Hitchcock's Rope and the Symbolic Order

A Satanist Reads the Bible

In this episode I'll be delving into film criticism with an analysis of the 1948 film Rope, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring John Dall, Farley Granger, and James Stewart. Rope has fascinated me since I first saw it earlier this year; it's now one of my favorite films and, in my opinion, and although it enjoys considerably less fame than staples like Psycho and Vertigo, Hitchcock's best. Its central theme, as I'll be arguing here, is the relation between the life-world of human symbolic reality and the Real itself, and as such makes an excellent example for exploring some of the themes of metaphysical idealism from my recent episodes. At the same time, I thought it would make an excellent warmup for a larger film criticism project I'd like to attempt, a look at the religious themes in the films of Martin Scorsese.