Ida Lupino’s American Psycho: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
“In The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino offers an unusually sustained visual examination of the average male body that is then contrasted against the anarchic body of the Psycho. Myers is often shown[…]
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David Greven is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His books include Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin (University of Texas Press, 2013), The Fragility of Manhood: Hawthorne, Freud, and the Politics of Gender (Ohio State University Press, 2012), Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (Palgrave, 2011), Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush (University of Texas Press, 2009), and Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature (Palgrave, 2005). He is on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal and Genders and is currently working on a book about post-millennial Hollywood masculinity called Ghost Faces. “In The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino offers an unusually sustained visual examination of the average male body that is then contrasted against the anarchic body of the Psycho. Myers is often shown[…]
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
“The queer theorist Leo Bersani has argued for the “self-shattering” qualities of gay sex, but Plata Quemada foregrounds gay desire as a mutually shattering event. The film’s romantic nihilism is at the heart of both its appeal and its essentially troubling nature.”
