This article argues that psychoanalysis is unable to properly theorize women's subjectivity and desire and posits instead that female subjectivity can be defined without the burden of sexual differences. Rather than look at feminist film theory through the narrow terms of psychoanalysis such as repression, subjectivity, and passive desires it should be looked in terms of genealogy. By looking at feminist film theory as stylistic changes over time and as themes in many films, feminist theory is not restricted to irrelevant psychoanalytic terminology.

While this article discusses films of the 1940's, many of its concepts can be applied to Blackmail. In essence, the film is an illustration of Alice's anxieties towards sex, love, and marriage. The moment she tries to deviate from the norm of seeing her steady, but dull, boyfriend, she becomes the victim of an attempted rape. By stabbing the portrait of the jester in the studio, she refuses the shame that Crewe and the jester as society want to force upon her. What on the surface seems a cautionary tale actually serves as a manifesto for Alice's right to be sexual and not feel any shame.