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Scorsese's Cape Fear:
The Triumph of Stereotypes
by Katie Reese
The 1962 version of Cape
Fear depicts a battle between good and evil where a virtuous
lawyer must abandon the positive law for the natural law in saving
his family from the menacing figure of unjustified revenge.
Alongside substantial legal critique of a lack of protection
for victims, the 1962 film reveals patriarchal discourse on gender
relations and the nuclear family. In 1991, Martin Scorsese remade
Cape Fear. His is not merely a revisiting or homage to
the first film but is an attempt at an actual reconstruction,
or what Michael Arnzen describes as metanarrative . Arnzen
explains 'metanarrative' in terms of postmodern deconstruction
and plurality. The postmodern effect of a metanarrative is to
take the meanings of a known story and to invert them into entirely
new meanings, subverting the original message. Scorsese attempts
to implode the message of stereotyping in the first film but
his efforts are rendered ineffectual because he merely replaces
this same message with a modernized version of the same stereotypes
of patriarch, family women, mistresses, and prison inmates that
inhabited the first film.
 The family dynamic
is no longer the harmonious "Leave it to Beaver" family
of the first Bowdens, but now includes the displaced teen with
budding sexuality and the dysfunctional communication that one
expects in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Similarly, our
notions of the terrifying menace vary with our understanding
of social stereotypes. In the 1962 version, we know that Max
Cady is the villain from our initial introduction to him at the
courthouse. When he passes by a woman who drops her book, Cady
deliberately does not pick it up for her. Later in the film in
a meeting with Sam, he orders twelve-year-old scotch twice, a
very ungentlemanly way of ordering. In both instances, breaking
normative codes of masculine etiquette tells the viewer that
he is a menace. For a modern viewer, the stereotypes of the 1962
film are laughable but the question must be posed if the second
film has done anything to overcome those stereotypes.
Scorsese's Cady, although updated in stereotyping, does nothing
to challenge stereotypes of the psychological villain or of prison
culture of the early Nineties. Even Cady's underwear involves
a stereotype. When taken in for questioning and intimidation,
police strip search Cady, revealing slinky, red, animal patterned
underwear indicative of the nature of a sexual predator. Similarly,
Cady's prison posters depict Stalin and Christian iconography
of vengeance, and his books consist of revolutionary philosophy
and the Bible. The imagery here plays on the viewer's ability
to recognize these sorts of academic symbols and reveals Scorsese's
attempt to create an elevated villain of psychological complexity.
The Christian vengeance becomes an important part of his plot
against Sam and is reiterated by the tattoos covering his arms
and back, but these are merely indicative of a terrifying stereotype
of religious zealots of the South combined with the tattooed
nature of prison culture and assumptions about hardened inmates.
Richard Sherwin contends that Scorsese's film is much more complicated
and revealing than Thomson's as Scorsese emphasizes the similarities
between Sam and Cady in their aggression toward women and in
their ability to kill. Although this attempt to the blur the
lines of hero and villain is clearly made, Scorsese ultimately
reinforces Sam as the legitimate patriarch just as Thomson did
for Gregory Peck thirty years earlier. Despite some complication
with moral ambiguity in the legal profession and reference to
Sam's infidelities, Sam clearly does the "right" thing
throughout the film. In fact, these changes and fall from grace
have more to do with stereotypical depictions of the time and
what we expect to see on screen in lawyers and in family dynamics
of the early Nineties than with imploding our conception of Sam
as hero. The second scene of the movie after Dani's prologue
presents Sam with a lawyer client at the courthouse. An interchange
between them reveals that Sam manipulated the law for his friend's
interests, but the manipulation actually does justice. In the
middle of a divorce settlement, the son-in-law hid assets to
avoid fairness and the extension that Sam obtained for the law
partner's daughter allows them to privately investigate to protect
those assets and to protect the natural law in equal distribution
of divorce assets. Similarly, there is minor moral discomfort
when Sam reveals to his partner how he buried the promiscuity
report, but, while there is this professional ambiguity, Sam
redeems himself by leaving the public defender's office to take
up civil practice, thereby repenting of any wrong done in not
being true to his profession.
Also, while there are allusions to the fact that Sam makes major
mistakes and is not the pure hero that Gregory Peck was, this
is neither emphasized nor directly shown on screen, and the implication
is that Sam is actually a good guy and hero. His infidelities
never occur on screen. There is the flirtation with Lori but
he tells her at the car that he cannot continue to flirt with
her, reemphasizing his role as husband and father. She appears
at the bar upset that he has stood her up while, unbeknownst
to her but beknownst to the viewer, he works on protecting his
family. There is relief in knowing that he is more committed
to his family than he is to the "other woman."
Similarly, after establishing that only he can win against Cady,
Scorsese does not allow the viewer to blame Sam for Cady's death.
Sam fights Cady to the death in a somewhat primordial battle
of masculinity but then the viewer is not even given the opportunity
to condemn him for smashing Cady's head with the rock because
natural forces do it for him and Sam remains morally blameless.
Mitchum's death is certainly more satisfying than Gregory Peck's
Sam sending Cady to prison but the idea is the same; neither
director can bring himself to truly stain Sam's hands. Essentially,
Sam retains the role of patriarch, the unblemished hero. In the
end, Sam defends his family at all costs and wins. Danielle
has a moment of mental and physical acuity to douse Cady in lighter
fluid and Leigh almost succeeds in her cunning play at getting
Cady to empathize with her but Sam is the protector of his family,
the successful patriarch and, ultimately, he must protect the
family for this to be a legitimate victory.
Just as the attempt to complicate Sam holds little weight, so
does the attempt to make Cady more sympathetic to the viewer.
He cannot be a true avenger with whom the audience identifies
because his is the 'straw man' reaction, a reaction not to injustice
but to deserved punishment. Scorsese could have presented a
different legal twist like an identification or actual consensual
problem but he did not because that could create empathy in the
viewer for Cady. Perhaps the most terrifying scene in the film
and the closest that Scorsese gets to humanizing Cady is when
Cady lures Danielle into the school theatre. The imminent physical
threat to her makes the viewer squirm in terror and then when
we realize that he will not harm her, the mental manipulation
and connection that he makes with her is a powerful menace, and
is both more tantalizing and terrifying than the initial physical
threat. However, as Francis Nevins has pointed out, Scorsese
drops this very successful manipulation of the character and
the audience when Cady becomes an invincible horror cliché,
riding under the car and later refusing to die. His charming
discourse on life and emotion is not, as Sherwin suggests, wisdom
nor truth learned from suffering. Rather, the viewer always knows
that his prophecy is that of Judas Iscariot, the ultimate blasphemer.
And whatever sympathy we glean from the knowledge that he would
have gotten off at trial for a crime that he was guilty of is
completely negated by the ridiculousness of what ensues in his
pursuit of the Bowdens and in his quest to make Sam "understand
loss." Scorsese does not present us with the disintegration
of the wholly other as the postmodern metanarrative requires,
but Cady is rather a hyped-up, stock horror character.
One of the most obvious stereotypes of the 1962 Cape Fear
is that of the image of the helpless, domestic woman. For example,
Sam thanks God for the fact that Peggy's innocence and fragility
has never been witness to the harshness of the male courtroom
and cross-examination. Scorsese had the opportunity to deconstruct
this image of the domesticity but he did not and his film instead
perpetuates female oppression. Leigh has a job but she does
not leave the home. Likewise, their luxurious home is certainly
not provided for from her salary but from that of the true breadwinner,
the patriarch. Leigh's femininity is also a character weakness.
Sam refers to her fragility when they argue about his past lovers.
She calls him arrogant for staying in the marriage for her sake
but there is an inclination to believe this assertion.
This is a conflict between men in which women have no place to
interfere in the conflict as more than objects. In both films,
they are not people but just weapons against Sam. This is even
more apparent in the 1991 film when Sam actually has a personal
relationship with Lori. Because he knows her, and even has a
romantic connection with her, Lori's rape is directly a message
and weapon against Sam. Thomson's Cady uses Diane Taylor as a
weapon too, but this is an indirect message without the same
kind of menace that comes from entering one's personal sphere
and from taking a woman that the audience knows and likes and
changing them into nothing more than an objectified threat to
our masculine hero.
Similarly, while the dysfunctional family unit replaces the utopian
1962 Bowdens, Scorsese upholds the nuclear family by reinforcing
the inviolability of women within the legitimate family. Just
like Diane Taylor, Lori can be raped and beaten because she is
the mistress, not the wife. Cady meets Leigh at the mailbox,
enters the house when she is home alone and has every opportunity
to violate her but does not. Similarly, Dani is most vulnerable
when she is with him in the theatre. When he does not harm or
even fully seduce her, the viewer remains terrified but ultimately
knows that he will never truly harm her. Her virginity and role
as daughter of Sam make her invincible against the threat of
violation.
The presentation of women as victims and domestic objects in
Scorsese's film does not even attract the legal criticism that
the 1962 film extends. The legal premise that the promiscuity
report was admissible is nonsensical as rape-shield laws have
been common in the United States since the mid-Seventies. Similarly,
acquittal could not have been certain had there been a simple
medical analysis of her injuries providing circumstantial evidence
of a lack of consent. Contrastingly, the 1962 film actually engages
in criticism of real laws prejudicing women. When Cady explains
to Peggy that coercion of her sexual consent through a bargain
not to harm Peggy would be considered legitimate consent, he
is legally correct for that time period. Similarly, Diane Taylor
fears that her name will be published for her family to read
and that a small sentence and lack of enforcement of restraining
orders will leave her with an increased risk of retaliation.
The film criticizes the system's reluctance or inability to
protect victims. Some of these elements appear in the 1991 version,
but, without any basis in actual law, they lack poignancy and
voice for women. When we condemn Sam for burying the report,
we effectually, give credence to the notion that denying such
voice and protection for female victims is legitimate.
Scorsese's only real success at inversion is in his deliberate
casting of Gregory Peck as the buffoon prosecutorial lawyer and
Robert Mitchum as the police enforcer. Sherwin calls this "postmodern
hyperreality". Similarly, the opening sequences and uncertainty
in Dani's prologue paired with the negative inversion of light
in Leigh's bedroom create indeterminacy between reality and fantasy.
The entire aesthetic of the film has a postmodern flavor that
is compelling but fails to deconstruct enough to become a metanarrative
because of its inability to step out of stereotypes set by the
first Cape Fear. Stereotypes reinforce the moral framework
of gender and power relations, and the ultimate closure in the
film with the death of Cady and the cyclical return to Dani's
reminiscence affirm that all is well with the world. There is
no inversion here.
Posted January 6, 2004
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