Week 1 Cobb, Chapter 1 Introduction

"Hitchcock used the genre of suspense to film a Nietzschean world in which God is dead or missing and the moral universe has lost its bearings" (Cobb, p. 17). Cobb writes this in his section on Scripts of Defiance. While I found Cobb's analysis of popular film and it's relationship to theology to be insightful, I strongly disagree with labeling the works of Alfred Hitchcock as Nietzschean. For starters, Cobb doesn't site any specific Hitchcock films. I think the reason why he fails to site any Hitchcock films is because Hitchcock's films do subscribe to a moral universe. As twisted and as dark as many of his pictures become, the morally good triumphs over the morally evil. Take Psycho for instance. In one of his most daring films, Hitchcock kills off his star, Janet Leigh, halfway into the film. I can see where some may find this Nietzschean in that this bleak world appears to have no moral order. Yet, lets not forget the Janet Leigh character is not completely sympathetic. In the set-up we find out that she has embezzled a case full of cash from her boss so it would seem that there is some kind of moral order when she takes her famous shower. In addition, Norman Bates may get away with murder, but in the end, he does meet his demise and justice is served. This is just one example but if we watch the canon of Hitchcock's films, as I have, it does appear that his characters live in and subscribe to a world with moral order.