Details
- article: Undecided Stories: Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail and The Problem of Moral Agency
- author(s): Gary McCarron
- journal: Canadian Journal of Communication (2008)
- issue: volume 33, issue 1, page 65
- journal ISSN: 0705-3657
- keywords: "Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays" - edited by Richard Allen and S Ishii Gonzales, "Hitchcock - the First Forty-Four Films" - by Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, "The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock" - by Donald Spoto, Alfred Hitchcock, Blackmail (1929), Chicago, Illinois, Claude Chabrol, David Sterritt, Dial M for Murder (1954), Donald Spoto, Eric Rohmer, Ethics, François Truffaut, Judgment, Leland Poague, Lesley Brill, Marshall Deutelbaum, Morality, Motion picture directors & producers, Motion pictures, New York City, Philosophy, Richard Allen, Richard Miller, Robert Walker, Robin Wood, Spellbound (1945), St. Ignatius College, Strangers on a Train (1951), Studies, Suspicion (1941), Thomas Hyde, Tom Cohen, Éric Rohmer
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Abstract
This article considers the question of moral agency in the work of Alfred Hitchcock through a detailed analysis of a crucial sequence from his early film Blackmail (1929). Focusing on this representative moment the author’s goal is to examine the problem of moral agency per se, rather than to catalogue expositions of specific ethical problems in a range of different Hitchcock films. In distinguishing between ethical rules and moral impulses, the author follows Zygmunt Bauman (1993, 1995, 2000) to examine the utility of this distinction in relation to the issue of moral agency in Hitchcock's work. Ethical rules, it is argued, are one aspect of our moral experience that often runs directly counter to our moral intuitions.
