Was I a woman who knew too much or not enough by miles and miles?
I ran breathlessly around the Freudian twists and turns Modleski careened on as she explicated Hitchcock’s great films: Rebecca, Suspicion, Vertigo, and my favorite, Notorious. I examined her every feminist footnote, and ran those sources to earth in all the libraries open to me. The questions Modleski posed about how sexual identity was constructed in Hitchcock’s movies and her forays into the patriarchal unconscious blasted away old, tired platitudes about Hitch’s misogyny. I found myself longing for and finding more mind-energizing critical experiences about any and all movies, until suddenly–voila–I too was in possession of theoretical language and ideas, exploding old prejudices. And finding out just how dangerous such an undertaking could be. For every reader who was delighted by my first critical foray into provocation, there were five angrily opposing my impudence–and some of them were the very critics who had inspired me with their refusal to nod dutifully at cliches. Some scholars and critics here in the United States and some half a world away were enthusiastic. Closer to home, my daughter Holly and my husband Richard had their doubts. They (supportively) reminded me that my turf is the road less traveled.