{"id":552,"date":"2014-10-29T10:47:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T10:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=552"},"modified":"2014-10-29T10:47:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T10:47:08","slug":"master-of-suspense-or-master-of-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/master-of-suspense-or-master-of-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Master of Suspense or Master of Mystery?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vertigo\"<\/a>All Hallows Eve and All Saints often get me thinking about two things: Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Vertigo<\/em> and a sermon preached by John Henry Newman at Oxford in 1832.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t recount the elaborate plot of Vertigo<\/em> here, and if you have deprived yourself of the pleasure of watching this masterpiece until now, I suggest you run\u2014don\u2019t walk\u2014to your nearest library to borrow it. What\u2019s that you say? You can stream it? All the better\u2014sit down and watch it now, then come back and read my reflections on it.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019re back. I\u2019ll bet you\u2019re feeling as Scottie did when he was told of the possession of Gavin Elster\u2019s wife by the ghost of her suicidal ancestor. You need a drink too, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

At the start, Vertigo<\/em> seems to be a story about the living possessed by the spirit of the dead and an ex-policeman, a \u201chard-headed Scot,\u201d who is hired as a private detective to solve the \u201cmystery\u201d of this possession. But unlike the usual formula of the detective story, in this film the mystery remains after the problem is solved. Scottie Ferguson, the protagonist in the film, follows a painful journey of self-discovery in which he must die to his old, pragmatic ego, the self that thinks that everything in life is explainable. \u201cThere\u2019s an answer for everything,\u201d he says. Scottie suffers from vertigo and wants to cure himself of this mundane fear of heights. He doesn\u2019t believe Elster\u2019s \u201cmystery\u201d when he first hears it, and of course on one level, that is correct\u2014the story is a fraud. Elster sets up the interpretation that \u201cthe other dimension\u201d possesses his wife. The rational Scottie doesn\u2019t buy it. Yet, even though it\u2019s a set-up, there is a deeper truth\u2014a mystery\u2014greater than what Elster or anyone else knows. It goes beyond Ferguson\u2019s profane, purely pragmatic and rationalist mind.<\/p>\n

Philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel have distinguished between problem<\/em> and mystery<\/em>. Problems have solutions that leave no mystery. What we sometimes call \u201cmystery stories\u201d are really whodunits that are merely problems to be solved. But mystery remains, not as a problem to be solved but as the holy mystery that is God, to be worshipped. Was Hitchcock a master of suspense or master of mystery? I think Vertigo<\/em> show him to be dealing with mystery.<\/p>\n

Scottie lives within a horizon that has been disenchanted. Like the fear of heights he didn\u2019t know he had, the whole film is the challenge of his facing up to his own mystery. Elster\u2019s fraud serves to bring out a side of the pragmatic Scottie that he\u2019s been denying; as the hard-headed Scot, he wants to explain away his own mystery. He thinks he can conquer himself by sheer intellect and will: \u201cif I could just find the key and put it all together.\u201d In the end, we do not know whether he accepts the fact that reason does not evacuate life\u2019s ultimate mystery. Whether he will die to his old self to become a new creation is left unanswered but what seems clear is that by the end of the film, Hitch has exposed Scottie\u2019s pragmatic denial of mystery as self-destructive and vain. The film demythologizes an evil scheme but deepens the sense of mystery.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why I think of Newman when I see this movie. In the sermon \u201cOn Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance\u201d he argues that pagan superstition\u2014the kind of thing that we associate with Halloween\u2014should not be seen as demonic or evil but as the quite reasonable response to the human condition of those lacking the gospel. \u201cThey who are not superstitious without the Gospel,\u201d Newman tells us, \u201cwill not be religious with it: and I would that even in us, who have the Gospel, there were more of superstition than there is; for much is it to be feared that our security about ourselves arises from defect in self-knowledge rather than in fulness of faith\u2026\u201d Scottie\u2019s reductionist rationalism\u2014just the opposite of superstition\u2014is a \u201cdefect in self-knowledge.\u201d He is a man who has lost control of himself\u2014in love, then in depression, then in anger. For Newman, it is better to be superstitious than to imagine that we live in a disenchanted universe. Reason without faith in the holy mystery is a fearful self-deception.<\/p>\n

David Hammond<\/strong> teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All Hallows Eve and All Saints often get me thinking about two things: Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Vertigo and a sermon preached by John Henry Newman at Oxford in 1832. I can\u2019t recount the elaborate plot of Vertigo here, and if you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,23,1],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-mystery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}