English mrshitchcock commentary hanan 2

MRS. HITCHCOCK COMMENTARY You, you all watched the screen While he, he worked the reams Of film and I , I only dreamed Of true love unseen from a rear window. I liked to cook for him Scrambled egg in the pan Panning back and forth, woman to man To settle in his beer belly pot With his chub I loved to frame the shot All of him; Ally sweetheart! He used to say Stop filming now; (he didn’t understand Why I’d get that way) Him holding me, honeydoll, I couldn’t help But notice us in the mirror Starring him & me, the angles of our lives My camera became my eyes Lights out – fade out CONTINUED: Non diagetic sound now Don’t work so hard, he’d plead, it’s killing you Ally, Ally, this isn’t you! Quite right, I’d say, it isn’t me You’ve got the wrong girl. She did it! He did! Norman, Otto, Bobby Rusk It was them, I’d cry, not me Yet it’s me he still suspects You see. What a mama’s man Running to her whenever he can But I’ll get him soon enough ,[object Object],Commentary: Like Mrs. Midas, Mrs. Hitchcock as a wife is subservient to her husband and actually seems to love and care for him as she ‘liked to cook for him’ and ‘dreamed of true love’ not seen from a Rear Window – a reference to one of the Hitchcock movies. She feels as if his work has taken him over and he’s so involved with it that he doesn’t really have time for her any more – and this will be subverted later in the poem when you see that in fact, it was not him but her who became far too involved with his work to the point where she loses her grip on reality and becomes confused, believing that she herself is living in a film. She is obsessed with his films, when she becomes paranoid that he blames her for something she tells him that it was Norman (Norman Bates, Psycho), Otto, Bobby Rusk – all the killers from his own movies. She loves him but she is still, however, mildly offensive about him as are other wives and women in The World’s Wife – she makes a playful reference to his overweight appearance, calling it ‘chub’ and condescendingly says that he’s ‘a mama’s man’. This is in reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s childhood where if he behaved badly then his mother would force him to address her while standing at the end of her bed for hours – she took a painful childhood experience of his and belittles it, knowing that he was always very much in the power of his mother. At the end of the poem she is downright insulting where as she loses her sanity she starts threatening where she’s going to put his ‘MacGuffin’ – another film reference. Hitchcock introduced the idea of there being a MacGuffin, a plot device that the film plot seems to be centred around but is a red herring as it will have nothing to do with the ultimate end. There are other film references made in spirit of it being about the Hitchcocks – a play on the film reference as she says it is with his fat that she loves to ‘frame the shot’ of a scene. Talking about camera movement, when she tells us she likes to cook for him with scrambled egg, ‘panning back and forth’ woman to man – this is where the levels of power lie in their relationship, showing that in gender roles power always goes to the man as he is superior. Camera techniques are referenced in the poem to show her losing her sanity, which is symbolised by the lights which fade out. The voices which she seems to hear she chooses to call ‘non-diagetic’, off screen – the voices only exit in her mind, off the screen of her real life. ‘CONTINUED’ – this visually separates the poem into two as the above stanzas represent her sane life and the below her disrupted view of reality. But it also serves to provide continuity from one stanza to the next, which is in reference to the way that in her work as an editor she had an eye for spotting continuity flaws in films that Hitchcock himself would miss – again, the woman is more observant than the man, like the woman in Mrs. Tiresias who would notice dawn and nature more before her husband would but kept it to herself so as not to hurt his male pride. Alfred Hitchcock himself takes the typical male role like other males in Duffy’s poems in the collection. He is oblivious at first and slow to realise his wife’s descent into madness, to see that while he is holding her she is only looking at the mirror and watching them from the camera that is her eyes, imagining them as if a couple in a movie. He is patronising to her as if she knows nothing about making movies, ‘Ally sweetheart, stop filming now’ – speaking to her as if she was a small child, the adult saying it’s time to stop playing now. He is affectionate but in his affection objectifies her, calls her ‘honeydoll’ – a doll, pretty but something to be played with, smaller and there for him to use; most certainly not his equal. There’s a lot of repetition in the beginning, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘i’, ‘pan’ – she becomes fixated on certain words and has a hard time letting go of things; she has an obsessive, addictive kind of personality. There are internal rhymes used, ‘pan, woman, man’ – ‘stuff his MacGuffin’ - pararhyme ‘chub’ and loved’ which are common techniques used by Duffy and in keeping with her style. Punctuation stops one line in the middle and another sentence is continued in the same line (technique? _________ ) in ‘all of him; he didn’t understand’ and then ‘wrong girl. She did it!’ – ‘you see. What a mama’s man’ – these all create a very disjointed effect, just like her sense of reality.

English mrshitchcock commentary hanan 2

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