Mini-essay: Blood Simple (Coen, 1984)

The inimitable and often intimidating Professor Jeanine Basinger teaches Senior Seminar to all her cinephilic underlings in their final semester at Wesleyan University. This year, I am one of those jaded senior film majors, and this year’s seminar subject is none other than the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. On the first day of class, Jeanine lectured on the three stages of Hitchcock’s development as a filmmaker, particularly in terms of how he manipulated his audience. The breakdown is as follows:
1. We share in the hero’s emotions and lose ourselves in joy.
2. We share in the hero’s emotions, but we’re glad he’s suffering – we are not losing ourselves, but rather entering a self that Hitchcock creates for us.
3. We share in the hero’s emotions and are glad he’s scared and suffering, but then we feel guilty about it, as though we as viewers are implicating the suffering. Our desire to see the hero suffer is actually causing him to suffer.
Jeanine argues that this third stage can be seen in such Hitchcock masterpieces as Psycho and Rear Window. After three solid months of immersing myself in Hitchcok’s body of work and watching three to five of his films per week, I reluctantly admit that I rarely experience this third level of manipulation as a film viewer. I’m sure it is my own shortcoming than the Master’s, but I began to question whether or not this theory really held water.
Enter Joel and Ethan Coen. Earlier this evening, I watched Blood Simple for the first time (I know, I know – bad film major!) in my Postwar American Independent Cinema class taught by Professor Lisa Dombrowski. I would undoubtedly consider myself a Coen Brothers fan, yet somehow their first feature film had, until now, escaped me. Perhaps it was because I tend to prefer their non-crime films; maybe it was because I was never really in the mood. But enough with my excuses. As I watched the film, my thoughts kept returning to Hitchcock (as they often do these days) and the three levels of audience manipulation. When Marty was crawling in the road and Ray shifted his car into drive, I thought to myself, “Yes! Do it! Come on, run him over!” when he failed to do so and exited the car, I was disappointed and a little annoyed with Ray. But moments later, as he dragged that shovel beside him and walked up behind Marty, I again thought, “Yes! Do it! Come on, hit him over the head with the shovel!” At this point, it hit me – I was implicating the suffering. The Coens had harnessed the elusive Third Level. And I realized that I was the most horrible character in the film.
As none of the characters in the film are particularly likable and all of them turn out to be murderers, this may seem like a farfetched statement. Yes, Marty hires Loren to kill his wife and her lover, but he has been cuckolded and feels betrayed by the both of them. Ray buries Marty alive, but he thinks he protecting his lover by doing so. Abby stabs Loren and eventually kills Loren in self-defense, as he is trying to kill her (even though she thinks he is Marty). And while Loren is a cold-blooded monster of a Private Eye, he murders for money – certainly not a noble motivation, but a tangible one nonetheless. I, the viewer, am the most immoral character, as I have absolutely no motivation for wanting these people dead.
When I ran this idea past my boyfriend, his response was, “Oh wow – that’s heavy.” Maybe it is. And maybe this isn’t a universal viewing response. Maybe beneath my vegan pacifist surface and cholesterol-free arteries, I am just a terrible, terrible person who wants to watch others suffer. The jury’s still out on that. But regardless of my possible schadenfreude, the Coens with Blood Simple reach a level of audience manipulation (in a positive sense, of course) that rivals even the most advanced and beloved cinematic achievements of Sir Alfred Hitchcock.