Content area
Full Text
Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin David Greven. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.
The films of Alfred Hitchcock have long been of interest to cine ma-based explorations of American culture. The recent debut of the A&E television series Bates Motel, conceived as a modern-day prequel to Psycho (1960), demonstrates that the director's works continue to appeal to and intrigue contemporary audiences.
Although countless books analyzing Hitchcock's cinematic creations and career trajectory have been published over the past several decades, David Greven's Psycho-Sexual represents an impressive addition to that body of literature. Effectively breaking new ground on a subject that has already been so extensively studied, this book convincingly challenges oversimplified readings of Hitchcock's films as being inherently homophobic and/or misogynistic as it simultaneously demonstrates the enduring influence of the director's representational approaches on three noteworthy New Hollywood directors of the 1970s and early 1980s: Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin.
Greven focuses his argumentation on the relation between American masculinity and "predilections for voyeurism, anxieties over homosexuality, and a growing fascination with pornography" (4) as...