ENGENDERING THE SCREEN: A FREUDIAN INTERPRETATION OF
GENDER AND SEXUALITY ISSUES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA
The ideas of Sigmund Freud were primarily intended to influence psychology,
and it is certainly the psychology label which is best used
to define them, but their influence these days extends far beyond this,
into all kinds of critical thought. Whilst the idea of Freud as a mere
sex-based psychologist is hugely misleading, some of his most influential
ideas come to conclusions on sexual and gender development. The most
influential and famous of those theories is perhaps the Oedipus
complex in which a developing child has an age (to put it simply,
almost to the point of crudely) to destroy the father in order to possess
the mother. It is competition for the mothers affection that causes
normal gender-identity to develop as the son becomes more
like the father through imitation.
Looking at the way critics think, it would appear that there is not
a film, book or piece of art in existence that is not open to Freudian
interpretation even if the thing in question was written in a
pre-Freudian time, which can be problematic. The world of cinema, having
only operated after Freud, is however far more ripe for Freudian interpretation
and European cinema of the past fifty years has certainly given
us plenty to think about in this respect. Of course, Freud is not the
only significant figure whose works can be used to analyse film
for example, the works of Ferdinand De Saussure, who is to linguistics
what Freud is to psychoanalysis, are also often applicable to twentieth
century European cinema particularly in the dreamlike Surrealist
films which accompanied the artistic movement (for example the films
of Luis Bunuel.) There is also scope for reviewing them in the way that
we as British viewers interpret subtitles; an act in which language
becomes a visual part of the film.
But the field of film analysis, particularly from the Freudian perspective,
is vast were to start?
Perhaps the most Freudian director of recent years is Spains
Pedro Almodovar, who we shall return to, but there have certainly been
others before him who have dealt with Freudian themes.
The great director Francois Truffuat famously said that before
television, people stared at the fire there has always been a
need for moving pictures. Truffuat was something of a serious
student of film, for him cinema is part of cultural civilisation, but
also an enhanced version of something more innate almost like
Freuds theories of religion in The Future Of An Illusion.
Cinema is Truffuats God as it is for many European directors
the beginning of it being a projection of their innermost feelings.
In Truffuats celebrated tragi-comedy Jules Et Jim,
(1962) for example, the title characters both appear to be wrestling
with enormous, delayed and projected Oedipus complexes. The film is
sometimes interpreted as an allegory of the fractured Europe of the
time, but there are some reservations to be held about this particular
reading Truffuat was not a political filmmaker. In fact, he was
quite the opposite he reacted against the social-realist films
of the time, wanting to take film back to its pure form. But this does
not mean that his films are a fantasy-land of flaw-free characters,
hence Jules and Jims Oedipus complexes.
When the pair first meet, one is far more confident with
women and more sexually mature than the other Jules learns from
Jim by copying him and treating him like a teacher, just like a young
boy does with his father when going through the Oedipus complex. When
Jeanne Moreaus character, the powerfully magnetic Catherine, comes
into the equation, the cycle of the complex is given free reign to be
completed as Catherine takes on a kind of mother role. Both Jules and
Jim are attracted to Catherine; over the years she becomes a source
of competition for the pair, one knowing that he can only secure her
by mimicking the other, as in the Oedipus complex. The relationship
between the three of them for much of the film is harmonious as they
learn they both have a place in Catherines life, almost like the
complex resolved. We see nothing of the mens families in the film, and
thus know nothing of their background, but it is easy to imagine them
as having unresolved Oedipus complexes which Catherine, as a projection
of the mother figure, has enabled them to metaphorically solve.
Another Freudian theory which Jules Et Jim undergo is that
of object-libido (as outlined in his work On Narcissism).
The object in this can also become object-ideal,
in which those who love them idealises them. For the fictional character,
it is easy to be an object-ideal- the writer/director can
mould them around this, making them easy for other characters to idealise.
What is less clear is how much of an object ideal would
Catherine be if she had been played by another actor, someone other
than the physically attractive and theatrically talented Jeanne Moraeau?
If their role is as important as the writer/directors, then Moraeau
can be credited for helping to make Catherine a great cinematic emblem
of almost every projected Freudian ideal.
In Freuds influential work The Future of an Illusion
he posits the idea that a neonate makes a God of is father in order
to make sense of a vast, overwhelming world which is difficult to perceive.
Jules and Jim may be adults, but the modern world is still overwhelming
and confusing perhaps a point were the idea of the film as a
representation of fractured Europe can come into play. In what has become
their small world, populated by each other and Catherine, they have
two options one is to make a God-figure out of each other, which
to a point Jules does to Jim in the first half of the film. The second
is to make a God-figure out of Catherine but as the Oedipus complex
situation has made a mother-figure out of her, can she possibly
fulfil roles which are more traditionally paternal?
Catherines femininity is undeniable, but women are arguably less
defensive of their gender-role than men. As the sense of masculine competition
between Jules and Jim accelerates, albeit in a latent, largely unseen
fashion (fitting with Freudian hermeneutics of suspicion)
Catherine is happier to treat gender as a plaything. In one of the films
most famous scenes, Jules and Jim dress Catherine up as a man (complete
with a drawn on moustache, that eternal symbol of masculinity) and the
three of them race each other. The very act of racing is typical of
masculine competition are Jules and Jim racing against Catherine,
or for her? After all, her masculine look is mere play, which they know
will become erased.
Linguistically, there is a faint irony here the
French noun moustache is actually a feminine word. In Sausserean
terms, the linguistic subject is here completely at odds with its sign,
but here the two are made to fit as this artificial moustache
is feminised by the person it is on.
In primitive terms, it could be said that Jim wins Catherine
in him and Jules competition, because he is the one who actually has
a son with Catherine, passing on his DNA and thus preserving himself.
This would also allow the Oedipus complex to begin in his son, which
could allow Jim to overcome his. Although everything ends tragically
in Jules et Jim, in terms of storytelling, Freudian or otherwise,
it is rather straightforward. The same can not be said of other influential
directors working in Europe at this time, such as Spains aforementioned
Luis Bunuel the main contributor to Surrealism in film.
When we think of European or arthouse cinema, our immediate reaction
is to think of the French. But the Spanish here have been just as influential,
as Bunuel shows (although his France-based work blurs the lines). In
recent years, it could be argued that one of the most influential and
successful crossover directors has been the aforementioned
Pedro Almodovar, whose Freudian films have the feel of the melodramatic
daytime soaps so beloved by the Spanish, but deal with far more complex
and multi-layered themes.
Even though he has been making films which have been successful in his
own nation since the late 1970s, Almodovar first came to attention
in the UK in 1999 with All About My Mother. Almodovars world
is peppered with gender dysphoria and peoples relationships with
their mothers, and All about My Mother is certainly a typically
representative film of his. The relationship between the mother
of the title and her teenage son Esteban is intimate and affectionate;
perhaps his Oedipus complex is not overcome, and she as an adoring mother
actually revels in this. But the situation is more complex than this.
For the Oedipus complex to be experienced in the first place, the father
must be present Esteban never knew his father, believing him
to have died when he was an infant. As a result, then, Esteban cannot
undergo the normal Oedipus complex process and thus shortcuts
to a direct attachment to his mother and his mother alone.
It is very early on in the film when Esteban is killed after being hit
by a car. This informs the rest of the films story as Manuela, his mother,
sets out to overcome her grief and deal with his death. Whilst grief
is obviously a universal theme, it is also one open to Freudian readings,
as something which he actively deals with in his essay Mourning
and Melancholia, a study of the theme. For Freud, mourning is,
logically, the loss of the object-libido. This leads to a withdrawing
of the individual libido; withdrawing from the world. This is completely
at turned around in All About My Mother instead of
withdrawing from the world, Manuela makes herself more visible than
ever in the world, even returning to the stage through a series of coincidental,
intriguing events.
Eventually, this series of events leads Manuela back to Estebans
father, a pre-op transsexual named Lola. This makes the late Estebans
situation even more intriguing if he had known his father, rather
than simply believed him dead, how different would his life have been?
The Oedipus complex is a way for standard gender development to occur
what would the situation be for somebody raised by a former man
who had altered his own gender? Whilst heterosexuality forms the core
of most of Freuds s writing on sex and gender, homosexuality is
not ignored. As with any ideas on homosexuality in this more narrow-minded
age, some of his thinking on the subject is somewhat dated. Homosexuality
in Freud is almost narcissistic; the persons object-ideal is a reflection
of the self. But the situation that Almodovar creates in All About
My Mother is so much more complicated than straightforward homosexuality;
is such a modern and unusual situation which is difficult to tackle
in Freudian terms. Lola was born a man, and retains male genitalia,
but is living and dressing (let us not completely ignore the cultural
significance of dress) but is still choosing women as his sexual partners,
having impregnated both Manuela and her friend, young nun Rosa (Penelope
Cruz). Is this heterosexuality, or homosexuality? In truth it is probably
neither. One of the greatest achievements of Almodovars films
is that sexuality can not take on its conventional labels. Trying to
pin down what kind of Oedipus complex a character like Lola would have
is an impossible task, but Freud would certainly presume that it did
not occur in the usual destroy the father/possess the mother manner,
as this means that he would have mimicked the father in order to be
a more conventional man. The potential and backstorys for
gender development is indivual characters is left open-ended we
know nothing of Lolas family background and how she came to alter
her gender. Her absence in Estebans life raises further off-screen
questions did her absence influence his sexuality, and would
it have followed the same path (considering the lack of a conventional
father figure either way?)
The modern world has proved some elements of the Oedipus complex wrong,
in spite of its important place in developmental psychology. The complex
does seem to fundamentally suggest, after all, that an absent father
figure would lead to gender dysmorphia or homosexuality, but many young
men are raised by single mothers and still fit the narrow mould of a
conventional man. It does not take any kind of scientific
or sociological study to confirm this; we can just like around. The
majority of people raised by actual transgender parents, however, is
very small and difficult to gain conclusions from. Manuela has chosen
to tell Esteban that his father is dead rather than expose him to what
he/she truly is. Estebans own sexuality may never be truly apparent,
but his demeanour fits a stereotype belonging more to the homosexuality
that Freud have would have placed him in than heterosexuality. Almodovars
films may invert, subvert and generally play with the Freudian, but
on this particular point he matches Freud perfectly.
Of course, these kinds of ideas in Almodovars films are more closely
linked with later queer theory, who take their cue from
Freud, than Freud himself. One of the leading figures on queer
theory is Judith Butler whose most famous book Gender Trouble
(1990) saw her argue that feminisms key mistake was trying to assert
that women were a group with common characteristics and
interests. Butler claims that this approach performs an unwitting
regulation and reification of gender relations, which reinforces
a binary view gender relations in which human beings are divided into
two clear-cut groups, women and men. Rather than opening up the possibilities
for a person to form and choose them, feminism had closed the options
down.
Thus, Almodovars films are almost post-feminist if looked at through
a Butler-inspired viewpoint, as many of the characters have asserted
power over their gender by choosing it.
Butler notes in her works that feminists rejected the idea that feminist
rejected the idea that biology is destiny, and yet developed an account
of a patriarchal culture which assumed that masculine and feminine genders
would invariably be built, by culture, upon male and female
bodies, making the same destiny just as inescapable. This argument allows
no room for choice, reason or resistance.
So, if this is to be rejected, that should we opt for instead? Butler
argues in favour for the alternative of those historical and anthroplogical
positions that understand gender as a relation among socially constituted
subjects in specifiable contexts. For Butler, gender should be seen
as a fluid variable which shifts and changes in different contexts and
different times.
Even though Butler is the forerunner of these theories under the name
Queer Theory, they were not completely new or groundbreaking
we only need to turn back to the 1940s novels of Jean Genet
(for example, in his classic novel Our Lady Of the Flowers"
descriptions of the character Divine move seamlessly from heto
she) to see this. As it happens, Butler is partly inspired
by Genets friend Michel Foucault. His influence forms an argument
that sex (in its masculine and femininedefinitions),
which in turn provokes desire towards the opposite gender, which is
a kind of continuum. Butler, like Foucault, believes in breaking the
links between these, in order to make gender and desire flexible, not
caused by other stable factors. This theory is certainly captured in
All About My Mother. Characters such as Lola seem unrestrained
by any stable factors, as she is born male, becomes female, but still
feels desire towards other females (even though, of course, Butler would
reject these particular labels.) The way such characters operate certainly
fits with Butlers claims in Gender Trouble that there
is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender
identity
is performatively constituted by the very expressions that
are said to be its results. This indicates that for Butler, gender
is a performance; its what you actually do at particular times,
rather than a universal who you are. Butler suggests that certain cultural
configurations of gender have seized a hegemonic hold, but it does not
have to be this way. This might all seem a little to idealistic, as
if there is no unfeasible utopian vision at the heart of it, but Butler
actually proposes that we can take subversive action right now, we can
create the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation, of
genders. Are Almodovars characters taking part in this? It is
difficult to say. All About My Mother was released in 1999,
nine years after the publication of Gender Trouble. But
there is nothing to suggest that the transgender roles adopted by Lola
etc are implicitly political. People who experiment with their gender
(in life as much as in art) are often confused and distressed, not some
sort of gender warrior). But to talk about merely adopted a transgender
role is to oversimplify Butlers ideas (and ideology).Butler argues
that we all put on a gender performance anyway, whether it is traditional
or not, and so it is not a question of whether to do a gender
performance, but what form that performance will take. By opting to
do something different with it, we might work to change gender norms
and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity.
Considering the somewhat dated attitude that Freud sometimes proposes
in his thinking towards gender and sexuality, and the very modern ideas
on these themes often proposed by contemporary European cinema, a theory
like Butlers, spawned from Freudian elements, seems to have more relevance
as a point of analysis. Butlers ideas certainly throw up some
interesting questions why should gender be binary? One character
in All About My Mother, a colourful, down-on-her-luck transgender
prostitute named tells somebody that clients like good big hard
tits and a good big hard cock, something which unites the supposed
binaries in order to remove them. But were Freud has been widely influential
enough to be popular for critical theory and film theory, could the
same ever be said for Butler? How far-reaching have the ideas in Gender
Trouble been?
The idea of identity as free-floating, connected to a performance instead
of an essence, spawned the school of queer theory as a whole
new critical theory, thus ensuring Butlers place in the critical
canon.
Other key writers on queer theory include Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick,
whose groundbreaking word Epistemology of the Closet combined
feminist with anti-homophobic methodologies. It was released in the
same year as Gender Trouble, and is just as interesting
in its approach, sometimes addressing similar themes. Sedgewick writes,
in twentieth century Western culture gender and sexuality represent
two analytic axes that may productively be imagined as being as distinct
from one another as, say, gender and class, or class and race. Distinct,
that is to say, no more than minimally, and nonetheless usefully.
In Epistemology of the Closet Sedgewick argues for the absolute
centrality of sexuality to understand modern culture, saying in the
very beginning of the text that an understanding of virtually
any aspect of modern Western culture must be, not merely incomplete,
but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not
incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition.
Whilst undeniably more modern, some of Sedgewicks thought is certainly
grounded in Freudian ideas, particularly the idea of sexuality as the
root and central point of human actions. However, were Freud makes the
homosexual/heterosexual definition, Sedgewick demonstrates that this
distinction is fundamentally incoherent, in spite of being at the heart
of modern sexual definition. There are two reasons for this. One is
that there is the persistent contradiction inherent in representing
homosexuality as the property of a distinct minority population. Reasonably,
Sedgewick labels this a minoritizing view. This is a tangent
of the idea that it is a sexual desire that potentially marks everyone,
including ostensibly heterosexual subjects which Sdgewick describes
as a universalizing view. On the other hand, there is the
abiding contradiction in thinking about the gendering of homosexual
desire in both transitive and separatist terms, where s transitive understanding
locates that desire as originating in some threshold space between gender
categories whilst a separatist understanding takes it as the purest
expression of masculinity or femininity.
The theories proposed by Butler, Sedgewick and other queer theory thinkers
such as provide useful ground. Using them to critique pre-1990s
films is obviously problematic due to the timescale, but films made
post-1990, such as Almodovars later films, are almost certainly
the films of Queer Theory. A Freudian reading is more difficult as even
more contemporary Freud-inspired thinkers would no doubt hold some objectives
to the kinds of characters Almodovar creates for example Jacques
Lacan, whose thought is very popular in film theory (particularly his
notion of the gaze) would claim that to be transgender is
a concept that would be imaginary, as certain cultural formations use
biological differences as a peg. A thinker like Derrida, who wants to
eliminate binaries, would have more in common with Butler, as it seems
to be an argument with the supposed male/female binary which most distinguishes
Butlers thought.
Queer Theory often has a difficult relationship with Freudian thought.
It is partly reliant on his ideas to centre its own theories, but on
the other hand it is locked in an argument with him. Feminism, which
is still a precursor to queer theory in spite of Butlers argument with
it, usually derides and dislikes Freud. But is he really misogynist,
or has it just been misinterpreted this way?
Two of Freuds most famous theories have often been derided as
sexist. One is penis envy many feminists find the idea of women
envying their penis completely derogatory; almost laughable. But, more
to the point, is it an accurate theory? Very few women claim to claim
a penis; far more men claim to envy female genitalia. But in the film,
the penis is often prized in sex scenes. Films which are explicit, but
not necessarily pornography, put proud focus on it in sex scenes; the
same attention given to female genitalia is the reserve of out-and-out
pornography. Films which deal with explicit, taboo themes whilst being
many miles away from pornography have potential to bridge some interesting
Freudian gaps. A good example of this is the film The Piano Teacher.
The Piano Teacher is not an original screenplay, but is
adapted from a famously discomfiting novel by Elfriede Helinek, whose
Nobel prize for Literature caused a moral outrage on the grounds of
her pornographic nature. But pornorgraphy is
not an appropriate label for her novels they break taboos, but
do ot titillate or provide sexual fulfilment. The film centres on a
cold masochistic woman, played by Isabel Huppert, a character who could
be seen as Freudian, in hugely distorted ways. She has an absent father
and shares a bed with her overbearing mother, who at one point she makes
a pass at an unresolved Oedipus complex, yes, but giving a woman
(who should undergo the female complex, the Electra theory) distorts
the theory. The film was directed by Micheal Hanneke, an acclaimed maverick
who has an interest in tapping into the viewers psyche when it comes
to their capacity for enjoying violence. But where this is evident in
some of his earlier films, such as Funny Games, The
Piano Teacher is more likely to prompt the viewer to look away,
particularly when Hupperts character Erika mutilates her own genitals.
Here the female genitals are being depicted, but as a source of discomfort.
Freud may have talked about penis envy but this kind of
vaginal anger pushes the theory even further. Lars Von Triers
film Antichrist caused similar controversy with its scenes
of auto-clitorectomy. Where films like Almodovars take Freudian
theory and subvert it,Von Trier and Haneke capitalise on it in extreme
ways.
Sexuality is at the heart of so much cinema; to view it all with a
Freudian viewpoint would be to exaggerate and overcomplicate many films.
But the influence of Freud on twentieth century thought on gender and
sexuality in Europe means that his influence on cinema is almost as
unavoidable as it is in psychology.
Amy Britton
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sigmund Freud An Outline of Psychoanalysis Penguin 2003
Sigmund Freud The Complete Works Volume 1&2 Vintage 2001
Judith Butler Gender Trouble Routledge 2006
Mark Cousins The Story Of Film: A Odyssey Pavilion 2011
Elfriede Jelinek The Piano Teacher Vintage 2001
Eve Kofosky Sedgewick Epistemology of the Closet University of California
Press 2003
|