Shame of the Male Gaze

Because of our identification to this point, the audience shares Scotty’s “unrelenting, unabated shame” (Sandler 142). Part of the shame is in having shared Scotty’s gaze of Madeleine. Mulvey “describes Jimmy Stewart’s Scotty as an embodiment of the active ‘gaze’ of the male spectator who, terrified by the spectacle of female ‘lack’ or castration, fetishistically attempts to recreate the ‘ideal,’ phallic woman” ( White 912). Scotty, and through his POV the audience, objectifies Madeleine by watching her. Objectified observation, however, like in the flower shop mirror, makes the viewer briefly distanced by the fact that we’re watching someone who is watching someone else, instead of just watching with Scotty.

Vertigo turns the tables on the male gaze though by showing the negative side of men’s fetishization of women. Scotty is punished by becoming feminized, going crazy, and literally being put on trial. This punishment adds shame to our own previous identification since the audience finally sees Scotty from an objective point of view.