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Sexual Misdemeanor/Psychoanalytic Felony

1987; University of Texas Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1225337

1527-2087

Nina C. Leibman,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

The appropriation of psychoanalysis into the field of film theory has provided not only a methodology with which to study film itself (reading against the grain, theories of displacement, etc.) but has facilitated understanding of how and why psychoanalysis appears within the plots of a large number of films. Now that we are aware of Freudian theory we can better judge its diegetic placement within classical Hollywood films. One of the more intriguing aspects is the predominance of women in Freudian-oriented films. Although there are some films which deal with men's madness (Shock Corridor [1963], Spellbound [1945], Nightmare Alley [1947]), the majority of these films center on women. There are several possible reasons for this emphasis, including filmic residue from Freud's Studies in Hysteria where the focus was on women, and the female-oriented melodramatic propensities of such films. A study of three well-known films of the 50s and early 60s, however, suggests that, during this period at least, male dominance and its concomitant condemnation of women were important motivating factors. Many of the films about female madness situate sex and sexuality as the primary catalyst in the heroine's illness. Male protagonists who are mad claim guilt complexes, journalistic curiosity, alcoholism as their domain. Women, however, are usually victims of their own sexuality. In these madness films, women are punished with insanity for expressing their desire, just as in a film noir, they might be murdered for the same crime. Madness is the punishment for entering the male territory of expressive desire. While on the surface, many of these female insanity films read as sympathetic portrayals of a woman's mental decline, upon closer examination, in terms of filmic structure and visual placement (particularly with regard to male characters), these women are held sexually accountable for their own madness, as well as the disasters which befall their male counterparts. More important, these films must sufficiently distort Freudian theory in order to situate their female protagonists in a position of guilt. The etiology of these women's madness is at odds with the thrust of Freudian theories of sexuality. It is not the purpose of this essay to present Freud as a great feminist and Hollywood as his unconscionable chauvinistic opposite. But Freudian theory presents complex notions of sexual repression and mental anxiety that Hollywood vulgarizes, ignores, or reverses in its attempts (however unconscious) to maintain the patriarchal status quo.