Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [176]
The class would begin with a study of the famous Dr. Sam Sheppard murder case and its media coverage, particularly the work of Dorothy Kilgallen, a syndicated columnist whose byline was pulled from several major papers after she wrote that the prosecution had failed to prove Sheppard’s guilt, or, in fact, anything at all. “The uppity lady had to be silenced, shut up,” Dr. Petersen said, which brought her to Hitchcock. “‘Shut up’ is something Jimmy Stewart tells Grace Kelly repeatedly when she expresses her opinions in Rear Window. Kelly, who’s portrayed as an accomplished professional, a buyer for major department stores, and a sexually aggressive woman, who unlike her literally and symbolically crippled lover, who’s inferred to be impotent, is not—I repeat not—trapped in love fantasies but wants love in reality. And unlike her emotionally sadistic boyfriend, she’s able to move through the world as opposed to simply observing it voyeuristically and controlling it virtually. It’s a visionary work about women and their struggles as women qua women and as women qua professionals. The movie, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is about a photographer who’s stuck in his apartment for eight weeks after his leg is broken on an assignment. To pass the time, he watches the tenants in the apartment complexes across from him. He feels his freedom’s being threatened by his girlfriend, Kelly, who wants to marry him. And so he projects his fantasies of killing her on to a jewelry salesman who might actually have killed his invalid wife. Remarkably, Rear Window came out only a month after the Sheppard murder. It was in theaters during the trial. And so the feminine public, the silenced she, was treated to a twofold horror show, during the day to the first true media circus of the century over the brutal murder of a suburban trophy wife—young, athletic, and beautiful—by her successful doctor husband. The case captivated the nation, directed endless class outrage at Sheppard, and led to a guilty conviction that sent him to jail for ten years until the Supreme Court threw out the verdict. Yet what was the message to women? That you can be killed for doing the very things expected of you. Meanwhile, at night, moviegoers relished Jimmy Stewart’s sadistic fantasies about women, even sublimating that character’s own impotent revenge fantasies against the sexually aggressive and professionally powerful Grace Kelly. Rear Window was, incidentally, the second-highest grossing film of 1954, right behind White Christmas.”
The female students again laughed knowingly, David lagging just behind. “It is this intersection”—Dr. Petersen made an X with her arms—“ladies … and gentleman,” she added, nodding at David, at which point only Alice turned around and smiled, “between the aesthetic and social spheres that will be our point of departure. For it is here,” she concluded, “that the real and imagined roles of women are not only fully figured but also clash tragically.”
David didn’t understand a word she was saying. But the class was small, and Alice sat three seats ahead of him to his right. He sat in the back, as in Otto’s class, and watched.
And he couldn’t help but watch—not just Alice, of course, but