Sigmund Freud's "The Uncanny" in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan"

Benjamin Halking

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9783346740830
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1, 7, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: This paper will revolve around Sigmund Freud's The Uncanny and the momentum of suspense it can cause. Furthermore, an interview of Alfred Hitchcock will be looked at in excerpts, where he discusses the momentum of suspense. Subsequently, the theory of The Uncanny will be applied to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 movie Psycho and later to Darren Aronofsky's 2010 movie Black Swan. Psycho sets an example of the suspense and is inevitably connected to the name of Alfred Hitchcock. Why is Psycho the embodiment of suspense and the uncanny? Opposed to Hitchcock's masterpiece, the 2010 movie Black Swan will be looked at in terms of the uncanny. As this movie is considered to be "an uncanny representation of light and color", it is supposed to form the counterpart to Hitchcock's Psycho in terms of uncanny elements and the idea of suspense. These seemingly very diverse genres (the titles themselves give off different expectations already) shall be examined regarding the use of uncanny elements. It will be analyzed how these elements are used and what the degree and frequency of the uncanny does to both the movie and the viewer. This paper aims to correlate the amount, the frequency and the intensity of uncanny elements with the suspense that is built throughout both of the movies. Does the amount of uncanny do any harm to the idea of suspense? Is this idea following the principle of "the more the better" or rather "less is more"? The current status of research on this very matter is very scarce. Aside from the interview of Truffaut with Alfred Hitchcock himself, there appears to be no hard evidence that this matter has been dealt with. Only Hitchcock goes into this topic and explains what he fathoms by suspense and how to build it (through uncanny elements).