Psychology at the Movies

by Skip Dine Young

  The glamorous black and white images of classical Hollywood stars like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall seductively puffing on cigarettes as wisps of smoke twirl around them is imprinted in the public imagination. Given the change in social attitudes, one might assume that smoking behavior has decreased in movies. Yet several content analyses indicate that this is not the case; the incidence of smoking in movies was the same in 2002 as it was in 1950, despite a dramatic drop in the proportion of the US population that smokes.25 The same studies do reveal significant differences in how smoking is portrayed. In recent years, minor characters smoked more often than stars, and smoking is presented in a more negative context (e.g., associated with hostility or tension reduction).26 This is an interesting example of how Hollywood wants to have its cake/cigarettes (continue to portray a visually dramatic behavior) and eat/smoke it too (sympathetically reflect current values).

  Unconscious Conflict in the Movies

  To some critics, content analysis as simply a way of scratching the surface of movies. In order to really understand the psychological implications of movies, the analyst has to consider the deeper significance; the subtext; the implicit meaning; the hidden message; the underlying symbolism, and so on. Paul Ricoeur's definition of a symbol is any object with both a “direct, primary, literal” meaning and an “indirect, secondary and figurative” meaning.27 If film is understood to be inherently symbolic, with multiple levels of meaning, movies take on a magical quality in which they are “pregnant” with significance at the same time their meaning is uncertain. According to Ricoeur, twentieth-century thinking about human nature was strongly influenced by three scholars—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—whom he called “protagonists [philosophers] of suspicion.”28 Each of these theorists found that the major domains of human motivation (money, power, and sex, respectively) occurred on at least two levels—the obvious and the unobservable. Forces at the unobservable level have an enormous impact on the activities of daily life, yet by their nature, they resist easy understanding. Such theories have a high degree of “suspiciousness” built into them that does not trust the surface; truth is always buried and elusive.

  Of these so-called suspicious philosophers, Freud has had the greatest influence on film theory.29 Freudian theory (psychoanalysis) is extremely complicated; it uses a lot of jargon and has a fractured history, with many branches (like an extended family tree or the history of the Protestant church). Freud has always been a controversial figure, and serious criticism can be made of his methods and conclusion. As a result, when people first encounter psychoanalysis, they are often confused and sometimes tend to dismiss it based on a first impression of its most outlandish features. Yet many psychologists (myself included) still believe that many of Freud's core contentions are on target, and that even those ideas that seem off the mark are interesting.30

  In my undergraduate teaching, I have sought to teach Freud in a manner that is accessible yet true to his ideas. The core of Freudian thought can be understood by grasping a few essential assumptions about human nature,31 all of which have significant implications for how movies are interpreted.

  1. From birth, human beings are motivated by selfish desires (such as hunger, sex, aggression) to please themselves and avoid suffering. Self-centered pleasure seeking is commonly found in movies.

  2. We are born with basic motivations, our primordial life energies (the id). The harsh realities of life teach us that all of our desires cannot be fully satisfied, and we learn to negotiate the necessary compromises of everyday life (the ego). We eventually gain an internalized sense of right and wrong from our parents (the super-ego). If this internal organization does not develop properly, people run into problems. Movies often share the belief in the importance of early development by employing life-spanning plots, flashbacks, or references to critical childhood events in dialogue.

  3. Because the id, ego, and super-ego all want different things, these three psychic structures are in an endless conflict with each other. Freud locates the center of the war zone in the ego; “a poor creature owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers; from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the severity of the super-ego.”32 All film narratives are grounded in conflict of one sort or another.

  4. Much of our psychic conflict is unconscious. Our consciousness feels the pain of our internal war, but the intricate attacks and counter-maneuvers themselves (defense mechanisms) are largely invisible. While unconsciousness is never revealed in its pure form, we can catch glimpses and shadows through symbols. Since films are symbolic, they parallel the processes (e.g., dream interpretation) crucial to psychoanalytic therapy. The significance of a movie which is captured in a plot summary is only the surface; symbolic probing takes us into the hidden realms.

  Many viewers will acknowledge that the complex, hallucinatory masterpieces of a Hitchcock, Lynch, or Aronofsky explore basic human motivations and conflicts, but from a psychodynamic perspective,33 all films (indeed, all stories) are reflections of our unconscious. Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (1975) suggests that children's fairytales reveal universal unconscious conflicts. From his perspective, Hansel and Gretel is not just a fanciful tale; it has symbolic qualities that resonate with the desires and fears of children's young psyches. Hansel and Gretel's ravenous consumption of the gingerbread house represents the impulse toward ultimate oral gratification. Their imprisonment reflects the fears associated with acting on that desire. The witch is symbolic of the “bad mother,” a child's anxiety that his or her mother may be not only inadequate, but dangerous.

  Movies have their own fairy tales and wicked witches. A representative Freudian reading of The Wizard of Oz takes Dorothy's adventure as a metaphor for the adolescent journey, the last distinct stage in Freudian developmental theory.34 In terms of sexuality, adolescence is referred to as the “genital stage” in which the individual's erotic interests are focused on achieving intercourse. The social dimension of this shift is that before a girl can develop a sufficiently strong sense of herself as an individual worthy of a love partner, she has to recognize her parents’ limitations. This possibility is initially so terrifying that “half-buried conflicts of childhood [are] resurrected to be resolved or haunt us forever.”35 Dorothy's first response is to rebel against her caring but imperfect guardians by retreating into fantasy. In her fantasy world, parental figures are polarized in their goodness (Glinda the Good Witch and Oz the Powerful and Mighty) and badness (the Wicked Witch). Dorothy must first face and conquer the Wicked Witch, the oppressive fantasy of parenthood that she fears. But she must also unmask the omnipotent Wizard in order to realize the power to go home is located in her. By the time she returns to Kansas, she has achieved the ego-state of a young adult who is ready to confront the realities of her everyday sepia-toned world.

  The tradition of psychoanalytic film interpretation is not limited to children's movies. Wolfenstein and Leites’ The Movies: A Psychological Study from the 1950s was one of the first attempts to articulate psychologically relevant themes in mainstream American movies using psychodynamic assumptions. One such theme—unjust attacks on an innocent hero—is captured in the noir classic The Big Sleep. Private eye Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is so regularly assaulted and threatened that he drolly remarks that everyone he meets seems to be pulling a gun on him. Since psychoanalysis assumes that all people are driven by selfish, impure impulses, the very idea of “innocence” is called into question. The aggression to which Marlowe is subjected is interpreted as a projection of his own aggressive impulses against the external world. Believing that the world is hostile can make it a scary place, but according to Freudian reasoning, this possibility is easier than accepting responsibility and guilt for our own aggression.

  Psychodynamic analyses of movies can be maddening in their attention to seemingly unimportant details, and fascinating in their attempts to explain mysterious phenomena. Years ago my attention was drawn to a
n analysis of Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining in a psychoanalytic journal.36 I have always found the movie uniquely creepy and mesmerizing. Freud would call my reaction to the film an example of the uncanny—the unnerving, chilling feeling of unexpectedly encountering some seemingly ordinary stimulus that nevertheless resonates on a deeper level. Freud of course has an explanation—it is what happens when we are unconsciously reminded of something we have repressed (held in the dark recesses of our minds). This repressed material is revealed for a fleeting moment, and we are left feeling uncomfortable yet intrigued.

  Psychoanalysis suggests that the reason I have such a notable reaction is that, through subtle clues and hidden symbols, The Shining evokes the impulse toward genocide in Western masculinity. Freud argues that all people have a death instinct, and when it grows too strong and threatens the self, it is directed to other people. Genocide is an extreme variation of this death impulse. The film draws the connection to genocide, particularly Nazi-era Germany, through subtle clues and hidden symbols: the doomed writer, Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson), drives to the isolated hotel in a Volkswagen; the yellow car (and other prominent yellow objects later in the film) is similar to the Star of David that Jews were forced to wear during World War II; Jack types his demented memoirs on a Nazi-era German typewriter; variations of the number 39 (as in 1939, the start of the war) can be seen on boxes in the food locker scene, and so on.

  Numerous criticisms may be lodged against an analysis like this. First, it seems unlikely that these symbols were intended by the filmmakers; indeed, there is no evidence that this was the case.37 However, the conscious intentions of writers and directors do not limit psychodynamic interpretations; it is always possible that unconscious associations are having an influence on artistic creation. Skeptics may also object that interpreting insignificant minutiae like the numbers on boxes strains credibility. However, for classical psychoanalysis, nothing is unimportant, as the unconscious mind perceives and associates to symbolic details of which we are consciously unaware.38 It is hard to prove these kinds of claims, but once people start seeing movies this way, it can be hard to stop.

  Archetypes in the Movies

  Carl Jung's archetypal theory is another psychological approach that has contributed a great deal to film interpretation.39 Jung's theory is also centered on notions of symbolism and the unconscious, yet it diverges from Freud in notable ways.40 In particular, Jung's understanding of the unconscious is that it is more than just primal impulses and unresolved personal complexes. Jung studied the images and stories of cultures from around the globe and across history and concluded that there are universal themes and patterns. He posited that the unconscious has a sphere called “the collective unconscious”—a psychic realm that is shared by all human beings. He argued that the collective unconscious is populated by universal themes (or forms of thought) he called archetypes. Archetypes manifest themselves as familiar characters, such as the Mother, the Father, the Wise Man, the Hero, and so on. 41

  While the archetypes in their pure form are inaccessible, people experience and understand these archetypes through symbols. We are surrounded by all sorts of symbols (touched by archetypes) in the course of day-to-day life—in dreams, on T-shirts, in novels, on billboard images, and of course in movies. When we are really paying attention, these archetypal symbols are emotionally resonant or even luminous. Thus, Jung asserts that symbols of motherhood are more than simple presentations of the reality of childbirth; instead, maternal symbols help people understand what it means to nurture and care for other human beings. Symbols are not just about understanding ourselves as individuals, or even our culture. They connect us to a bigger world, a world that is beyond us, a world of psychic “others.”

  We can choose to explore symbols or we can ignore them (or at least try to ignore—some symbols, like some movies, seem to haunt us). Symbols are not just a means of uncovering disturbing material from our unconscious; instead, they are full of possibility for personal growth and greater understanding of the cosmos. Analyzing films from this perspective can have a more playful quality than the dead-serious detective work often found in Freudian analysis. This is not to claim that a Jungian analysis of movies will always lead to positive feelings. The archetypes are not our friends, in that they do not necessarily have our best intentions in mind. Instead, archetypes present an unknown possibility between polar opposites. For example, nurturance is not the only side of the Mother archetype; the other pole is devouring, where the Mother threatens to overwhelm and suffocate her children. We can cite movies with saintly mothers such as Lorenzo's Oil, but also movies that present frightening mothers, like Mommie Dearest. The exploration of archetypal symbols in movies may be delightful at times, but the journey will be occasionally be scary and horrific.

  Star Wars has probably received more attention from archetype-minded interpreters than any other film.42 Listing its characters is like a stockpiling of archetypal personalities: Obi-Wan Kenobi (the Wise-Man); Luke Skywalker (the Hero); Han Solo (the Rogue); Princess Leia (the Damsel in Distress); Darth Vader (the Shadow), and so on. An obvious use of Jungian symbols occurs in a scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is training with Yoda. In a mysterious, misty cave, Luke comes face-to-face with Darth Vader. In a brief light-saber battle, Luke seems to slay Vader. But when Luke opens the front of Vader's mask, he sees his own face. This scene calls to mind Jung's notion of the Persona, the mask we wear in public that stands in contrast to who we really are. More than that, Luke realizes that he shares part of his identity with Vader, his dark-side or “Shadow.” He has seen the enemy, and it is himself.

  The use of archetypal characters in Star Wars has been developed beyond the presence of familiar characters and particular scenes. Luke's journey though Episodes IV-VI can be viewed as an extended narrative centered on his confrontations with a series of father figures.43 At the beginning of the films, Luke is seemingly fatherless, without a guide. His well-meaning Uncle Ben comes close to a father substitute, but in attempting to deny Luke's wish to fight in the galactic rebellion, he is preventing Luke from pursuing his individual destiny. Obi-Wan Kenobi soon becomes a replacement father. He facilitates Luke's journey in discovering The Force (a symbol for the realization of transcendent selfhood). Even in death, Obi-Wan becomes an internalized guide for Luke. At the same time, Obi-Wan does not have all the answers, and even lies to Luke about his origins.

  Luke confronts another father figure in Yoda, whose small, strange appearance and goofy behavior seems at first very unfatherly. However, he is eventually revealed as one of the wisest and most powerful of the Jedi Knights, an order that assumes a paternal role toward the galaxy. Yoda is not able to help Luke either, but as he passes away, he reveals the truth that Darth Vader is Luke's biological father. Vader's evil nature (hunger for power, inability to love) at first makes this revelation seem like a cruel twist of fate. However, in a climactic confrontation with the Emperor, Luke refuses to give into his impulses of rage and revenge toward Vader. Luke's mercy triggers the buried compassion in his father, and Vader sacrifices himself to save Luke. Vader perishes, but this final fatherly act allows Luke to individuate and transcend in his journey toward selfhood. Self-development always comes at a cost.

  While fantasy movies advertise their mythic origins, and therefore welcome Jungian analysis, the theory asserts that all stories come from the same place: the collective unconscious. Even a topical movie like The Graduate, usually analyzed as a reflection of the cultural revolution of the 1960s, may be analyzed through Jungian eyes to reveal other dimensions.44 Specifically, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft) can be seen as a variation on the Mother archetype, with a strong emphasis on the terrible, destructive side of motherhood. Jung notes how many ancient cultural symbols feature female goddesses (Kali in Indian myth, Hecate in Greek myth) who embody a femininity that is not caring and nurturing but powerful, insatiable, and destructive. Mrs Robinson is never even given a first name; the emphasis being pl
aced on the “Mrs.” This connotation is both ironic and revealing as she seduces Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), the inexperienced college graduate. She wears clothes that prominently feature black, and in one key scene, even wears a leopard-skin coat, connecting her to a feline predator and the legend of “The Lady of the Beasts.” The crucial Jungian insight is that what appears to be modern is actually rooted in ancient, primordial symbols.

  Ideology in the Movies

  Along with Freud, Paul Ricoeur singles out Karl Marx as one of his “suspicious” philosophers.45 This quality can be seen in Marx's central notion of ideology, the cultural forces that prevent individuals within a society (especially a capitalist society) from seeing the truth of their own circumstances. Under the distorting gauze of ideology, the true meaning of social products like movies are by no means self-evident; in fact, the obvious and accepted meanings that may be reflexively attributed to a film are merely the party line, effectively blinding the masses with false consciousness.

  While this kind of language is often associated with Marxist interpretations, not all ideological analyses need be so condescending. Ideology can be defined as simply “a system . . . of representations (images, myths, ideas, or concepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical existence and role within a given society.”46 The problem is that while the members of a society are immersed in these representations, the social codes themselves are not explicitly stated and therefore may be invisible in daily life. This process can be understood as a form of social unconscious; instead of coming from within (Freudian), the distorting forces that prevent us from seeing reality come from without. Ideological analyses thus promise to unravel these codes and provide a path to another kind of hidden meaning in film.