Coming from architecture and amateur psychoanalysis, I am always intrigued by abstraction, diagrams, and connecting the dots and lines in a constructed framework. Centering around the tension between abstraction and materialization, thresholds as a framework could be a provoking starting point to analyze Alfred Hitchcock’s films. It is between the abstracted and the physical, between the nothingness and the literal, between the archetype and the materialized, between the signifier and the signified, perversion is introduced into the films and the uncanniness of spaces is experienced.
Defining what is a threshold and its relevance becomes central. From its dictionary definitions, the word “threshold” means a gate, a door, and also further means abstractly a boundary or an interim space between a place’s ending and another place’s beginning, or between status changes and transformation. In architectural studies, we define a “threshold” as “barrier space that is located for separating the volumes,” or “the floor of an entrance to a building or room”. We often reduce the connection between spaces to nothing more than a door, but if we look more closely, there are lots of more nuanced ways of connecting and separating the spaces. A threshold is not a specific architectural component, but rather, they materialize in various spatial forms, including doors, windows, passages, arches, screens, openings and even some sub- spaces. The threshold’s significance lies at its function of connection and differentiation. A threshold acknowledges the different programs or atmosphere in the two spaces, and tries to connect between the two. When crossing that threshold, the person experiences the change between the two spaces, and for a threshold with depth even feel the characteristic of its own.
On the other hand, in the narrative theory world, a threshold could also signify an important transformation or status change in a story arc. In Joseph Campbell’s narrative theory of “A Hero’s Journey”, he identifies one critical stage of the main character’s journey as “Crossing the Threshold”. The threshold here is between their ordinary and familiar world and the unknown and dangerous world, where the hero leaves their home after answering their “Call to Adventure” in the new world. There are some points that are worth noting in his definition: the crossing action may occur either willingly or unwillingly; the “threshold” is almost always materialized as a physical boundary (such as a wall, a doorway, a river etc.); once the threshold is crossed, it is likely that there is no turning back. As a way to introduce the potential danger to the characters, this one-way, unwilling boundary crossing action that is often framed by a physical manifestation of a “threshold” is prevalent in Hitchcock’s films. One doesn’t need to buy his logic in generalizing all narratives into one “monomyth” completely, but thinking through “thresholds” in Campbell’s narrative theory along with the architectural language could be a productive way of interpreting Hitchcock’s films.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge the potential limitations of the threshold methology. When thresholds, both physical and abstracted one, are identified, I don’t aim to constrain them strictly or define them exclusively as thresholds, but rather, they are to be put parallel with these threshold properties in narrative and architecture theories, in order to provide analogous and productive readings of the films.
