Body Double and the Trashing of Noir
A sexually-frustrated man watches an exotic woman dancing out of his window, voyeuristically delighting in the spectacle until a rogue strike of anger dispatches her, and he must delve into a dark world to discover the machinations of her murder. Exploring deep inside this world, he believes he has found that same woman once more, and, growing obsessed with the possibility of meeting her, he begins to let his curiosity turn to desperation, eventually unravelling a conspiracy of violence, uxoricide and misplaced passion.
With such a specific story of intrigue, sexual darkness and voyeuristic obsession, this narrative is undoubtedly incredibly familiar to fans of Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984). But it was likely equally as familiar a story to the creators of Brian De Palma’s Body Double.
Academics, critics and audiences have long bemoaned De Palma’s tendencies to draw on his inspirations a little too heavily, bringing attention to the enumerative list of narratives, stylistic accentuations and thematic wellsprings that the director likes to drink deep from, particularly of his fondness for British Auteur, Alfred Hitchcock. Whilst (as we will soon explore) De Palma’s own inspirations run a little too strong to ignore, we can likely see this familiar recycling of narratives, concepts and thematic degradation as a symptom of a wide-running disease plaguing the global cinematic stage throughout the 1980s, and continuing to run rampant well into the modern day – Postmodernism.
Of course, some may argue that, by now, Postmodernism is simply unavoidable. For a concept concerned with the recycling and re-appropriating of recognisable iconography, crafting a wholly-familiar collage that refers to past cinema with ‘extreme intertextual awareness’ (Eco, 1985, p.11) it is not challenging to see examples throughout the films of today; a movie will regularly refer to its inspirational past with little subtlety and considerable saturation. They are artworks that are immediately recognisable. Postmodern products could be seen as a ‘random cannibalization of all the styles of the past’ (Jameson, 1991, p. 65), cutting and pasting the most evocative moments into something not quite unique, and not quite duplicated – creating a final result that expects the audience to glean supplementary meaning through an already-established understanding of film canon. We may champion originality, but with supposed limits to human imagination, how much originality can there really be? Didn’t Christopher Booker (2006) outline that there was only really ‘Seven Basic Plots’, anyway?
Of course, it is not quite as clear-cut as simply noticing a clearly recognisable story. These issues of generic, narrative and visual familiarity are exacerbated within the genre we find ourselves discussing: Neo-Noir, by virtue of its name alone, is itself an intrinsically reflective, ‘highly self-conscious genre, keenly aware of the plot conventions, character types and common techniques associated with past film noirs’ (Keeley, 2010, p. 4), utilising these with forthright brazenness to say something new about our contemporary space. On the whole, Neo-Noir operates as an exacerbation (or perhaps, as we will see, an excessive masturbation) of the noir aesthetic: where Noir, persistently limited by the restrictions of the Hays Code, refers to sexual encounters and sadistic violence with subtlety and visual allusion, our unrestrained, modern counterpart explores no shortage of luridly explicit sexuality and criminality, likely overcompensating for the past in an often ridiculous display of gratuity; where Noir had to paint within the confines of its monochromatic grayscale, emphasising the lighting with chiaroscuro and expressionist-inspired surreality, the Neo-product has access to the entire palette, splashing saturated reds alluding to lust, blood and danger with reckless abandon, often similarly utilising these colours to spotlight moments of significant narrative note, as with Vertigo’s ghostly green neon sign; much like how Noir was often the victim of limited budgets, reduced to bare sets and tired bit-players, with the occasional spectacle-heavy studio fare, we now have an occasional lavish neo-noir, helmed by famed auteurs, complemented by an overwhelming saturation of the Direct-To-Video Erotic Thriller.
This Erotic Thriller, a ‘noirish’ story characterised by ‘sexual intrigue’ and ‘incorporating some form of criminality or duplicity’ to provide the narrative framework, under the guise of representing the high demand for ‘on-screen softcore sex’ (Williams, 2005, p. 1), was greatly indebted in its success to the rise of the home-video market – often, if these films failed on the theatrical stage, they would find a new life in stores as VHS available to rent for television-viewing – a famed, and rather entertaining example of this can be seen in the Lynchian, drifter-turned-criminal, VHS-hit, Red Rock West (1993). We can see this duality of presentation and availability meta-textually referred to within Body Double: “Holly does Hollywood”, the porn film that opens the Vertigo-segment, signalling the beginning of Jake’s growing obsession, is itself screened in theatres, and available to rent within the video-store. Soon, this cultural proclivity for private-viewing became the domineering force, and the charge of sexuality within them grew to the point of outright pornography, trading subtleties within criminal stories for hardcore presentations interlinked around a narrative replicated from what you would often see in classic Film Noir.
I would argue that Body Double consciously toys the line between the Neo-Noir and the Erotic Thriller, drawing on both genres in both a stylistic and meta-textual sense in order to comment on both influences – that of Hitchcock and the hitched-cock – to make the case that there is really little difference between them. There are many interesting interplays between the Hitchcockian influence and the erotic thriller to consider. De Palma’s film ‘flirts seriously with the concerns and pleasures of the marginalised techniques of pornography and the narratives of noir’ (William, p. 3) emblematic of the erotic thriller, whilst drawing on the tried-and-tested narratives of both Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), two highly-respected, studio darlings (as well as possessing a similar budget), for its own storied and stylistic influences.
To use “influences”, of course, is incredibly generous. As stated, De Palma is not shy to present his love for the proclaimed “Master of Suspense” throughout his filmography: Dressed to Kill (1984) De Palma’s earlier attempt at the erotic thriller describes a gender-confused-killer premise eerily similar of Psycho (1960), permeated with stylistic lashings inspired by the Italian Giallo; the narrative of Vertigo is heavily influential on De Palma’s Obsession (1976), co-penned with Paul Schrader; and there is even reference to classic Film Noir in Femme Fatale (2002), opening with Double Indemnity (1944) playing on the television as Laure Ash watches on, perhaps formulating a criminal plan of her own, evilly inspired by the platinum Miss Dietrichson.
There is an intertextual connection to be read into the medium of television here – past the 1950s heyday, ‘noir viewing and noir memory became primarily televisual’ (Williams, p. 35) and past the 1980s heyday, the erotic thriller began to be enjoyed through the living-room bound television too. Just as Laure discovers her own narrative influence through the televised Double Indemnity, Jake must find his Vertigo influence within the televised world of Holly Body’s porn – thus, the DTV erotic thriller, filled with its pornographic allusions and home-viewing necessity, is inherently, consciously linked to the noir narrative it is often borrowing from.
This connection between the noir narrative and the pornographic is equally explored in the first half of the film – if it is true that, within Rear Window, ‘the windows across the courtyard resemble miniature movie screens’, expressing a ‘projected image of the spectator's own subjective fantasies’ and anxieties (Lemire, 2012, p. 57) with Jeff pointing his penis-like extended camera lens to further illuminate his own internal desires, then is the window that Jake watches not representative of miniature pornography screens, emphasising his own internal fantasies, his attraction and anxieties towards women, enhanced by his own phallic, extensive telescope? This relationship between the male anxieties and pornography is historically reinforced – Playbody’s debut marked ‘the first time that there was an attempt to give single men status’ (p. 74), and thus the capability to look at naked woman was culturally linked to the rise of non-commitment, and aversion of traditional marriage, such as the exact kind portrayed by Jeff in Rear Window.
Of course, Jake does not actively avoid a traditional marriage role, but instead finds himself the victim of a previous failed relationship – the film establishes the inadequacy of his masculinity, a motif that pervades the entire film, by having his wife cuckold him in the opening five minutes. This narrative beat is more common to the erotic thriller – we often find the catalyst for the following events, the ‘first step on the slippery slope towards erotic thriller unfaithfulness’ that highlights the ‘perils as well as the pleasures of sex’ (Williams, p. 2) is that of an extra-marital affair – though usually, this story would then continue to follow the instigator of the affair, not the victim. Are we actually following the wrong character here?
In fact, there are a lot of conscious pointers throughout the film to suggest that Jake is not the correct person cast for the part he is expected to play. This is made immediately clear within the narrative of the film, as Jake fails to perform his vampiric, punk role (dressed in a garish outfit reminiscent of Holly Body’s own costuming) – such a crucial scene that it is ingrained into the failing psychology of his character and again referred to in the climax as his personal successive moment – but it is also meta-textually explored through the presentation of the character and his actions undertaken.
We may suggest that Jake fits the part expected by the noir-knowing audience, that of the sexuallly-exploited fall guy: the protagonist deceived and manipulated by the femme fatale’s manufactured feminine wiles. Historically, as is often the case with Noir, the ‘protagonist is “simply destroyed” because he cannot resist her charms’ (Naremore, 2008, p. 221) – in Vertigo, Scottie’s downfall is directly connected to his attraction to Judy, unable to see past her outward beauty to understand her inner deceptions.
But that is Classic Film Noir. This character takes on a new, outwardly-vulgar dimension in the erotic thriller: the ‘sexual winner as noir loser’, who is explicitly presented with a similar manner of eroticism to that of his female counterpart – someone who gets his proverbial cake, eats it, and suffers all the depressing additives and body-altering fats that comes afterwards. Despite being an objective qualifier, we can see strong examples of a similar sexualisation for the male protagonists in a variety of Neo-noirs: The Hot Spot (1990) sees a muscly, slinky Don Johnson meandering around dusty, sweaty Texas; Wild Things (1998) sees Matt Dillon muscling around the equally sweaty Floridian everglades. The operative adjective we can take note of, clearly, is the musculature of our leading men.
Craig Wasson, who portrays Jake Scully, is quite the opposite, presenting himself in a rather weak, ineffective and sexually uninteresting manner – perhaps the glasses-wearing nerd, compared to the muscled jocks of other erotic thrillers. This sharp, immediate disconnect from the smooth-talking, attractive leading men we are used to only leaves the evidence of his own obvious flaws more clear – the ‘painfulness of watching him fail’ where we would usually expect our leading men to succeed, and his inability to ‘look or act in the way that we are used to seeing characters do’ (p. 358) in these narratives showcases his lacking suitability. Subsequently, our failure to objectify and identify with our non-attractive protagonist makes us actively aware of the spectatorship we are experiencing; as we watch this character we know not to be ourselves, we are made conscious of our own active watching, becoming a willing voyeur peeking into this character's shortcomings, and openly delighting in them.
Unsurprisingly, this process of objectifying the characters is equally key for the female players, both within our source material, Vertigo, and within its descendent, Body Double. Our vertiginous protagonist, Scottie, finds himself the victim of extreme attraction, suffering to the point of dangerous, red-flag avoiding obsession – but Scottie is simply attracted to Madeline’s beauty, never finding a romantic attachment for the woman within. His own experience of tailing, work-mandated voyeurism allows him to keep a literal distance from Madeline before she dies, though it is safe to assume that he never really wanted to get to know her personality anyway – he venerates the image she stands for first, and foremost. This explains why, when he discovers Judy, he spends such time and money on the process of altering her image to match that of the supposedly-deceased Madeline – he creates a double of her body only, avoiding the personality that would mark them as separate people, if he were to take the time to uncover it. Instead, he fetishes the minutia – little aesthetic details like the clothing, or the hair. In fact, the eroticisation of blonde hair is a persistent motif within noir, and as such, is often replicated within neo-noir – Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) sees Arquette’s femme fatale donning the iconic golden look as she take on a new, sexualised identity, prepared to stand as the centre of the anxious male protagonist’s own equally dangerous and misplaced obsession.
Jake is much the same. He is never in love with Gloria Revelle, he simply found himself enamoured with the visual imagery she provided, and thus, De Palma once again brings this familiar idea to its most explicit presentation to emphasise its clear construction – the pornographic, eroticising of this imagery reduces Gloria/Holly to the most clear form of objectification. Upon meeting Holly, who Jake takes for his own Gloria, he sees no need to alter her appearance at all, despite her obvious aesthetic attributes differing – her eroticised self, inspired by the dancing action she undertakes, is already as Jake remembers. It may be all he remembers. Unlike Scottie, he doesn’t need to change her hair colour or mode of dress, as her mode of dress is already that of the most erotic – little to none.
We also see this familiarity reflected stylistically. When Jake and Holly finally engage sexually, De Palma utilises a spinning, surreal camera movement, intercutting Holly with memories of Gloria’s own earlier spinning sequence – the feeling of Holly Body’s body brings the memory of Gloria back to life for Jake, and it is wonderful for him. This exact spinning camera movement is used only once in Vertigo, appearing when Judy’s transformation into Madeline is complete, and Scottie can once more hold her in his arms. Nothing has changed, it is just made more explicit.
Interestingly, Holly’s platinum blonde hair (again, shared by Jake in his vampiric outfit) in comparison to Gloria’s own brown colour seems to suggest an inversion of Vertigo’s original attributes. This is not the only twisting of the original formula: both protagonists find their mental health afflictions weaponised against them by their machiavellian antagonists. Where Scottie suffers from Vertigo, struggling with boundless, wide-open spaces, Jake suffers from claustrophobia, finding himself restrained by restrictive, small locations.
De Palma is actively playing with the established conventions here, both of the noir (in Hitchock’s films) and the erotic thriller. The best (or maybe most famous) sequence in the film is emblematic of this post-modern, consciously-aware construction – often, in meeting the erotic thriller’s demand for sexual display, there is a ‘requirement of having a sex-scene every ten minutes, like a production number in a musical’ (Williams, p. 25) – much is the same of the Italian Giallo, in its own dramatic, Grand-Guignol murder sequences, parroted again in Dressed to Kill’s highly-stylised murders – here, however, De Palma mixes the sexual and the idea of a musical number to create an explosively-stylised sex scene which would later become the MTV music video for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”. It is not subtle.
So, is this expression of exacerbated sexuality a surprise for a reimagining of two classic film noirs? Likely not. As we can tell, this relationship has always been the case, generically speaking – ‘‘film noir was and is centrally about sex anyway’ (Williams, p. 28). Indeed, one of the main characteristics attributed to Classic Film Noir in its first definitions was that of its ‘erotic’ (Borde, p. 3) nature. Post-Hays-Code-removal, and exceeding the limits required by American censorship, this connection can be made as explicit as desired. Is it then, not fair to suggest, that if Classic Film Noir was unhindered by industry-imposed censorship, that they would be looking to make similar stories of sexual, criminal intrigue, and as such, is the Erotic Thriller, with all its influences and unhinged gratuity, not the ‘direct descendent of film noir’ (Williams, p. 28)? By exacerbating the implicit to its most explicit, De Palma ensures this connection is made clear. All that remains of his work is a copy of what was originally there, albeit one that is more sexually and violently inclined – simply a Double standing in for the Body of Hitchcock’s own work.
Bibliography
Williams, L. R. (2005) The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Eco, U. (1985) ‘"Casablanca": Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’, SubStance, 14 : 2, pp. 3 - 12.
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Keeley, D. (2010) Neo-Noir : Contemporary Film Noir from Chinatown to The Dark Knight (Kamera Books). London: KAMERA.
Booker, C. (2006). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. New York: Continuum.
Lemire, E. (2012) ‘Voyeurism and the Postwar Crisis of Masculinity in Rear Window’ in Belton, J. (ed.), Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57 - 90.
Borde, R. and Chaumeton, E. (2002) A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953). San Francisco: City Lights Publishers.
Naremore, J. (2008) More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. California: University of California Press.
Filmography
Body Double, 1984. [Film]. Directed by Brian De Palma. US: Columbia Pictures.
Rear Window, 1954. [Film]. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. US: Paramount Pictures.
Vertigo, 1958. [Film]. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. US: Paramount Pictures.
Dressed to Kill, 1980. [Film]. Directed by Brian De Palma. US: Filmways.
Psycho, 1960. [Film]. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. US: Universal Pictures.
Obsession, 1974. [Film]. Directed by Brian De Palma. US: Columbia Pictures.
Femme Fatale, 2002. [Film]. Directed by Brian De Palma. US: Warner Bros.
Double Indemnity, 1944. [Film]. Directed by Billy Wilder. US: Paramount Pictures.
Red Rock West, 1993. [Film]. Directed by John Dahl. US: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
The Hot Spot, 1990. [Film]. Directed by Dennis Hopper. US: Orion Pictures.
Wild Things, 1998. [Film]. Directed by John McNaughton. US: Columbia Pictures.
Lost Highway, 1997. [Film]. Directed by David Lynch. US: October Films.
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