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Hitchcock Meets Kierkegaard: Selfhood and Gendered Forms of Despair in Vertigo and The Sickness unto Death

Abstract The development of Vertigo’s main characters provides a detailed illustration of the dialectics of despair as analysed in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death, in particular of the so-called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ types of failed selfhood. This article shows the relation of selfhood and despair to dizziness both in Kierkegaard’s work and in Hitchcock’s film, and it examines the religious subtext of Vertigo. The dramatis personae of Judy and Scottie are analysed by applying Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of despair. They display a variety of failures to relate to their selves, like unconscious and conscious despair, possibility’s despair, despair over the earthly and despair of the eternal. Moreover, they epitomize the gendered types of despair as depicted in The Sickness unto Death: losing one’s self in relation to someone and obsessively striving for self-assertion at the cost of others.