Hitchcock's Appetites : The Corpulent Plots of Desire and Dread

F irst, I would like to thank the English Department and the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University, for their generous support, encouragement, and mentorship. They were instrumental in allowing me to research and write this book, granting me a sabbatical to do archival work and begin the writing process. They were also wonderful listeners and advisors. I owe the entire first chapter to the fellowship I received in the summer of 2012 from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was allowed access to the David O. Selznick and Myron Selznick collections. The help, guidance, and information I received at the Harry Ransom Center made the book a possibility and a fait accompli. I am deeply indebted, in innumerable ways, to my parents Douglas and Sandra McKittrick, who introduced me to, and let me fall in love with, the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Janet Staiger has been a constant source of inspiration and support, for having read several of my chapters and shared her own work throughout a career that made me realize productivity and diligence were not just possible, but necessary. I would probably never have built my own scholarship around the films of Hitchcock if it weren't for a dear friend and mentor, Dr. Sabrina Barton, whose essay on Strangers on a Train made me realize that good work in queer and feminist theory could be life-changing and nourishing in profound ways. The participants of the Hitchcock seminars and the members of the independent study groups at Western, with whom I shared my Hitchcock research, helped me write and grow in ways they will probably never fathom. I owe a debt particularly to Andrea Enyedi, Briana Asmus, and Tazara Owens. The support I got from friends and colleagues inside and outside the academy made the book happen as well. There are too many to name, but I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Why appetites? Why Hitchcock? Hitchcock studies and fat studies: An interdisciplinary repulsion? Hitchcock, feminism, and embodiment How Hitchcock’s body matters The genius of tall, thin, and handsome Chapter 1 Hitchcock’s Hollywood diet The makings of a media giant The arrival of the “300-Pound Prophet” Selznick’s fat commodity Chapter 2 The Hitchcock cameo: Fat self-fashioning and cinematic belonging “The Real Me (The Thin One)”: Another origin story of the cameo The (Meso) textual play of the cameo: Blackmail, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Stage Fright A typology of the Hitchcock cameo Chapter 3 The pleasures and pangs of Hitchcockian consumption Screening the revolting body The poetics of potables “Drink It Down”: An Hitchcockian imperative Lactose and intolerance: The poisonous meanings of milk Hitchcockian consumption and the carnivalesque Food, sex, murder: The Hitchcockian trinity of pleasure Hitchcock and the signifying food chain Chapter 4 Appetite and temporality in Rear Window: Another aspect of voyeurism An eye for a stomach: The instructive case of Miss Torso Framing the Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Girl The problem of fit: Imagining change, growth, and proportion When seeing is not believing “I want no part of her”: Women and the comedy of corporeal errors Time, change, and ambivalence Chapter 5 Childhood and the challenge of fat masculinity “You’ll outgrow it”: Hitchcock’s youth Suffer little children: Hitchcock and cinematic childhood Loss, danger, absence: The semiotics of Hitchcock’s filmic children The Wrong Man and the appetites of Cain and Abel Chapter 6 Hitchcock and the queer lens of fatness Hitchcock and the fat closet A sense of sex: Queer romance in Hitchcock’s cinema Cinematic vicarity: Surrogate versus prosthetic identification The Tickles: Subjectivities without bodies Epilogue Notes Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Enhanced Filmography Bibliography Index This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.In Hitchcock's Appetites, Casey McKittrick offers the first book-length study of the relationship between Hitchcock's body size and his cinema. Whereas most critics and biographers of the great director are content to consign his large figure and larger appetite to colorful anecdotes of his private life, McKittrick argues that our understanding of Hitchcock's films, his creative process, and his artistic mind are incomplete without considering his lived experience as a fat man.Using archival research of his publicity, script collaboration, and personal communications with his producers, in tandem with close textual readings of his films, feminist critique, and theories of embodiment, Hitchcock's Appetites produces a new and compelling profile of Hitchcock's creative life, and a fuller, more nuanced account of his auteurism. In Hitchcock's Appetites, Casey McKittrick offers the first book-length study of the relationship between Hitchcock's body size and his cinema. Whereas most critics and biographers of the great director are content to consign his large figure and larger appetite to colorful anecdotes of his private life, McKittrick argues that our understanding of Hitchcock's films, his creative process, and his artistic mind are incomplete without considering his lived experience as a fat man.

Using archival research of his publicity, script collaboration, and personal communications with his producers, in tandem with close textual readings of his films, feminist critique, and theories of embodiment, Hitchcock's Appetites produces a new and compelling profile of Hitchcock's creative life, and a fuller, more nuanced account of his auteurism.

In Hitchcock's Appetites, Casey McKittrick offers the first book-length study of the relationship between Hitchcock's body size and his cinema. Whereas most critics and biographers of the great director are content to consign his large figure and larger appetite to colorful anecdotes of his private life, McKittrick argues that our understanding of Hitchcock's films, his creative process, and his artistic mind are incomplete without considering his lived experience as a fat man. Using archival research of his publicity, script collaboration, and personal communications with his producers, in tandem with close textual readings of his films, feminist critique, and theories of embodiment, Hitchcock's Appetites produces a new and compelling profile of Hitchcock's creative life, and a fuller, more nuanced account of his auteurism.

The First Book-length Study Of Director Alfred Hitchcock To Consider How His Struggles With Weight And Size Found Their Expression In His Cinema And In His Creative Life-- Machine Generated Contents Note: Introduction -- Chapter 1: Hitchcock's Hollywood Diet -- Chapter 2: Appetite, Temporality, And Consequence In Rear Window: Another Impulse Of Voyeurism -- Chapter 3: The Hitchcock Cameo: Fat Self-fashioning And Cinematic Belonging -- Chapter 4: The Ins And Outs Of Hitchcockian Consumption: Some Notes On His Cinematic Uses Of Food And Drink -- Chapter 5: Children And The Challenge Of Fat Masculinity -- Chapter 6: Hitchcock And The Queer Lens Of Fatness -- Epilogue. Casey Mckittrick. Includes Bibliographical References, Index Abd Filmography. "The first book-length study of director Alfred Hitchcock to consider how his struggles with weight and size found their expression in his cinema and in his creative life."-- Provided by publisher