Overt Freudianism in Film: The George W. Bush Years

Because we do not understand ourselves, our attempts to repair our lives are apt to make them increasingly worse.

The only experience we humans have in common is our desperate loneliness.

The most honest an artist is willing to be, the more artificial his/her art will become.

--themes observed in the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York


Insecure men with daddy issues, who attempt to mask their insecurity by swaggering around and refusing to see life's inherent complexity, deserve our sympathy. That does not mean, however, that we have to elect them president.

--theme observed in the 2008 film W.


Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York and Oliver Stone's W. are both exercises in Freudian psychology; both, that is, attempt to understand human motives with reference to Freud's mapping of the psyche. Neither filmmaker is particularly coy about this fact; for example, Synecdoche is full of Freudian slips (which are referred to by that term at least once), and just about every review of W. remarked on its interpretation of George W. Bush as someone still dealing, in his 60s, with a deep Oedipus complex.

Both are pretty good movies, in my opinion. But here's a difference: Stone's movie is straightforward in a way that would seem implausible from a Freudian standpoint. As David Denby said in a review in The New Yorker, "Even if the real Bush is as simple as that (which I doubt), he’s still a lousy movie character—an inadequate protagonist in his own life story." The success of Kaufman's movie, on the other hand, depends on its more-than-a-little bewildering plotline: if, in other words, someone claims to understand Synecdoche, New York completely, either that person is lying or else the movie failed (for him or her).

The first third or so of Synecdoche is fairly unadorned realism, a portrait of a family that looks like many families, and that (like many families) is in the midst of a crisis composed of many small problems with the potential to become large ones. The middle third is less realistic, and "reads" like a Coen brothers movie, with increasingly quirky characters and lapses from the plausible that seem to serve a realist end (such as the house one character contemplates buying despite its being on fire--homage to Barton Fink?--which seems a metaphor for her forced optimism despite a sense of impending doom). The last third of the movie, however, is full-out David Lynch territory, in which the lines between the real and the surreal (conscious and unconscious) are so blurry that they can't really be sorted out; the only option is to watch the interesting, blurry patterns. At some point, Synecdoche, New York becomes an account of its protagonist's dream, but it's not easy to say at exactly what point this occurs.

The protagonist of W., on the other hand, like that of Synecdoche, New York, doesn't really understand what is happening to or around him, or why, and (like his counterpart in Synecdoche) makes a mess of things in trying to wrestle his life into a plot he can make sense of. But his issues, as Stone interprets them, are half an inch below the surface. I enjoyed the movie, and I have a feeling it will help future viewers make some sense out of this moment in history, but it's less persuasive (and also less interesting) as a psychological portrait.

So it may be that Synecdoche, New York will end up being the more definitive account of the cultural moment known as the George W. Bush years. In fact, I couldn't help wondering what kind of movie would result from Stone and Kaufman collaborating somehow to blend the two, incorporating Stone's research and insistence on speaking plainly with Kaufman's disturbing analytical weirdness. What if, instead of a play-by-play enactment of what journalists and historians have concluded really happened behind the scenes, Stone and Kaufman concocted a version of the 43rd president who (like Synecdoche's Caden Cotard) hires actors to play himself and his cabinet members, each day acting out their most recent experiences while W. directs? Would that have more aptly captured the weird mixture of manipulation and sycophancy that Cheney et al. directed at their boss? What if, instead of Caden's attempt to construct an exact replica of part of New York City inside a warehouse, Stone/Kaufman's W. character built a scale model of Baghdad on the White House lawn, then slowly and unintentionally wrecked it? That would at least offer the possibility that, as an artwork rather than an actual nation, it can be torn down and forgotten about once its maker moves on--which, I guess, would serve as wish fulfillment for the audience.

Election Day 2008

Everyone knew that Tuesday, Nov. 4 would be a memorable day in history. The unanswered question is how it will be remembered. Lots and lots of images--some will stick, some won't. Which ones will be iconic?

I'd nominate the tv feed of Jesse Jackson weeping at Grant Park in Chicago while waiting for President-elect Obama to give his acceptance speech. Cynics wondered, predictably, if Jackson's tears were of frustration rather than joy: after all, Jackson was the only other African American to come anywhere close to being nominated for president (not that he came all that close), and he notoriously (and profanely) criticized Obama last summer when he wrongly thought he was off-camera. But for most, I suspect, the image was a moving one, even if Jackson's attitude toward Obama is, in all probability, complex. The media's narrative tends to allow for little nuance in the relationships between black leaders--either Obama is the culmination of all that Jackson has worked for, or else Jackson and Obama are rivals.

On the other hand, I think few of the political cartoons in the days following the election will stick. Much has been made about humorists' supposed difficulties in finding a comedic edge when it comes to Barack Obama. (See here and here for interesting discussions.) Whatever the cause, the main problem seems to be a lack of originality. Lots of references to Obama's famous "fist-bump":



...and to Abraham Lincoln passing the mantle to Obama:



...and to Abraham Lincoln fist-bumping Obama:



...and to Martin Luther King, Jr. fist-bumping Obama:


A good part of these cartoon's drives is wishful thinking: the implied (or explicit, sometimes) claim that, now that an African American president has been elected, America's legacy of racism is over. George F. Will was upfront about this: "We are free at last from the inexpressible tedium of the preoccupation with skin pigmentation." Stephen Colbert was equally upfront (if less sincere), asking interviewee Charles Ogletree: "Is, then, racism over?"

Minimalist cartoons

Get Your War On by David Rees

Garfield Minus Garfield by Dan Walsh


Two very different cartoons that share a strategy: Both take images from trite sources (word-processor-style clip art and a longstanding comic strip, respectively) and reveal their inherent, apparently unintentional funniness* by stripping them to their bare essences. GYWO asks what the mute office drones in the clip art would be talking about, and concludes that if we could hear them we'd hear the sort of detached, cool, semi-ironic, and deeply profane kind of talk that we might encounter at work, only wittier and more political. Garfield Minus Garfield asks, even more simply, how the character Jon's words and actions would look if there wasn't an anthropomorphized cat sitting there.

The blog Wonkette called GYWO "the only example of a funny comic strip getting funnier when animated," and I have to agree. The clip art office-drones and their invisible desks look better than ever in animation. Follow this link to see it:

http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_new_world_orde_10121.php



*A Mark Twain coinage. Those who, like me, prefer Garfield Minus Garfield to Garfield would probably agree with this statement: The latent humor in Garfield (on which GMC relies) is superior to the manifest humor of same. It's as if Garfield's raison d'etre were to make GMG possible.

Course poster

Thanks to the graphic-design support of Mr. Chad Simmons, there is now a poster advertising HUM 107: Introduction to Cultural Studies:



Not bad, eh?