I'm scared of heights!

Vertigo.

What an accurate title for a movie that is about a guy with acrophobia and suffers from vertigo. But it’s doubly insidious that whoever thought up this movie (Alfred Hitchcock was the director, but it said in the beginning of the movie that it was inspired by some French book) named the movie Vertigo because of the effect it gives the viewer.

So powerful. I’m experiencing vertigo right now.

I will get back to the artistic value of this movie. How it was shot, and the very concept, etc. But I really want to address how it portrays how people of that era deal with psychological stress. 1954 was it?

I’m guessing they couldn’t deal with it. The paranoia I mean. They would just diagnose themselves as “mad” and be done with it. I’m guessing we all experience paranoia in our lives, but I feel it all really depends on how everyone else deals with it, too. That’s why I regard this as a result of the era, because it really depends on how everyone else thinks about a certain “thing.” So I guess here I’m talking about psychological stress and how people deal with it. In Scottie’s era, people look down upon it. When he asks the lady who ended up buying Madeleine’s car where she bought it and thereby mentions how Madeleine kills herself, the era of the movie names it “unfortunate.” That means I guess that being paranoid to the point of killing oneself makes it unfortunate. That is the era Scottie lives in. I guess we all still live in it as well. It’s not “good” to commit suicide because of a mental condition.

So people back in the day couldn’t deal with it. Some people today still can’t deal with it, and yes, sometimes suicide to them is the answer. In Gnarls Barkley’s new CD, “St. Elsewhere,” C-Lo says, “And I’ve tried, everything but suicide, but it’s crossed my mind, just a thought.” Maybe that’s how we’ve dealt with it since 1954 or whatever. We just recognize that it’s just a thought. But it’s not to think Scottie didn’t discover that as well. When he was trying to help Madeleine, he tells her it’s just thoughts, and whatever’s real, whatever’s happening right now is what really matters. Except Hitchcock shows how impetuous the mind can be with the portrayal of Scottie’s mental state after he sees the staged “suicide.” We change our minds so fast and so impulsively that we forget what we have just figured out about our present situation, our state of being, our lives. Sometimes we can’t deal with our own forgetfulness. Vertigo.

Hitchcock covered all the bases. He showed schizophrenia by Scottie’s multiple aliases. He showed depression with Scottie’s silence. He showed his era’s inability to deal with people’s psychological problems with the scene at the hospital. The doctor looked like an idiot. And paranoia was all over the film. Part of the genius is how paranoid the viewers were because of the movie. Good movies hit a strong chord in people in that way I guess.

I should’ve known the sneakiness of the plan. Any normal person would’ve totally known someone was tailing them. Scottie was the opposite of sneaky.

So this is the era we are trying to get out of. Our own self-awareness haunts us. And we have been dealing with it forever. Movies like this are a bookmark I guess, to show the future where we were at, to make sure we don’t fall far. So does that mean a society that produces much “bookmarks” (movies, art, books, etc.) is enlightened? I was actually glad to hear this phrase from the album "Emergency Rations" from a rapper called Mr. Lif, “I think he was onto something…” I guess that’s the phrase of this phase of my life, “I think I’m onto something.”

I should address the topic of love, and how the movie portrayed it. It was good. Real, kinda like how Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind portrayed it. I’ll get back to this.

How come movies as thought-provoking as this involve love? Is it the one thing we haven’t figured out?

I take that back. I, Robot was thought provoking. Back at square one…

Having a brain is so frustrating sometimes.