Ellinger's analysis of BIRD specifically and gialli generally is well-handled, and I don't dispute any of her individual points. However, I find myself at odds with what I consider a political interpretation of Argento, albeit one not nearly as toxic as, say, a site like the defunct HOODED UTILITARIAN.
For one thing, Ellinger follows the lead of many modern critics in valuing artistic works when they take the form of a quasi-Marxist oppositionalism to anything smacking of the reigning hierarchy. For instance, Ellinger claims that the 1960s saw something of a breakdown in the "macho" roles exemplified by the beefcake actors of the Hercules films, a breakdown symbolized by an Italian character-type she calls "the inept." Though I'm sure the critic is aware that Italian cinema was full of comedians who, like most comedians elsewhere, often portrayed fools and klutzes, Ellinger attaches particular importance to the fact that one of the most famous "inepts" was found in the persona of sixties icon Marcello Masroannni. Ellinger makes much of the fact that Mastroanni played the part of an "inept" even though visually he shared the look of the standard male hero: square jaw, broad shoulders, et al. Parenthetically I'll agree with Ellinger on her interpretation of Mastroanni, for even when he does play a character who's supposed to be tough and wily, like Marcello Poletti in THE TENTH VICTIM, the actor often finds himself in more risible circumstances than any of the boulder-shouldered heroes of muscleman films.
Though Ellinger never invokes such worn-out boogiemen as "the patriarchy," I feel that she's backdooring some of these concepts when she praises Argento's film for some of its supposed oppositionalism to images that reinforce the dominant hierarchy. She brings up the Italian crime films that were contemporaneous with Argento's work, and mentions approvingly that, while the crime films would show pimps and gangsters who were manly and dashing, BIRD presents the viewer with a mousey guy whose charms are something less than obvious.
Similarly, Ellinger praises Argento for including, as many Italian directors of his time would not, images of homosexuals and non-standard types, like a cross-dresser seen in a police lineup. Now, I don't disagree with Ellinger in her saying that Argento does a good job in evoking humor and even a little pathos in these characters. However, I don't think that a work is good simply because it satisfies an aspect of what we now call "identity politics."
In summation, I tend to distrust critics who have become so politicized that they project a knee-jerk reaction against the very concept of normative masculinity. I touched on these matters somewhat in my 2011 essay WAPSTERS VS. FACTSTERS. Kat Ellinger's essay on Argento reminds me of the group of 1980s feminist critics I termed "Factsters," In that essay, I decided that the "Factsters" were much closer to sussing out the nature of art than the far more prickly "Wapsters," given that the former understood how pornography "could include sexual representations by and for women." Nevertheless, even the Factsters were not willing to validate "pornography for men," just as Ellinger approves of Argento because BIRD seems to be spotlighting both women and non-traditional sexuality over the idea of the Dominant Male Hero. This is a shame, because in fictional worlds like the medium of film, dominant men and women are both fantasies, rather than exhortations to "go thou and do likewise."
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