‘[…] he perceives himself as a caterpillar […]’: Constructions of the Disabled Subject in the Critical Response to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

Abstract

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window has benefited from a copious and often insightful critical response that consistently turns, explicitly or not, upon the notion of disability. This chapter will focus on one example of this criticism in order to draw out constructions of disability that are all too often avoided within film studies, despite, I suggest, having a constitutive role in many readings forwarded within the field.