms of the heterosexual family unit and accepted gender spheres came to be seen as a kind of deviation. In this context of increasing Cold War tension and emphasis on specific and appropriate gender behavior and spheres, The Man Who Knew Too Much may, as Corber quite rightly argues, be seen as a part of the construction of patriarchal American hegemony.

Yet Corber ultimately seems to arrive at the conclusion that through the techniques of film, Hitchcock successfully contained the feminine and, within the context of the filmic text, reasserted the dominance of the male and the masculine world. While he convincingly implicates Hitchcock in the extension of the postwar settlement, his conclusion that this film successfully resolves gender and reasserts traditional masculine dominance is problematic. He fails to consider the power of the image within these films. Throughout the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, the primacy of the image makes clear that the central male character is situated in a defensive position. Whatever Hitchcock's intent may have been, the image of the male defensively attempting to silence his vocal, independent wife remains in the mind. The scene in which the doctor forcibly sedates his wife forces, as even Corber must admit, the viewer to sympathize with Jo. When Ben tells her that she's been tense and that the pills will relieve her stress, it is clear through the context of the filmic events that he is in fact displacing his own tensions onto her.[9] The viewer's sympathy lies with the woman at a moment of crisis. Ben's constant effort to silence her, as well as his difficulty in enforcing this silence, speaks to the central tensions between men and women of this era, and makes the insecurities within masculinity apparent. Indeed, throughout the film, Stewart is unable to take any kind of effective action. His child is kidnapped, and he cannot save him. In another sequence, he is unable to prevent the stabbing death of a foreign official. In the final sequences of the film, he is trapped by the kidnappers and prevented from going to Albert Hall and saving his son. His inability to act is physically enacted on screen, his ineffectiveness made lasting by the persistence of the narrative imagery. The primacy of this imagery is lasting, particularly when it is contrasted with the success of his wife. For all of Stewart's efforts, it is in fact Doris Day and the successful deployment of her singing voice that save their kidnapped child at Albert Hall. Her voice and her actions are consequently endowed with a level of authority and mastery that neither the actions nor the words of Stewart are able to achieve. As Tania Modleski observes, Hitchcock's films are often ambivalent in their representations of women.[10] Though his films frequently place women in peril and misogynistic situations, and though both he and his male characters make efforts at subduing the feminine, his female characters are rarely helpless, and many exude a power over men that is never fully resolved or controlled. Consequently, gender relations in Hitchcock's films often remain ambiguous. The Man Who Knew Too Much is an excellent example. As Dennis Bingham notes, there are a number of shots within the film that emphasize the ambiguities and overbearing qualities of the male persona.[11] The disturbing qualities of Hitchcock's images, representing a threatening male, contrast and outweigh any efforts to reconcile and reclaim masculinity. The image lingers in, and has primal control over, the mind longer than the ideological component of the film.

The difficulties with Corber's reading of Hitchcock's Fifties films are further complicated by the intricate nature of the social and political world of the era. While he argues that Hitchcock's methods were shaped by the era, he fails to truly consider the complex reasons why many people felt the need to reclaim masculinity. In locating Hitchcock's films within the broader spectrum of historical ideology, Corber fails to adequately consider gender as a fluid, evolving phenomenon, just as he fails to adequately consider the primacy of the image and its capacity to overshadow a filmmaker's ultimate goals. Corber's film analysis, while correctly asserting that Hitchcock's films attempted to support the post-war settlement by reasserting masculinity within the filmic text, fails to adequately acknowledge the complexity of gender and politics in this era and that the perception of gender crisis and the effort at masculine reassertion had roots predating the postwar years. Indeed, men - particularly middle class white males - had felt increasingly insecure in their identities for decades as the white, patriarchal structure and control of society was challenged.

The growing independence of women in the early twentieth century and their gradually increasing numbers within the labor force, particularly during the Depression and World War II, threatened men's traditional perceptions of social and gender identities. The conservative rhetoric of traditional gender roles that was so prevalent in the films of the Fifties was often the result of the memory of men's disorienting experiences in the Depression and in World War II and its aftermath.

For years, American masculinity and the traditionally accepted notions of the male had been identified with work.[12] The workplace was a male world, one in which men could prove their masculinity and form identities. With the crash of the stock market and the rise in unemployment and women in the labor force, men felt their sense of gender identity threatened. [13] The presence of women, it was felt, would contribute to the feminization of the workplace and strip men of jobs during a time of economic crisis. A return to traditional gender roles seemed an appropriate defense.

World War II temporarily halted this resurgent conservatism as vast numbers of men went to war and the need for a substitute labor force mandated the mobilization of new types of employees - namely, women.[14] Yet when the war ended and men returned, they often expected to resume the jobs that they had given up. In the wake of war, the country experienced an economic boom that meant for many families a middle class existence was possible on only one income.[15] Given the gender values that had predated the war, and that many returning veterans still shared, as well as the ideology of the post-war world, patriarchy was once again emphasized.

In the eyes of many men, the presence of a number of new political and social phenomena following the war only compounded the need for the reestablishment of traditional gender roles. The rise of the Cold War and fears of communist infiltration served as further evidence that the country needed traditional values if the United States was to win the ideological war. As in the Depression, the family unit was considered of prime importance. Proper gender models were considered essential for maintaining virility in the face of the emasculating forces of communism. The reestablishment of these proper models was a project undertaken on a political level by liberal and conservative politicians, and on a cultural level by filmmakers like Hitchcock. Culture became complicit in reestablish white male hegemony. This process, as seen in the gender ambiguity of Hitchcock's films, was not necessarily easy. The post-war emphasis on conformity had the potential to be constraining. Some men felt constricted by the emphasis on conformity, as though by assuming the same white-collar jobs and the domestic duties as father that thousands of others did they were stripped of individuality and their abilities to effectively prove their masculinity on an individual scale. This conflict between support of the post-war gender consensus and men's sense of gender constriction can be seen in The Man Who Knew Too Much and other Hitchcock films, as the men struggle to accept the ideological roles outlined with their desire to take action and forge new ways of proving their masculinity.

Corber's argument that filmmakers like Hitchcock attempted to support the effort to reassert traditional values and gender roles, when placed in this context, is persuasive. In making that argument, however, he does not adequately delve into the reasons why these efforts were made. He does not consider the history of gender conflict and evolution. He fails to adequately consider the cultural changes discussed above as a potential motivation for the urgency with which policy makers and creators of culture addressed the issues. Although he argues that Hitchcock's methods were shaped by historical and contemporary events, he seems to estimate the director's efforts at reclaiming masculinity within the filmic text a success. However, reestablishing masculinity was not as easy as Corber implies. The complex, ever-changing nature of the historical continuum and its shaping of the Cold War rhetoric denies Corber's argument that any issue of gender can be easily resolved. The difficulties and tensions inherent in the process can be seen within Hitchcock's work in the postwar world.

These are precisely the complexities that Corber fails to adequately consider in his effort to explain the efforts of filmmakers like Hitchcock. While his argument that Hitchcock was not an auteur in the strict sense is convincing, and he is correct in his assessment that many films in the Fifties supported consensus, he fails to adequately explain why. Were he to have made the effort to explain the reasons in detail, it would have become apparent that the task of successfully reclaiming masculinity for white middle class men was futile. The weight of the evolving, continuous nature of historical circumstances bears down too greatly on film in general and Hitchcock's film in particular. The fact that he was reacting to an ongoing process of history and gender renegotiation precludes the successful reestablishment of the functioning absolute patriarchy that the ideology of the postwar settlement demanded. The fact that there is, as Modleski notes, a persistently ambiguous view of men and women throughout not just this one film but many of Hitchcock's movies would seem to point to Hitchcock's failure. Hitchcock's effort instead speaks to the defensive, uncertain nature of middle-class men of that era. That Hitchcock felt the need at all to react is indicative of the weak position of ‘traditional' masculinity.

[1] I use the words ‘traditional' and ‘traditionally' several times throughout the text, particularly with reference to American cultural mores and notions of gender and masculinity. I use these terms with full knowledge that they are very flexible terms, often interpreted differently by different segments of the population at different moments in time. I feel it necessary to clarify my usage, and what definitions I intend. The ‘traditional' notions of gender that I speak of are the broadly defined versions of the post-war, Cold War consensus world in which males were assertive, honest and hard working providers, while their film counterparts were often similar (though frequently more heroic and physical). In this definition, women were relegated to the subservient position in the home.

[2] David Halberstam. The Fifties. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993. Pg. 589.

[3] Ibid., pg. 591.

[4] Robert J. Corber. In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in Postwar America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Pg. 137.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., pg. 141.

[7] Ibid., pg. 142.

[8] Halberstam, pg. 54.

[9] Dennis Bingham. Acting Male: Masculinities in the Films of James Stewart, Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Pg. 74.

[10] Tania Modleski. The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. New York: Methuen, Inc. Pg. 5.

[11] Bingham, pgs. 75-76.

[12] E. Anthony Rotundo. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity From the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

[13] By 1933, 24.9% of the civilian labor force was out of work. The number of suicides nationally rose from a rate of 13.9/100,000 in 1929 to a rate of 17.4 in 1932. Net yearly incomes fell in scores of industries. The national marriage and birth rates declined steadily between 1929 and 1932. The gross national product fell from $103.1 billion in 1929 to $55.6 billion in 1933 - a decline of over $47 billion in 4 years. Information courtesy of: Frederick E. Hosen. The Great Depression and the New Deal: Legislative Acts in Their Entirety (1932-1933) and Statistical Economic Data (1926-1946). North Carolina: McFarland and Co., Inc. Publishers, 1992.

[14] It should be noted that a large number of minorities also took jobs previously unavailable to them; due to the topical and page constraints of this paper, however, a comprehensive discussion of ethnic labor and race issues must remain the purview of another paper.

[15] Halberstam, pg. 589.