Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]

LONG-TERM FANTASIES REPETITIVELY WORKED THROUGH IN FILM

Henry Lawton
(Group for the Psychohistory Study of Film, New Jersey)
Mentalities / Mentality's 9#2 (1994)
For more On film studies see:
Special Issue -"Psychohistory Of The Cinema"
Journal of Psychohistory 20(1) Summer 1992

Films attempt to communicate shared fantasy and emotion. Those that are popular succeed in doing so, those that are not act as trail balloons presenting fantasy scenarios to be accepted or rejected as the shared emotion and fantasy of the group dictate. We live in a continual theatre of fantasies, felt and presented, all competing for places in the house of our attention, feeling, and emotion. Films may present one basic fantasy or a number of them. Thus, in our attempts to psychohistorically under-stand film we often find ourselves confronted with many different themes. One thing that I have begun to see from my study of film is that the conventional definition of group fantasy needs to broadened. Fantasy subject matter in film also changes, but not via the same sort of readily discernible cyclical patterns noted by Lloyd deMause. The changes tend to be much more long term and not necessarily in accordance with any patterns previously observed (the ebb and flow of the western movie over the last thirty years is a particularly obvious example of what I am trying to get at). Filmic fantasy seems more centered on subjects rather than dynamics of relationship and feelings about ourselves in the world. Such fantasies might center on such human concerns as love, sexuality (hetero and homo), wealth, success, creation (where babies come from and how they are born), fear of attack, who is the enemy, war pro and con), science and technology (especially in the sense of capabilities and knowing limits), the atom bomb, politics (e.g., should be vs. what we are, etc.), millennial/apocalyptic longings, extending man's dominion to the stars, an idyllic past, what may lie in the future, rage and horror, overcoming monsters, the imagination of disaster, heroism, religion, the family (changing relationships, changing meanings of the family in our society, etc.), revolution, friendship, mate vs female, redemption, the lure of the primitive, etc.

It might be of interest to take one of these categories to try and comprehend its workings over time. I selected fantasies about creation because this is a subject that has preoccupied us all to some degree. If we think back into our childhoods, we can all remember youthful fantasies about where babies came from, how you did "it," or where you put "it." When I was eleven or twelve, I remember being out with two of my buddies. We were walking down the street and being curious young men, our talk eventually turned to sexual issues. One of my friends asked: "But where do you put it? In the front? In the rear? Or in the middle?" Much to this boy's consternation, the other two of us broke into raucous laughter at his expense. We knowingly assured him that you put it in the front ("where did you ever get the middle?"), hoping against secret hope that he would not question us further, thereby exposing that we really did not quite know what putting in the front meant either!

Perhaps the most enduring movie fantasy on this subject involves creation without genital sexuality and is embodied most powerfully in the original Frankenstein (1931). Henry Frankenstein has made a body/baby "with my own hands," it "is not dead, it has he is going to give it life, he alone has found "the great ray that first bought life to the world." Indeed, he seems to harness nature and somehow bring a spark of life to his constructed body, just to show he can do it. He seems not unlike a grandiose, exhibitionistic little boy who wants to frighten his loved ones, with his supposed power really to hide his tremendous sexual confusion and anxiety. Who does he wish to show? Shortly after the creature is bought to life, he tells his old professor

WALDMAN:-
"I believe in this monster and if you do not, leave me alone."
WALDMAN:- "But think of Elizabeth, your father.."
FRANKENSTEIN:- "Elizabeth believes in me. My Father, he never believes in anyone."

When the elder Frankenstein is told by the Burgomaster of the village that Henry is the it spitting image of him, his response is an irritated: "Heaven forbid!" He is presented in the film as a simple man, whose great hope was that his son would marry his long suffering fiancee, Elizabeth, settle down and give him a grand son.

During the creation scene, Henry Frankenstein is rather like the nerd who has suddenly turned on all those who have ever hurt him or given him a hard time. He postures threateningly, telling his audience to be quiet and watch what he is going to do. He is going to show us his manhood. The creation is like some sort of elaborate exhibitionism, the body lifted up and offered to the penetration of the lightening, and we are able to see. The whole creation is symbolic sex devoid of emotion, distanced from passion. His tower is at once erect phallus and womb, the raising of the table a fantasy of entering the womb of heaven to be impregnated by electrical sperm/lightening. Even though we do not see the actual conception, there is no mystery: we see raw power. The nerd son is in charge, daddy will have to believe in him now. Elizabeth seems almost able to believe. He plaintively declares to her "my experiment [sex act] is almost completed." But now everyone will have to believe (this is taken to perhaps its ultimate absurdist extreme in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein when Victor and the creature go on a vaudeville tour together, so all can see his handy work). There will be no more doubt, Henry Frankenstein has given birth to a "hideous progeny as Mary Shelly called her creation. He turns his creature into a monster perhaps out of envy of female ability to give birth. The creature becomes a projection of his creator's personal feelings of monstrousness, rage, and nihilistic hate.

The attractive aspect of this fantasy lies in the element of power. Frankenstein was released in 1931, during the height of the Depression. The act of creation without genital sexuality is a fantasy of power in its most omnipotent and grandiose sense. Like all such creations, the result gets out of hand. The Depression could be seen as a somehow magically created monster that is destroying us, thus it must die to give us hope that the world can again become a safe, happy place. Frankenstein embodies the same fantasies. Its appeal may also be due to the fact that it removes the anxiety inherent in genital sexuality (e.g., Will I be potent? will I perform well? will I satisfy my partner, myself?) and substitutes feelings of unlimited power and omnipotence. We can stand as gods, unafraid, able to create at will, without hesitation, simply by our force of will (thus always potent, never afraid) and superior intellect. Despite the continual reinforcement that the result of such creation means, these fantasies are insane, they remain very powerful in our shared emotional universe over long, long periods. (How many hundreds of times has this story has been refilmed since 1931?) For all its power, the fantasy of Frankenstein is really deeply morbid and nihilistic. There is no love here, no relationship or sharing, no mutual joy of partners in pleasure and passion. There is only the empty loneliness of power... a sick, sad emptiness. Creation here is not joyous and t enhancing, rather the result is inevitably me son of horrible destruction.

Children's fantasies about creation and how babies are made often reflect some element of sadism (expressions of parental pleasure during sex might easily be misinterpreted as one partner (usually daddy] inflicting pain on the other partner (usually mommy] and evoke fear id/or anger in the child/spectator: "Why is daddy hurting mommy like that?"). In Frankenstein the creation scene may be melodramatic and even over blown, but it hardly seems sadistic. It is only after the creature's birth that sadism emerges, especially the person of Dr Frankenstein's deformed assistant, Fritz, who seems to take a positively maniacal pleasure in baiting and torturing the poor creature with fire, until one day, provoked beyond endurance, the creature lashes back and ills his tormentor. Henry Frankenstein aids I this atrocity because he seems to lose interest in his creation after the deed is done and is unwilling to assume further moral responsibility for his handiwork. The creature ultimately becomes a tragic figure of mythic dimension lost in a world he neither made nor understands, acting out the displaced sadism his creation upon the innocent villagers of the local countryside that Baron Henry Frankenstein is supposed to oversee and protect.

In the 1936 Island Of Lost Souls mad scientist Charles Laughton attempts to create humans via very painful transformation of animals with drugs. Most of his efforts go grotesquely awry and the island is populated with a culture of half human half animal beings that ultimately rise up and kill their creator, while the hero and the scientist's one success escape the island. This film takes the sense of sadism inherent in child creation fantasies glories in it and rubs our faces in it, even to the point of calling the mad doctor's laboratory "The House of Pain." A more elegant and stylish version of the same story embodying all the sadistic trappings of the old version and then some was made in 1977 as The Island Of Dr Moreau.

In 1956, two contributions to the fantasy appear: Forbidden Planet and Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Both films are genre classics. Forbidden Planet involves creation via a fantastic machine able to transform mental energy into instrumentality it will do the bidding of the thinker. Here, mad Dr. Morpheus creates invisible monsters it kill for him in the service of his own unconscious rage. Elements of sadism are readily obvious and directed at all who threaten in any way his omnipotent little universe. When he finally realizes what he has been doing, Dr. Morpheus has the grace to do himself in. Again, normality is saved from the monster. Invasion of The Body Snatchers may be the first great paranoid movie ever made. It involves mysterious seed pods from outer space, who, when humans go to sleep, perfectly replicate them and mysteriously dispose of the real person. The new creations differ from those they replace only in the sense of having no emotion. As more and more are re-created the process of the new creation is carried out calmly and with systematic efficiency that seems implicitly sadistic in its disregard for the implications of its conduct. The only way this plague can be stopped is if humans learn of it before it is too late; the movie holds out some hope for that in the end. In the remake (1978) no one escapes and there is no hope for humanity against this new creation. Genital sexuality continues not to be an issue in these versions of the fantasy. Creation as destruction monstrousness remains alive and well. There remains a profound fear of life in this fantasy.

In Demon Seed (1977) we see a parody of genital sexuality that has a computer mating with a women. It takes an egg from the woman, fertilizes it, removes it from her womb to a special incubator where their baby grows to full-term in twenty-eight days. The computer (designed, interestingly enough, by the woman's husband) wants to create a superior being who will replace ordinary people and save the world from destruction. The computer tells her that "our child will learn from you what it means to be human."

The Manitou (1978) involves the heroine developing a large tumor on her neck and back. Eventually it is discovered that the tumor is the foetus of a manitou (an Indian witch doctor in control of magical powers great enough to destroy the world) capable of controlling his own reincarnations. The creation is like a parasite using its helpless host until it is strong enough to burst forth in all its malevolent power to try and bring chaos back to the world. The whole creation process is disgusting and more than a little sadistic to its poor female victim.

In John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) we see an inversion of genital creation with protagonist Michael killing sexually active girls with long phallic knives. This film which largely gave birth to the modern slasher genre involves a fantasy of creation as death. In a parody of genital sexuality, Michael becomes a creator of death rather than life with his long phallic knife. He does his destructive work with monstrous, implacable efficiency, his seeming hate of successfully sexual women is so powerful and overwhelming that in the end we remain uncertain as to whether he has really been killed.

David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979) involves a woman somehow able to develop an external womb as a symbol of her pent-up rage. She conceives without male assistance and gives birth to her brood; zombie-like, semi-children, who, at their mother's bidding, will go out and kill without question as an expression of her rage. These "children" are externalized parts of the mother generated by her imagination, rather than beings in any separate sense.

Now we come to Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), perhaps the most outrageous and graphic depictions of fantasies about how children are created. These films, from a fantasy point of view, are very rich and deep, but I am only going to focus on aspects pertinent to creation. The crew members of the ship Nostromo are awakened from suspended animation by their computer ("mother") and sent to explore a planet. They find this long dead space ship with a group of what seem to be eggs bathed in an eerie blue light. One of the men (Kane) bends down to examine them, suddenly one seems to erupt and fasten itself to the face plate of his helmet. Upon return to the ship, the creature is found to have fastened itself to his face and neck, with part of its body inserted down his throat Efforts to detach it fail and the crew has to watch and wait. Several hours later, the apparently dead creature drops off Kane's face. Still later, Kane awakens seemingly unaffected by his ordeal. His only memory is of a "horrible dream about smothering:' Before going back to suspended animation the crew has a meal to celebrate their good fortune. During the meal, Kane gags and screams; in what may be the most horrendous birth scene ever filmed, the monster suddenly bursts forth from his chest (a variation of my childhood friend's fantasy?). It is as if he went into sudden violent labor and died during child birth. We stare at the Alien monster baby for a moment as it stands in the gaping hole that was a man's chest. It looks like an erect phallus with teeth, a penis dentatus, if you will (Young [448] offers a similar notion)[2].

Here we see sexual insemination via the mouth, gestation in the middle of the body, and sadistic birth through the middle of the body. It turns out these monsters are like parasites and use humans as living hosts after inseminating them through the mouth. There is no sense of sexuality here, men and women are indiscriminately used as hosts by the monsters. Creation here is devoid of emotion; hosts are simply receptacles. We see this very clearly in Aliens when a relief expedition returns to the planet and finds the remaining colonists in a state of death-in-life waiting helplessly to be torn to shreds by hideous, violent births of still more' monsters. This is a fantasy of creation that is sadistic and brutal in the extreme. There seems to be no defense against the onslaught of these creatures. In Alien 3, we realize to our horror that Ripley is a carrier of the monster also. Her salvation is to throw herself into a fiery pit as the monster bursts through her chest, holding it close to her so that it can not escape as mother and monster baby plunge into the flames together. They die together and humanity is safe for the moment at least.

There is no evolution in any of these films toward realization that genital sexuality is good. Birth inevitably involves some sort of hideous result. To understand the equation of birth and monstrousness in these films, it is helpful to look at early medical ideas on how and why women gave birth to deformed babies. A very striking belief has persisted from antiquity almost till modern times. When children were born too radically dissimilar from their parents, they were generally seen as monstrous.

Instead of reproducing the father's image, as nature commands, the monstrous child bore witness to the violent desires that moved the mother at the time of conception or during pregnancy. The resulting offspring carried the marks of her whims and fancy rather than the recognizable features of its legitimate genitor. The monster thus erased paternity and proclaimed the dangerous power of the female imagination...The maternal imagination erased the legitimate father's image from his offspring and thus created a monster...Many troubling secrets are made public by women the day they give birth, when the monster reveals what has remained hidden since conception. The ability of women to feel desires so violently that they mark their progeny with the signs of their unsatisfied cravings...illustrates the role of imagination as the faculty...that produces deformities in the child. (Huet: 1, 8, 17)

Such theories persisted despite growing medical evidence they were wrong. As we see from the story of Frankenstein, these ideas persist because they are in service of silent fantasy desires to be able to procreate without an other. Mary Shelly follows in this tradition, so the contention of Anne K Mellor that Shelly's myth is "unique, both in content and origin" (38) clearly requires modification. Also, the force of maternal imagination is especially obvious in Cronenberg's The Brood, and to a somewhat lesser extent in Alien/Aliens. When we contemplate fantasies of birth and its results, we get into the realm of powerful, long term shared emotional issues.

All of these films seem to perceive normal sexual urges as incredibly powerful and profoundly threatening. They only way these terrifying urges can be controlled is by reversion/regression to the most primitive levels of fantasy. Even then the control remains uncertain, which is why we see the repetitive working through over and over again in the hope that maybe we will get it right this time.

What has changed here over time? There seems a fairly constant shying away from genital sexuality or its variants. The fantasy stays pretty consistently at a primitive emotional level. A basic change seems to be in the dimension of sadism. Modem filmic fantasy about creation is far more brutal, explicitly sadistic and filled with rage than it used to be. With the Alien there is no sense odd desire, pleasure or passion, only cold cruel implacability. There is no remorse or hesitation, only function. Conventional notions of good and evil do not seem operative here. Creation somehow seems to have gotten beyond prevailing norms; it is no longer a territory of joy and excitement, but one of horror and death. Humanity's only role is as a vessel for the new pestilence (Aids?). The evolution of this fantasy, as I have sketched it, seems to ask: What have we come to? Why are we so consumed with the rage that leads to death? What is going on? Where does the unspeakable sadism and rage animating the fantasies of films like the Alien trilogy come from? Where is the love, joy, passion, and excitement that we know to be inherent in the real creation process? I do not know for sure, but it does seem clear that in the case of shared filmic fantasies about creation their evolution seems to mirror on some level very disturbing elements of the shared emotional evolution of our society as a whole.

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Group for the Psychohistorical Study of Film on 14 May 1994, 1 wish to thank Deborah Tanzer, Richard Morrock, Robert Saunders, and Geraldine Pauling for their excellent feedback.

2 Huet [11] shows a picture from a l6th-century medical text of a child with a snake that appears to be inside its body eating it alive from the inside out. The congruence with the birth depicted in Allen is quite striking and unsettling. It is highly unlikely, however, that the film makers had any awareness of this information while making the film.

SOURCES

DeMause, Lloyd. "Historical Group Fantasy - Journal of Psychohistory 7:1(1979)1-70.
Huet, Marie-Helene, Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1993.
Mellor, Anne K, Mary Shelly: Her Life. Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Young. Robert M. "Alien 3". Free Associations, 4:3 (1994). 447-53.

Henry Lawton is Book Review Editor of the JOURNAL OF PSYCHOHISTORY, Secretary of the IPA, and author of the newly published PSYCHOHISTORIAN' S HANDBOOK.

For more On film studies see:
Special Issue -"Psychohistory Of The Cinema"
Journal of Psychohistory 20(1) Summer 1992

Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Articles & Texts [Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal] [Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]

To report errors in this electronic
transcription please contact:
[email protected]