Onur Oral FILM 452 Psychoanalysis and Film Instructor: Defne Tzn 24 August 2011

Experience Spiders Realm with Spider Himself: Psychoanalytic Analysis of the film Spider
The film, Spider, dives into the inner world of a psychotic, makes spectators to identify with a psychotic character and understand his mental condition; in the meantime it leads spectators into this inner world. It blurs the difference between the real and the imaginary and makes us to get lost in this inner world.

The film opens with some visuals that look like inkblots, which are used to reveal deep secrets or significant information about the test taker's personality or innermost thoughts1, while showing opening credits of the film. So, because of the inkblots, from the very beginning of the film, it is narrated that the film is about mental condition or mental illness. The film begins in a train station, which is a dynamic representation of the flow of life; people are walking and communicating each other. A steadicam moves through the station and lastly, we are able to see the main character, Spider, all alone, gets off the train, looks like disoriented. That information also shows to spectators that the film contains some characteristics about a problematic mental condition because it is shown that Spider could not fit in the outer world. While other people in the train station are all dynamic, Spiders attitude is different from their actions. The film plays out some confused flashbacks, memories and fantasies of the main character that shows series of

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events from Spiders past into his contemporary existence. Through these flashbacks and memories spectators see that the young Spider witnesses his parents marital difficulties, while the adult Spider also plays a part as a spectator and an observer in young Spiders fantasized interpretation of the reality, in order to relive and scrutinize those series of memories just like the spectators. But through the whole film, even if we experience Spiders past with him, we cannot distinguish what is imagined and what is real. According to Laplanche and Pontalis, the activity of fantasying is both reflections of persons original world and subject to his/her pleasures.

The world of fantasy seems to be located exclusively within the domain of opposition between subjective and objective, between an inner world, where satisfaction is obtained through illusion, and an external world, which gradually, through the medium of perception, asserts the supremacy of the reality principle. (Laplanche and Pontalis 1986, 8) As spectators, we fully experience Spiders past with Spider himself. From this narrative, we may infer that a different model of voyeurism is narrated because while we experience Spiders past with Spider, putting adult Spider in the frame makes the spectators to get a sense of passivity due to point of view of spectators. But the same approach (putting adult Spider in the frame while we witness his past events) also enables to identify us, as spectators, with Spider. There is also a scene that destroys the voyeurism; when adult Spider stays in his room, he talks about the smell of the gas. According to C. Metz, evoking the other senses except the sense of sight and hearing would disturb and destroy the voyeurism. Psychophysiology makes a classic distinction between the senses at a distance (sight and hearing) and the others all of which involve

immediate proximity and which it calls the senses of contact. (Pradines): touch, taste, smell etc. (Metz 1984, 59).

The film is not a dream, phantasy or hallucination as a whole, certain parts and events are. In the film, Spider remembers that Yvonne and his father killed his mother, which never happens in reality. Spider replaces his mother with Yvonne, as he wishes his mother to be sexually available for him. The film is a combination of both real world and phantasy world and there are multiple narratives in single narration, and this combination perplexes the spectators most of the time. Even if we cannot understand if we experience Spiders fantasy or reality, as spectators we can still emphatize with Spider, because phantasy is also a part of the real. In Freudian theory, it is explained that; The diegetic film, on the other hand, which in certain respects is still of the order of phantasy, also belongs to the order of realityIt can please or displease, like the real, and because it is part of the real. (Metz 1984, 113). But also as spectator, we should not forget that the truth might not be that Spider killed his own mother. We still cannot be sure, which scenes are Spiders fantasy and which are not. We do not know if his past is not his imagination, we only experience Spiders past and present with Spider himself, thus we do not know if Spider kills his mother, or kills Yvonne.

In the barn scene, Spiders father comes near to young Spider when he was really afraid of him and shut his ears. While we expect a strong reaction from his father to young Spider, he reacts compassionate to young Spider, and asks him why he blames him (his father) for killing his mother even if she is not dead. This scene motivates spectator to

identify with Spider and to question what is real, or unreal and this is the first time that narration tips us off about questioning reality, the truth.

If we focus on the narration of the film, in some of the scenes, the movement of the camera and framing is very well designed in order to describe Spiders situation. In some scenes, the emptiness of the frame, for example the character Spider can be seen all alone in frames centre in some scenes, leads audience to experience his isolation from the outer world and emphasizes his solitude. Also the films editing style, transition between frames is really slow, before cutting it takes at least two seconds for transition to next frame. The aim of that editing style is to make audience to identify with Spider, not just by showing the film with Spiders point of view but by displaying how Spider experiences the world, how he gets stuck in the moment.

According to Freudian theory, the term condensation is the process by which a single symbol or word is associated with the emotional content of several, not necessarily related, ideas, feelings, memories or impulses, especially as expressed in dream2. In this activity, condensation, the unconscious condenses a fusion of several elements, which occurs in the dream thought, into one, which occurs in the dream content. In the film, a color, blue, links and associates all three women around Spider; in the early scenes Mrs. Wilkinson welcomes Spider wearing a blue blouse; his mother, Mrs. Cleg, looks at herself in a mirror in a blue lingerie; Yvonne has a blue dress in some scenes. Even casting of film hints about condensation; the same actress acts three characters in the

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film, Spiders mother, Yvonne and Mrs. Wilkinson. According to Freud, the dream thoughts and the dream content are two different versions of languages that are presented to us. The dream content is some kind of a transcript of the dream thoughts. It is a translation of the dream thoughts.

The dream content, on the other hand, is expressed as it were a pictographic script, the characters of which have to be transposed individually into the language of the dreamthoughts. If we attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic relation, we should clearly be led into error. (Freud 1971, 311-312)

There are some reasons for the spectator to believe that young Spider having an Oedipal complex. According to Freud and his Oedipal complex theory, every infant boy desires his mother sexually and bears hostility to his father. In other words, while the mother becomes a love object in infant boys phantasy, the father becomes a rival and an inimical. The friction between the infant boy and his father is caused by the desire of the infant boy of a woman who does not belong to him. According to Freud, accepting the puissance of the name of the father should solve this incest taboo and complex until infant boy becomes six-year-old, because symbolic order is established on these rules.

In the film, we see young Spider, older than six-year-old, still sees his mother as a love object and bears hostility to his father. In one of the scenes, young Spider runs away from the room where his mother asks him if he thinks his father likes her new lingerie. This scene proves that the young Spider is obsessed with his mother, and envious of his father. The way the narration tells us that Spider observes the reality, the truth that he is the one

who kills his mother, and witnesses what really happened. But most importantly, all those scenes that are related to idea of Oedipal complex are shown to spectator after young Spider is in the bar, and Yvonne flashes her breasts at him. This event triggers and stimulates young Spider sexually. According to Freud, a child should learn about sexual processes before fantasying about his mother. The child, having learnt about sexual processes, tends to picture to himself erotic situations and relations, the motive force behind this being his desire to bring his mother into situations of secret infidelity and into secret live-affairs. (Freud 1957, 239). Similarly, in another scene, young Spider watches his mother and father kissing each other from a window. That scene proves Spiders association his mother with a prostitute. Therefore, the thing is that he begins to desire his mother sexually when he witnesses his mother and fathers sexuality for the first time. Freud calls this situation primal scene. It is, I may say, a matter of daily experience that sexual intercourse between adults strikes any children who may observe it as something uncanny and that it arouses anxiety in them. (Freud 1971, 585).

So, after realizing and learning the secrets of sexual relationship, childs suspicion about his mother draws to a close, but his suspicion about his father continues. According to Freud, this situation is called certissima3. Realizing and learning the secrets of sexual relationship can remove the father from the Oedipal triangle. In the film, Spider desires his mother sexually. According to Freud, it is common that a male child love his mother both sexually and emotionally, but also identifying himself with the father can lead him to repress that desire to his mother. But in the film, Spider cannot identify himself with [An old legal tag: paternity is always uncertain, maternity is most certain.] (Sigmund Freud, Family Romances, Vol. IX, Standart Ed. 239)
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his father because he sees his father as a rival for his love to his mother. He cannot accept the puissance of his father and remove the father from the Oedipal triangle. So he begins to create characters in his own mind, such as Yvonne as becoming his mother, and he is alienated from reality and from the symbolic order. According to Lebeau, a child needs to abandon his desire to his mother for the symbolic order. Oedipus is a figure whose destiny will determine Freuds account of the origins of cultural life in the (boy) childs renunciation of incest (with mother) and murder (of the father). (Lebeau 2001, 80). In one of the scenes, Spiders father told young Spider that he should have some mates/friends. But Spiders inability to establish a persona and suppressing his stimulations is reasoning not to have any friends. Spider cannot fit in the symbolic order because he cannot accept the puissance of his father and remove the father from the Oedipal triangle. In another scene, adult Spider lies in a bathtub stark naked, like a fetus, with fearful eyes. That scene shows that even Spider is an adult, he cannot completely break off the relation of the mother, which is called symbiosis, and cannot fit in the symbolic order. Another view is that the Oedipus complex must collapse because the time has come for its disintegration, just as the milk-teeth fall out when the permanent ones begin to grow. (Freud 1976, 173).

Experiencing a fixation in oral and/or anal stage would develop psychosis and triggers a conflict between ego and the external world. With psychosis, the person isolates himself from the external world, and his perceptions do not have any effect on him. A psychotic stores his retrospective perceptions. According to Freud, a psychotic does not just refuse his new perceptions; also he refuses his inner world, which is represented as a copy of

outer reality. Thus, his ego creates a new inner and outer reality under the influence of his ids wishes.4

Spiders problematic Oedipal scenario and dividing into bad and good mother figure is caused by his mental condition, psychosis. After the primal scene, which is the first time that the child realizes sexual relationship between his father and mother, mother figure is perceived as a love object and the child leads into Oedipal period. But in the film, young Spiders pure love of his mother and his desire to marry his mother develops into the desire to have a sexual relation with his mother by learning the real sexual concept. In order to compete with this complicated situation, Spider creates a bad but desirable and sexually achievable mother figure, also a prostitute, Yvonne, in his inner world because he rejects his mother that can be both good and bad due to his psychotic situation. He wants to eliminate the innocent mother figure and replace her with a bad, prostitute mother figure. This is the only way for him to have a sexual intercourse with his mother in his unconscious. But after realizing that he also cannot have a sexual intercourse with Yvonne because of the obstacle of his father, Spider begins to think that Yvonne is the murderer of his mother and he prefers to kill Yvonne, who is actually a replaced mother figure in his inner world. In one of the scenes, when Spider looks at a photo of some women, women figures transform into Yvonne. Also in another scene, young Spider watches his father and Yvonne while they have sex. As spectators, we see his father facing back, but when he turns to us, he transforms into Spider. This is the only scene that

Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case (New York: Penguin Books, 2003, 63). 8

Spider identifies himself with his father in order to have a sexual intercourse with the mother figure, Yvonne.

There is also another topic about prostitute mother figure to be stated; toothed vagina, or vagina dentate. According to myths of several cultures, women who have vagina dentate spread fear to others because they break mens penis off (who have a sexual intercourse with them) with their teeth, and castrate them. According to Freud, it is possible to think of displacement of a persons genital region and upper side of his/her body. Freud calls this situation upward displacement. In the film, while Spiders mother, Mrs. Cleg, has a healthy, good-looking tooth, Yvonnes teeth are sharp pointed and wide apart. Yvonne is some kind of an expression of Spiders unconscious castration fear.

In a scene adult Spider takes a piece from broken window glass. That piece of glass represents castration threat for Spider, because it is a sharp tool that can castrate him. When young Spider recognizes that his mother does not have a penis, he disavows that idea. Yes, in his mind the woman has got a penis, in spite of everything; but this penis is no longer the same as it was before. Something else has taken its place (Freud 1991, 154) This is when the fear of castration emerges. But also in the film, Spider is not the one being castrated. He chooses to castrate his father. When Spider decided to leave gas from oven open, he does not just try to kill Yvonne; he also tries to kill his father. If Spider is homosexual, which may be repressed, the reason why he wants to kill his mother may be removing her from the Oedipal triangle and his wish to be with his father.

In a scene, where Spider and two other men play golf, first Spider puts his hand into his pants (like he tries to reach his penis) and takes a sock out that has some piece of papers in it. Then the old man puts his hand into his pants, takes a sock out that has artificial teeth in it, and puts it into his mouth. This old man obviously represents a man who is castrated, and impotent. Finally the young man puts his hand into his pants, but he just holds his penis and laughs. Both socks that Spider and the old man have look like empty and soft, like an impotent. That scene proves that the sock is used as a phallus, as a signifier of lack. The sock is an object that symbolically resembles a penis. While Spider and old man carries their sock in their pants, the young man, who is not castrated, does not carry something like that. So, in this context, it is possible to say that the sock that exists near his penis symbolizes his homosexuality. Even Spider has a conflict with his father, because of not avoiding symbiotic relatedness with his mother, for this conflict, it is not possible say that Spider is heterosexual. From the same reason (not avoiding symbiotic relatedness with his mother) his homosexuality may be repressed. According to Freud, there is a relation between repressed homosexuality and paranoia. In his study, Freud tells that a case can begin with paranoid and schizophrenic symptoms, and than it is possible to see the emergence of the wishful fantasy and hallucinations.5 Also Freud adds that the root of homosexuality and its fantasy sets loose then intensified yearning for the father.6 These evidences of Freuds study correspond to the film and the character of Spider.

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Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case (New York: Penguin Books, 2003, 65). Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case (New York: Penguin Books, 2003, 39). 10

As we said before, Spiders truth may not be the real truth. On the whole film, as spectators we cannot distinguish the difference between what is imagined, fantasized and the truth, because the film makes us to identify ourselves with a man, Spider, who cannot distinguish the difference between those ideas. It is possible that Spiders mother left him because of him, his attitude or something that he has done. And maybe he fantasizes about his killing of his mother in order to salve his conscience. In one of the scene, Spiders mother, Mrs. Cleg, tells a story about a spider to Spider. In the story a female spider makes tiny little silk pockets to put her eggs in, then crawls away without looking back once. Spiders mother tells him that female spiders work was done; she had no more silk left and shes all dried up and empty. In the same scene, after Mrs. Cleg finishes her story, she just stares to emptiness and looks like worried. This scene and the dialog may prove that Mrs. Cleg substantially left Spider and her family.

As a result, while we are experiencing the past of Spider with Spider himself, we will be lost in his created darkness, or maybe lived through darkness, or maybe both. We cannot be really sure which one.

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Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. Family Romances. Vol. IX, in The Standart Ed., by Sigmund Freud, 237-241. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, Sigmund. Fetishism. In On Sexuality, by Sigmund Freud, 149-157. London: Penguin, 1991. Freud, Sigmund. The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. In The Standart Edition, by Sigmund Freud, 137-179. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Vol. IV. London: Penguin, 1971. Freud, Sigmund. The Schreber Case. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Laplanche, Jean, and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality. In Formations of Fantasy, by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, 5-33. London: Routledge, 1986. Lebeau, Vicky. The Play of Shadow. London: Wallflower Press, 2001. Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

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