The central conflict in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) takes place within the mind of Dr. Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau). Judah’s unstable mistress Dolores (Angelica Huston) threatens to tell Judah’s wife (Claire Bloom) about their adulterous relationship unless he leaves his wife for her. As a non-religious man—a “scientist”—Judah believes that his sin of adultery could remain undiscovered and unpunished. But now that his life as a respected ophthalmologist and family man are jeopardized by Dolores, he considers a major crime, “getting rid of her.” This option is available through Judah’s brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), a criminal who could hire an anonymous assassin to do the job. Considering the major sin of murder weighs heavily on Judah, and a crisis of conscience ensues. Eventually, Judah goes ahead with the crime, and Dolores is murdered. Despite a guilt-driven urge to confess, Judah is never caught.
The cost of Judah’s crime is a small portion of his soul, not the overwhelming sense of guilt that we would expect as just desserts in a mainstream movie. He is not crippled by guilt, nor is he driven to turn himself in to the nearest policeman. Judah is just subtly troubled by the inherent amorality of the world, and the existence of this amorality within himself. He has lost his sense of moral superiority over his brother Jack and others like him, but he has retained his wealth, position, freedom and family. The triumph of Judah’s initiative over his guilt saved his life from collapse and tragedy, though it could be argued that it was his weak sense of guilt and overdeveloped sense of initiative that got him into trouble in the first place. In the final scene, a voice-over of a philosophy professor declares: “We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices….” Though Judah’s life was not destroyed by his decision to destroy the life of another, his own identity and self-concept as an essentially moral human being are lost forever. The decision of whether Judah is actually punished for his crime or not is ultimately left up to the viewer.
Erikson’s fourth stage of identity development revolves around the conflict between work and play. Children need to learn how to balance their desire to play with their obligation to work. Industry versus inferiority corresponds with Freud’s latency period, in which children learn to sublimate their libido energy into industrious activities. “Industry” refers to a need to complete and master projects and challenging tasks. If children are successful at this stage, they gain a feeling of industrious self-worth. If they are not successful, their self-esteem may be wounded, resulting in a basic sense of “inferiority.” In keeping with Erikson’s model, the proper resolution of this stage is neither industry nor inferiority, but a healthy balance between the need to work and the drive to play.
It is important for children to understand work as an important part of their identities. But there is a thin line between loving your work and believing that one is only deserving of love if you are successful in your work. Over-industriousness arises when work becomes psychologically addictive. The workaholic is driven both by the desire to work and the fear of the guilt that arises from not working. The workaholic feels guilty, inferior and worthless when he is not being industrious. He defines himself as a “human doing” rather than a “human being,” and can only feel worthwhile and deserving of love if he is being productive. The only thing that dulls the workaholic’s inner sense of inferiority is work, the activity that generates the money and success that are the external hallmarks of industrious success.
The B-plot in Crimes and Misdemeanors revolves around Woody Allen’s character. Clifford is a charming, funny, intelligent and artistic documentary filmmaker who nevertheless feels inferior to his brother-in-law, Lester (Alan Alda). While Clifford is proud of his films, they are not huge commercial successes like Lester’s television productions. Clifford’s feelings of envy and resentment towards Lester are repeatedly pointed out to him by his wife and Lester’s sister, Wendy (Joanna Gleason), who is divorcing Clifford because he is unsuccessful. She tells him: “I think you’re jealous because he’s a much honored, highly respected man and he’s a millionaire ten times over, and he’s doing what you’d love to do … he’s everything you wish you could be.”
Clifford’s feelings of inferiority are exacerbated when Lester offers Clifford “a chance to earn some big money and reach a big audience” by directing a documentary about him for public television. Driven by the need for money to complete his own film (a short subject about a philosophy professor), Clifford swallows what’s left of his pride and agrees to become Lester’s biographer. If this is not enough, an associate producer on the documentary, Halley (Mia Farrow), catches both Clifford’s and Lester’s fancy. Clifford now finds himself competing with Lester for Wendy’s respect, Halley’s love and a sense of artistic integrity. For a little while, it looks like Clifford might win out. Halley appreciates Clifford’s film about the philosophy professor and suggests producing it as a public television special. In Halley, Clifford sees a replacement for Wendy. Halley is beautiful and intelligent. She respects Clifford as an artist and even shares his condescending attitude towards Lester, whom Clifford sees as a pompous boob. But Clifford’s aching sense of inferiority backfires and destroys everything. Clifford’s documentary is so blatantly hostile towards Lester that the film is taken away from him. Lester takes over production of the film and Clifford loses this project along with the opportunity to make more films for public television. By attacking Lester through his film, Clifford ironically loses any chance of ever being as successful and industrious as Lester.
Clifford’s final downfall is symbolized by the death of his intellectual mentor and film subject, Professor Levy. Clifford identified with Professor Levy because, while he was not rich and famous, he was a brilliant and dedicated thinker who lived and worked with a basic sense of integrity that belied the flashiness and superficiality of Lester. When Professor Levy suddenly and inexplicably commits suicide, Clifford’s own sense of self worth is rocked to the core. He can no longer imagine himself as an artistic, if not commercial, success. In the final scene, we see that Clifford has lost everything. Lester is overjoyed when Wendy tells him that she found someone else and is leaving Clifford for good. And in a final blow to his self-esteem, Clifford discovers that he has lost Halley to Lester. Clifford admits that Lester won the rivalry for Halley’s love because Lester is “a success.” Clifford tells Halley: “This is my worst fear realized….” His realization is that integrity is relatively meaningless in a world that respects commercial success and popularity beyond everything else. He has come to grips with the sad fact that Lester is the epitome of “industry,” while he is wallowing in “inferiority.”
Zelig
Erikson coined the term identity crisis as a psychiatric diagnosis for war veterans he worked with in a veterans’ hospital. Many of the veterans were experiencing intense problems readjusting to normal society after their traumatic and often harrowing experiences in the army. Their normative conflict involved a need to resolve their identities as soldiers, in order to develop new identities as civilians. Erikson later applied the notion of identity crisis to adolescents, who often face similar challenges adjusting from childhood to adulthood. The adolescent identity crisis in Erikson’s fifth stage of psychosocial development is identity versus identity diffusion.
Erikson’s term moratorium refers to the notion that adolescence is a waiting period between childhood and adulthood. The adolescent in moratorium is actively engaged in finding an identity. At the peak of moratorium, the adolescent may resemble a human chameleon, perpetually transforming his identity at a moment’s whim in order to fit into the latest fad that has caught his fancy. Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983) is a character study of a man in the ultimate state of identity confusion. Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) has the odd ability to immediately alter his physical appearance. He has no stable sense of identity. His character alters itself in order to blend into the identities of the people around him. Zelig’s transfigurative ability earns him the title of “human
chameleon.” In the beginning of the movie, which takes place in the 1920s, Zelig is in a true state of moratorium. He freely explores different identities by indulging in instantaneous transfigurations. At one moment he’s an upper-crust Republican blueblood, the next moment he’s a lower-class Democratic kitchen worker. Now a black jazz musician, now a Chinese immigrant, now a Native American—Zelig is everybody and nobody at the same time.
Shortly after his discovery by the psychoanalytic community, Zelig is taken out of treatment by his exploitative half sister and forced to display his abilities as a freak. Often times, periods of moratorium are cut short by parental figures who determine the adolescent’s identity for him. It is quite common in both Western and traditional cultures for a dominating parent to decree that their child is going to be a doctor, lawyer, businessman, etc. The expectation that a child will take over the family business or carry on a family tradition will often lead to identity foreclosure, in which the adolescent becomes what his parents want him to become. Identity, rather than being a personal matter of individual choice, is treated as a familial obligation. In short, foreclosure is the lack of personal exploration and the absence of choice in achieving a sense of ego identity. Zelig, in his performing freak period, represents the passive resignation of a foreclosed identity. While he can appear to be anything he wants to be, his true self is psychologically undeveloped, spiritually empty and fundamentally nonexistent.
Zelig escapes his life as a freak and returns to a state of moratorium, once again jumping from identity to identity. He is rediscovered by the psychoanalytic community and begins intensive analysis with Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow). Due to a good deal of transference and Dr. Fletcher’s “unconditional positive regard” as a caring mother figure, Zelig overcomes his psychotic need to transfigure himself. He begins to form a strong sense of personal identity. While Zelig used to blend in completely in every situation, now he is willing to stand out. Zelig even makes a point of being an individual. He intentionally starts an argument with a doctor over the weather, and then attacks him with a rake. Zelig’s deliberate contrariness is an example of rebellion, another common feature of the adolescent identity crisis. Like the defiance of a small child, rebellion is a personal statement of individuality, autonomy and the will to be one’s self.
Eventually, at least for a while, Zelig learns to manage his rebelliousness and forms a personal sense of identity that he is comfortable with. Unfortunately, Zelig’s past catches up with him, and he is sued by all the people he deceived during his long moratorium as the human chameleon. The scandals, lawsuits and life in the public eye are too much for Zelig’s still fragile sense of self. He regresses to his earlier defense mechanism, flees and transfigures himself into obscurity. Zelig is now in a state of diffusion. He does not have a strong sense of personal identity and he is not actively exploring. Instead, Zelig is avoiding the problem. Once again, Zelig is both everybody and nobody.
Negative Identity
When a person becomes completely lost and confused in his search for a personal identity, he runs the risk of forming a “negative identity, i.e. an identity perversely based on all those identifications and roles which, at critical stages of development, had been presented to him as most undesirable or dangerous….” According to Erikson negative identities are identities that are opposed to the values of the individual’s upbringing. When faced with a choice between being “nobody” and “somebody totally bad,” many individuals would prefer an especially bad identity than no special identity at all. Zelig displays this preference in his transfiguration in Berlin, where he becomes a high-ranking official in Hitler’s Nazi party.
By merging himself into the faceless masses of a fascist totalitarian regime, Zelig completely blots out his own identity in favor of an all-encompassing group identity. Zelig’s choice of the Nazi party is comical but also significant to his character. The Nazis were Jew haters, and Zelig’s decision to become a Nazi points to his own self-hatred. Zelig’s story raises the issue of conformity at the individual level, and it also symbolizes the issue of assimilation at the cultural level. Conformity and assimilation are the individual and cultural expressions of the fundamental human need to identify with a larger whole. Zelig is a self-hating Jew who tries to eradicate his own identity so he can blend in with his gentile countrymen. His story hyperbolizes the large-scale assimilation of millions of American Jews in the early twentieth century, who distanced themselves as far as possible from their traditional culture in order to dissolve into the melting pot of American life. By choosing a Nazi identity, Zelig could not have moved farther away from his own identity as a Jew.
Eventually, Zelig is discovered by Dr. Fletcher and rescued from his Nazi existence. At the end of his story, Zelig finally achieves a sense of personal identity that he is comfortable with. No longer the human chameleon, Zelig is himself and only himself. His incredible redemption is achieved through the transformative power of love—the challenge at the next stage of identity crisis.
Annie Hall
Erikson’s sixth stage, intimacy versus isolation, deals with the universal need to love and be loved. Erikson believed that intimate adult relationships recapitulate the emotional intimacy of the mother/child relationship. On a purely biological level, the physical intimacy shared between baby and its mother is not experienced again until much later in life. Sharing a bed, snuggling, suckling at the nipple, kissing, hugging and close ventral (belly to belly) contact are the most intimate physical experiences we can share with another. These types of contact are shared only by parents with their babies and adults with their lovers. Traditional psychoanalytic theory maintains that the search for a spouse in the genital stage of psychosexual development is directed by an unconscious desire to relive the physical intimacy experienced with the opposite-sex parent during infancy. Though Erikson’s focus was on emotional intimacy, he retained the traditional connection between parent/child and adult love relationships.
Intimacy is hampered by distantiation—a lack of trust and fear of vulnerability. If someone has a basic sense of mistrust in himself or his lover, he will suffer from a fear of vulnerability, resulting in an inability to disclose his most personal secrets, feelings and fears. A lack of disclosure shuts off open communication in the relationship and creates distance and tension between the lovers, resulting in emotional isolation. Distantiation is the force that pushes people apart; it is the counter-force to intimacy, the force that pulls people together. The crisis at this stage of development is to find a healthy balance between distantiation and intimacy. Too much distantiation leads to isolation. Too much intimacy can lead to an unhealthy mesh, in which the lovers’ identities become intertwined, losing their individuality and independence. The optimum resolution of the identity crisis at this stage is a healthy relationship between two people that is emotionally and physically intimate, while also providing a supportive and nonrestrictive base for self-exploration and identity development.
Relationship researchers have found that a very common conflict in romantic relationships is a gender difference in the kind of intimacy desired by males and females. While women typically complain about a lack of emotional intimacy in their relationships (i.e., too little communication and “mutual disclosure”), men complain about a lack of physical intimacy (i.e. not enough sex). In Hollywood Ending (2002), Woody Allen’s character addresses this dichotomy in a dialogue with his ex-wife (Téa Leoni) about the problems that broke up their marriage. When his ex-wife complains: “There was no communication … we had sex … but we didn’t talk.” Allen’s character replies: “Sex is better than talk! Talk is what you suffer through in order to get sex!” The trials and tribulations of love and the differences between the sexes are common leitmotifs running throughout Woody Allen’s films, addressed especially well in his classic, Annie Hall (1977).
Alvy and Annie
While most romantic comedies deal with two characters falling in love, Allen’s film dealt mainly w
ith the disintegration of a romantic relationship. For the first time on film, the couple in love talked openly about their sex lives, a subject that had previously been addressed only indirectly through double entendres, or indulgently through sex scenes. In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) talk about their sexual relationship in frank, candid discussions. Another significant deviance from the normal romance plot is the absence of an external obstacle that the couple must overcome. Most romantic plots involve impediments such as jealous rivals, possessive parents, malevolent villains or other intrigues that must be conquered by love. But the only obstacles to happiness in Alvy and Annie’s relationship is their own intimacy issues. A final unique feature in Allen’s film is the ending. Instead of getting together in the end and living happily ever after, Alvy and Annie split up and go their separate ways. While being an extremely romantic movie, Annie Hall depicts a very unromantic look at relationships, in which two people can love each other completely, while also being completely incompatible as a couple.
In an opening monologue, Alvy Singer says: “I would never want to belong to any club that would have me for a member. That’s the key joke in my adult life in terms of my relationships with women.” The joke alludes to a sense of mistrust in Alvy’s character, a creeping suspicion that any woman who would love and accept Alvy for the man he is must have something seriously wrong with her. His basic sense of mistrust in women and his relationships with them springs from a basic mistrust in himself and his own self-deprecating ego. Alvy goes on to admit: “I guess I’m going through a life crisis or something … Annie and I broke up.” The film then unfurls into a stream-of-consciousness string of related flashbacks and memories in which Alvy analyzes his life in order to understand why his relationship with Annie failed.
Movies and the Mind Page 24
