Bakery Frosting

Dick Polman's 2010 article in Obituary Magazine castigating Hitchcock's Psycho at 50 was fair, perceptive in view. I do not think Judith Rossner's Looking For Mr. Goodbar would have been possible without the reverberation of the first slasher movie on camera, but I also cannot find an archive version of Polman's piece for reference, and Dick has no reason to help me out, nor twitter as a whole, despite my pleading. 

Polman was one of the first journalists I read on Blogger, and if I wanted to be that kind of introverted groupie, I could drive to University of Pennsylvania's campus and attempt to place my disenfranchisement in his path, but I was never that far gone for our locally grown national analyst; drifted away from him, not from any distinct animus, not in terms of ideology, though his entirely wasted opinion about Romney and the sect that stuck in Utah provides a good indicator of my waning enthusiasm, with some exceptions, his byline in Obituary being one. I could scold and say "Dick, by the time I get to the library guide to periodicals." Or just be myself and say Dick can you help an old woman out? Unlike Scorsese, who can teach us about what Hitchcock was doing with Janet Leigh in terms of artistry, Dick does not like the legacy of Psycho's impact, which some critics suggest Hitchcock himself attempted to address with the later and even more chilling Frenzy, circa 1972. The opening rape strangulation in Frenzy was a vivid remonstrance of my childhood, and I did not need ThisTV to remind me that British pathology can be just as pernicious, and far worse than Jason in a hockey mask.

Hitchcock, however, is an unabashed structuralist, Polman's grasp of the culture shock in Psycho's wake notwithstanding.. What came after also got messier, and I believe Richard Brooks tried to take his cue from this in Goodbar's climax, which, if the filter is correctly applied, might be seen as Rossner's argument against Hitchcock's stark, manipulative fantasy sacrifice, and not simply in terms of Theresa's masochism goading her into her dangerous liaisons and lack of caution. Rossner's work begins the process of de-glamorizing pathological misogyny which Hitchcock consistently elevated, and Spielberg parodies with devastating irony in his use of Jude Law as the automaton which may not even know it is innocent of our fascination with murder of women in A.I. Law's Gigolo parody is an enhanced version of of the chameleon he plays in Music From Another Room, the Clinton era touchy feelly romance of manner which has not sold me, yet none the less wrestles a rebuttal against too much of a sweet tooth for dandies.

What I feel about Andrew Sullivan's departure as an online columnist, now, is contempt. He deserves credit for pushing back against LBGT militancy to silence hostile and trauma- considered it persons such as myself--but he is in part responsible for this path where the inclusion and destigmatizing of every form of conduct will ultimately be our own undoing. I'd like to see Andy take on the corruption of activists like Erik von Schmettering and Jimmi Shrode. If I had the dexterity I could make a best seller writing a title like Faggot Wars.