PSYCHOANALYSIS FILM THEORY

In this essay I’ll try to explain everything about psychoanalysis in movies, mainly in Kubrick’s movies, as I believe he mastered it like no one else. In this essay you’ll find all the information’s about the beginning of the psychoanalysis in the movie world, where it came from and what it focuses on. In the later stage of the essay I’ll give two examples from two of the most famous Kubrick’s movies ever create, Orange Clockwork and Full Metal Jacket. I hope these examples will explain briefly on how Kubrick uses psychopaths in his movies making them complete cold-blooded animals and killing machines.

Psychoanalytic film theory, despite its relatively late development, has become one of the most widely practiced theoretical approaches to cinema studies today. This is largely owing to the fact that psychoanalysis and film technology were born in the same era, and essentially grew up together. Thus, as cinema quickly came to focus on ways of rendering subjective experiences the innermost psychological depths of the characters it portrayed it naturally drew upon the newest conception of subjectivity offered in the field of psychology, namely the psychoanalytic conception of it.

Psychoanalysis is an approach that focuses on unmasking the ways in which the phenomenon of cinema in general, and the elements of specific films in particular, are both shaped by the unconscious. The unconscious studied by psychoanalytic film theory has been attributed to four different agencies: the filmmaker, the characters of a film, the film's audience, and the discourse of a given film.

- The Filmmaker's Unconscious. Its one of the earliest stages, psychoanalytic film theory compared films to such manifestations of the unconscious as dreams, imaginations, slips of the tongue, and neurotic symptoms. Just as these are considered to be manifestations of a patient's unconscious, films were considered to be manifestations of a filmmaker's unconscious. However nowadays this psychoanalysis theory is rarely in use and its old fashioned.

- The Character's Unconscious. Another application of psychoanalysis to cinema studies one still occasionally seen today focuses on the characters of a given film and analyzes their behavior and dialogue in an attempt to interpret traces of their unconscious. This approach, when it first appeared, was immediately attacked by skeptical film critics who pointed out that fictional characters, insofar as they are not real people, have neither a conscious nor an unconscious mind to speak of. However, the psychoanalysis of film characters quickly found new credibility with the next stage in the development of psychoanalytic film theory the analysis of the audience's unconscious as it is prompted and shaped during a film viewing.

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- The Audience's Unconscious. The audience-focused approach will often focus on the way in which the behavior and dialogue of certain characters can be interpreted as manifestations of our unconscious, insofar as we come to identify ourselves with them when we visit the cinema. Thus, as we sit quietly in the dark and forge our psychic bonds with this or that character, we unconsciously project our own fantasies, phobias, and fixations onto these shimmering alter egos. Whenever they inevitably say or do something that even tangentially touches upon one of these fantasies, phobias, or fixations, we derive unconscious satisfaction or dissatisfaction accordingly.

- The Unconscious of Cinematic Discourse. The most recent version of psychoanalytic film theory more or less abandons the character-centered approach altogether, focusing instead on how the form of films replicates or mimics the formal model of the conscious/unconscious mind posited by psychoanalysis. Thus, for example, the psychoanalytic film theorist might focus on the way in which the formal procedure of editing will sometimes function similarly to the mechanism of repression by cutting out a crucial, emotionally charged moment, which, though unseen, will continue to resonate throughout the film.

Stanley Kubrick is considered to be one of the finest filmmakers in the history of cinema, an artist of great intellect, who challenged his audience as if they were opponents in his game of chess, exposing many generations to new ways of thinking and different perceptions of cinema, and the world, as we know it. Whether he was dissecting the topics of good, evil, war, time, space, lust, sanity or insanity, his movies always were special and unique in different ways, mainly because they were

psychotic and uncomfortable to watch for some of his viewers making them different and ‘special’.

Stanley Kubrick's films seem to provoke the kind of mindless praise and attack that is called 'controversy' these days. In the case of A Clockwork Orange, the responses have ranged from 'brilliant' to 'boring', with special attention to the film's depictions of violence. If the viewer responds to nothing else, he is sure to notice the sensational subject matter. Of course, violence is a difficult subject for visual treatment. Kubrick has been careful to offer such a container. But if the viewer refuses it, he is left holding the inevitable - violence, sex, death - at least as far as chatter and film criticism are concerned.

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Clockwork Orange is one of the most famous Kubrick’s movies mainly due to the fact of its psychotic themes and conventions. Kubrick's work following Clockwork Orange has continued to display the pessimism and even misanthropy of that film. A Clockwork Orange is told retrospectively by a character who is both a victim and a great exponent of violence. Alex inhabits a world that is almost thoroughly dispirited, broken down by a daily grind of meaningless work, stultifying mass culture, and officially sanctioned “milk bars” that serve a variety of drug tonics to

send one off on incoherent fantasies. This gray world may well be Anthony Burgess’ vision of a not-too-distant future England suffering under the failure of socialism and liberalism, and Alex’s protest, as shocking and violent as it is, is curiously sympathetic.

The psychological mechanism behind Alex's unifying vision is that of 'projection'. All Alex' s victims are outside society: the tramp, the gang, and the radical and when he punishes them, he unknowingly punishes himself. The mirror defense of projection works to throw outward, to spit out, the consciously disowned aspects of the personality by ascribing them to others. The mechanism is itself unconscious. When Alex commits evil, he enjoys the pleasure of the act itself, the knowledge that it is considered wrong by society, and the unconscious justification of the act through projection. Thus, Alex rapes, ensures there is a witness to the rape, and punishes the 'complacency' of the victim. “Evil is honored, sharpened and justified” as he often mentions in his head. Alex levels the social ranks of his victims. The drunk's rhetorical complaints are Alex's own: he hears just what he wants to hear. Throughout the film, figures of authority are all versions of the gang leader. As the equation is perfect but in one respect, Alex is conscious of his evil, except in his need for self-justification. How reviewers could have missed the comedy of childish egotism is a kind of perfection in itself. The infantile fantasies show Alex's blindness to his own psychology and ideology through a masochistic dream in which he always triumphs despite indignity, torture and suicide. “Men court him, newspapers celebrate him, Hitler apes him. The lovely bird motif throughout the film the Beethoven frissons in Bar and lair; the malchick screams at the Medical Institute's sinny; the gull over the Thames; and the growing boy eating from the Minister's hands” - not only indicates the variety and integration Kubrick achieves through motivic relationships, but Alex's pathetic desire for freedom in the midst of blind dependence.

Kubrick has appropriated theme, character, narrative and dialogue from Anthony Burgess' novel, but the film is more than a literal translation of a construct of language into dramatic visual form. Kubrick's film refashions the materials of the novel, and the rigor of the reworking gives the film a poetic compression and resonance that the novel lacks, despite its disturbing narrator, intricate structure and brilliant language. 'Nadsat' figures primarily in only the first third of the movie, but Kubrick has included much of Burgess' narrative invention, and as a result the Alexander’s of film and novel conquer similar empires. The unifying parallels

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between citizen and State and the mechanism of projection are taken from the novel, although Kubrick finds new ways of communicating them visually.

In some ways, Full Metal Jacket can be seen as complementary and inverse to A Clockwork Orange. In Clockwork, Alex wreaks havoc because of his love of violence and sex and his lack of empathy for his victims and enemies. Society tries to change him by aversive conditioning against the sex and violence. In Full Metal Jacket, the system takes young men and puts them through a conditioning program to attempt to extirpate any

feelings of empathy that they might naturally have, leaving them in the end, psychopaths, suitable for cold blooded warfare. It does so first by stripping them of the characteristics they use to identify them and order their lives. They are shaved bald, removing any individual hairstyles. Their names are taken away from them and denigrating nicknames applied. Their home regions and towns are ridiculed.

Their physical characteristics like obesity and shortness are used to mock them make fun of them and tease them to some extend. Their manhood is denied. Any morality that they learned is deliberately inverted and aggression, sexual prowess, and profanity become the valued qualities. Any empathy the soldiers might have for one weaker or less fortunate is mercilessly driven out of them. The fat Pvt. Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence is continually harassed and ridiculed by the DI. Some of the more sympathetic men, such as Joker, attempt to help him get through basic training by showing him how to do things and keeping him out of trouble. The real purpose of making Pyle the dummy and a clown, however, becomes clear when the DI begins to punish the men for Leonard's mistakes. Then they begin to hate him. In the incident when they pummel him with bars of soap slung in their towels, even Joker takes part, showing that the breaking down of sympathy and empathy has succeeded, and the men are ready to be killers. Thus, Kubrick demonstrates that, as in Clockwork, the society gives lip service to law and order, but when

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it gets down to the harsh reality, it is psychopathic and will use whatever system of values that it needs to in order to accomplish its purposes.

Once in Vietnam, the men put into practice the psychopathy they learned in their training. They murder in cold blood, curse, kill, and screw, and do little else. On the helicopter trip to the front, Joker and Rafter Man observe the psychopathic door gunner as he machine guns peasants at work in their rice fields while laughing and joking, asking them to write a news story on him. The Vietnamese are also corrupt, or have become corrupted by the contact. Cowboy, although he is technically in command, cannot enforce his orders, and the men do pretty much as they please.

The protagonist in this film is Joker. The psychopathic conditioning is not fully successful on Joker's personality. He retains some empathy, although becoming hard and ironic. Although he participates in bashing Pyle when egged on by his peers, he cringes to hear Pyle's cries and weeping afterward. He tries to prevent Pyle's suicide. In Vietnam, he wears a peace button to symbolize his ambiguous feelings about the endeavor he is engaged in. His opposite number is Animal Mother, in whom the conditioning has produced a perfect specimen. Animal Mother carries a huge automatic rifle and joyously screams war cries as he kills, making him seem as a complete animal with no feelings whatsoever. His reaction on viewing the bodies of dead comrades is "better you than me”, as we often hear in the movie. Finally, Joker's empathy forces him to put the wounded female Viet Cong sniper out of her misery, when Animal Mother and the others oppose it and want to see her suffer.

Certainly Full Metal Jacket can be seen as an anti-war film. Since war is the human institution, which most highlights the brutality of man's animalistic nature, it is natural that a pessimist such as Kubrick would return to it again and again, like a never-ending circle.

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In conclusion, I believe I covered all the themes and conventions about psychoanalysis in Kubrick’s movies as well as made a clear explanation on the roots and the beginning of the psychoanalysis in the world of cinema. I hope I somewhat explained on how war can change a single humans life, from making a everyday and regular man into worthless piece of meat and then making him a fearless psychotic murderers just because society tells us to, just like it happened in FMJ.

References

http://www.mindswork.co.uk/wpblog/the-shining-a-family-can-be-scary-enough/

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0004.html

http://www.ice.udl.es/udv/demoassig/asignaturas/Humanmonster/modul3/m3pop2.htm

http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath3.htm

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000040/

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/stanley-kubrick-cinephile

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychologist-the-movies/201205/classical-conditioning-in-clockwork-orange

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=13822

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0104.html

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http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/fullmetal.htm

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/full-metal-jacket-1987-themes-and-analysis.287124/

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