Somatic Cinema

The relationship between body and screen - a Jungian perspective

Luke Hockley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415669238
• eBook ISBN: 9781134745661
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Films can hold personal psychological meanings that are often at odds with their narratives. Examining the intersections between mental health and the cinema, Somatic Cinema represents the cutting edge of film theory, evaluating the significance of this phenomenon both in therapy and in the everyday world.

Luke Hockley draws on the insights of phenomenological and Jungian film theory and applies them alongside more established psychoanalytic approaches. The result is to combine the idea of affective bodily experience with unconscious processes as a means to explore a new ontology of the cinema. The emphasis is therefore shifted from pure intellectual insight to greater inclusion of personally constructed meanings and experiences. Several key concepts are developed and explored throughout the book. These include:

• The idea of the 'Third Image', occupying the intersubjective space between viewer and screen, and therapist and client
• The concept of the Cinematic Frame (as opposed to the Film Frame), the container of the psychological relationship between viewer and screen
• The use of the Cinematic Experience to encapsulate the somatic expression of unconscious effects that develop while a film is viewed and which are central to the creation of personal psychological meanings.

With a focus on examining why we develop a personal relationship with films, Somatic Cinema is ideal for academics and students of film studies, media studies and analytical psychology.

1

THE CONSCIOUSLY CONSTRUCTED FILM

This chapter explores the way that some filmmakers, scriptwriters and producers deliberately set out to make psychological films, such as Titanic (Dir. Cameron, 1997), The Fountain (Dir. Aronofsky, 2007) and Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (Dir. Lucas, 1977). It examines how this type of ‘knowing’ conscious intent can interfere with the way in which the unconscious works. The contention is that films that aim to be psychological often end up being flat and lifeless, and, contrary to expectations, turn out to be the least psychological films of all. Of course even when filmmakers set out or want to make psychologically affective films, their production processes are creative ones in which unconscious mechanisms remain at work. Nonetheless, it is seemingly the non-psychological film that turns out to have the most psychological value. Subsequent chapters will show how films such as Mamma Mia! (Dir. Lloyd, 2008) and Happy-Go-Lucky (Dir. Leigh, 2008) came to be important for clients in long-term psychotherapy. The importance of unconscious processes as they influence both production and interpretation is at the centre of this book. Of course, commercial film production companies generally set out to make films that will be financially successful, and not films that are psychologically beneficial. Yet, as illustrated by the previous examples, what appears to happen is that we invest seemingly non-psychological films with personal psychological meanings. Normally these meanings are quite at odds with the narrative meaning of the film itself and, rather than coming just from the film, they are instead a result of the intermingling of personal unconscious concerns with the narratives of films from commercial mainstream cinema. Curiously, films which set out to evoke psychological responses and which are knowingly structured around psychological themes can fail in the very mission they set out to achieve.

Why some deliberately psychological films don’t work

It is not an uncommon experience to have high hopes for a film before we watch it. Typically we might have seen other films by the same director, or it might be that we are interested in the actors, or perhaps we have read good reviews of the film. Yet after watching the film we are left feeling empty, disillusioned and unfulfilled. We wonder how it is possible for films like this to get made and what those so-called experts who review films could have been thinking of. We tell ourselves that clearly we have seen a different film … Those ‘objective’ measures of a film’s appeal are poor predictors of how we will react to it psychologically. The reason for this is that such external indicators of quality cannot take into account our subjectivity nor can they anticipate the role our personal unconscious concerns will play in making meaning. However poor they are, these external influences remain a core part of film’s narrative image, as indicated by film theorists such as John Ellis (1982) and Stephen Heath (1981). The relationship in contemporary cinema between viewer and viewed is of increasing importance, not just in fan cultures where it is the subject of considerable theoretical attention (Jenkins, 1992) but also in film blogs, where sites like Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) are leading a more intense discussion of films than those provided by any television or radio film review programme. Such ‘auxiliary texts’ feed back in an iterative manner into the meanings that are created in the interactions between viewers, texts and institutions and in so doing they form part of the cycle of viewer expectations.

This difference between expectation and experience is termed ‘cognitive dissonance’. The dissonance arises as a result of the difference between expectation and reality: we were promised a wonderful time at the cinema but the reality was dismal. No matter what the situation, the wider the gap between our expectation and our actual experience, the larger our disappointment, and this also holds true for films. The concept of cognitive dissonance is certainly helpful in understanding what might have happened in the above example. However, perhaps other factors are at work too. This book explores how it is that viewers can have such divergent and even opposing emotional reactions to the same film. In so doing, it will suggest that this seemingly simple problem will actually help to develop a new paradigm through which to understand the relationship that viewers have with the cinema screen.

This chapter focuses on the ‘psychologically informed’ film. The type of film I have in mind here is one that knowingly attempts to deal with psychological themes. These are films where the filmmakers set out to embed psychological devices into the narrative and the visual structures of films. In doing so filmmakers move images, thoughts, ideas and processes that are the mechanisms and material of the unconscious into consciousness. Why is this a problem? After all, much of the work of therapy is about making people more aware, or more conscious, of what is happening in their lives. Without doubt, consciousness and rational thought have a clear and central role to play in psychological insight. Why then am I focusing on a similar process in the cinema and what is it that is so problematic about filmmakers setting out to engage the unconscious? Sometimes it is not problematic at all. In his later films Alfred Hitchcock knowingly used the manipulation and subversion of audience expectation through exploring the psyche as both a narrative theme and a meta-form of cinematic storytelling. Why then does the same not apply to other filmmakers who attempt something similar? To answer these questions it is necessary to use some Jungian concepts and these will, while not exactly answering the question, at least point us in the right direction. However, in showing why these Jungian ideas are useful I am going to make an argument that at first might appear contradictory.

Jungian psychology regards the conscious part of ourselves as shifting and, as it does so, increasing in awareness. While Jung stresses that the way we understand our relation to the world is largely conscious, at the same time he argues that there are parts of the psyche which are unconscious and which he insists we need to pay attention to. One of the clearest ways these unconscious elements manifest themselves is in dreams. Unconscious elements also appear in irrational acts, unpredictable emotions and creative outpourings and, I would add, in the cinema. It is my contention that in this latter setting an awareness of these unconscious processes will help us both to reframe what is on the screen and also to understand why viewers react emotionally and psychologically as they view films. Jung observes that it is a struggle for consciousness to understand the unconscious. Yet the struggle is essential, as consciousness needs to become increasingly aware of the part of the person which remains a mystery, unknown and hidden. Put another way, Jung suggests that it is a life-long challenge for us, for the ego, to hold the unconscious and conscious parts of ourselves together and to accept that the unconscious can never be fully understood. Here is the tension: consciousness is essential, but it is not enough, as part of ourselves always remains unconscious.

Jung was not alone in making this observation. Indeed, the idea that there are aspects to our unconscious lives that we will never know in full is also central to much of Freud’s writing. Yet one of the elements that distinguishes Jung’s analytical psychology from Freud’s psychoanalysis is the extent to which it considers it desirable to become aware of the contents of the unconscious. From both the Jungian and Freudian perspectives, the unconscious needs to be made conscious, as this is the main means by which psychological complexes can be detected and eventually dissolved. However, for Freud the majority of the unconscious needs to be constrained or, as he puts it, repressed. This is because it contains sexual material that is related to the impossibility of the Oedipal situation. By contrast, Jung tends to put his focus on releasing the unconscious, as for him the unconscious has a role that is both teleological and homeostatic. Here then are the two differing orientations – Freud who emphasizes the significance of childhood sexuality and the need for repression and Jung who regards the unconscious as something which gradually unfolds into consciousness over the course of life. This is rather to caricature and over-simplify the differences. But the general point holds: namely that the unconscious has a somewhat different role in Freudian and Jungian theory and this directly influences how consciousness relates to and understands the unconscious.

Given the positive role that Jung ascribes to consciousness in human development, where then is the problem with filmmakers taking unconscious material and rendering it on the cinema screen? Jung was certain that when we have to deal with the psychological difficulties of life, consciousness alone was never enough. He also thought that consciousness had a tendency to interfere with the work of the unconscious. This is seen every day in the consulting room of psychotherapists when they hear their clients struggling to change their old patterns of behaviour and at the same time see them desperately resisting change. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that this is one of the core dynamics of therapy. However, Jung went further. He claimed that ideally we should simply let the unconscious do its work; that what we need is to let the archetypal structures of the unconscious, and their propensity to form images, simply happen. When this occurs the images that appear relate directly and purposefully to an individual’s life situation. As Jung (1952: para. 608) puts it, ‘The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent.’ In the following quotation Jung develops this idea.¹ In doing so he stresses the primacy of the unconscious and the need to hold together in a productive and creative tension the conscious and unconscious parts of ourselves:

The unconscious is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to drill it are only apparently successful, and moreover are harmful to consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle.

(Jung, 1953/68: para. 51)

This idea was developed by James Hillman (1979) and is at the centre of his theories about how to work with dreams. In his writings on praxis, he explores the significance of holding images in our imagination and in so doing letting the dream do its work, without the intervention of consciousness. One of the implications of this is that if images are to work psychologically then it is important that we do not force them into the rational and intellectually active parts of ourselves. This is one of the many problems with interpretation, as evidenced in some Jungian film scholarship but also in more general film analysis. Instead, we need to engage with films at the level of affect, and in so doing to allow their images to resonate with the themes of our lives. Of course the conscious part of the psyche is often resistant to this idea. Observing that we have an unconscious aspect to ourselves is not without its frightening qualities and there is the very understandable concern that if we let go of consciousness we will lose our way in the world. We fantasize that we might even find the unconscious overwhelming.

The tension between the desire to know the unconscious aspects of ourselves and the fear of knowing those same aspects means that if we are going to understand the psychological meaning of an image, be it in a dream or in a film, the intellect is going to be important. From its earliest days, film theory has been struck by the likeness or analogy between film and dream (cf. Bordwell, 1997). In the 1970s Christian Metz developed the idea that in some way films mirrored intrapsychic processes and the cinema screen could be considered a type of ‘dream screen’. These ideas have been developed by numerous theorists (Heath, 1981; Lebeau, 1995; and many others). It is also striking that Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenburg and Dave Geffin called their film studio Dreamworks. But the intellect alone will not be enough. What I am suggesting here is the development of an approach to understanding the psychological qualities of the cinematic experience which is not just intellectual but is also somatic. Such an approach incorporates our full being, conscious and unconscious, mind and body, as a means by which to understand how our emotional reactions to films become encoded in us and in our psychological responses.

This is not to suggest that the intellect is without a role in understanding films. Far from it, as it must surely be the case that without the assistance and insights offered by the intellect any film would be incomprehensible. The intellect is needed for an understanding of film literacy and of the basic conventions and tropes of film style and constructed meaning. Nor do I want to devalue the work of academic film criticism, on which we are going to draw heavily. Rather, the general point is that if we are to understand the psychological reactions that we have to films we need to use more than just our intellect. The second and specific point is that one way to do this is to explore what happens when filmmakers consciously attempt to embed in films unconscious mythological material in an attempt to engage with and manipulate the unconscious of the viewers. Analysing such films provides a useful way of highlighting the limitations of a purely rational, conscious and intellectual approach to understanding how films work psychologically.

Of course all films engage in emotion manipulation. But I want to suggest that there is a significant difference between wanting the viewers of a film to feel something at a certain point and embedding archetypal material in the hope that it will speak to some universal and mythic part of the psyche. To expand on this theme a little more I am going to offer three examples. The first comes from an unlikely source and is the Walt Disney film Dumbo (Dir. Armstrong et al. 1941). Perhaps Dumbo is not the first film that springs to mind when we think about psychologically meaningful films. But there are aspects of the film that continue to move viewers today and do so by deploying well-established filmic devices. The scene I want to consider is where some rowdy children poke fun at the size of the baby elephant Dumbo’s ears. His mother (Mrs Jumbo) unleashes her temper as she rears on her back legs and trumpets loudly, her eyes turning red with rage. Later in the film she is imprisoned in a circus carriage that carries the sign ‘Mad Elephant’. The baby Dumbo is taken to see his mother by his friend Timothy Mouse, the music swells as the trunk of Mrs Dumbo makes its way through the bars of her cage, gradually finding her son, and a tear of recognition roles down her cheek. There’s not a dry eye in the house. This is sentimental schmaltz at its peak, which is surely what the animators had hoped for. There is also something powerful in seeing a mother reunited with her son after she has been incarcerated; her only crime was having tried to protect her child. It remains moving even though we know that we are only watching cartoon elephants. Something in the mother–child bond remains touching. Remember, this is a film made primarily for children but when we watch it as adults we can sense that here is a portrayal of the psychological attachment between parent and child and we recognize the power of the mother–child bond.

In a moment we will compare the psychological qualities of Dumbo to the more knowing approach of The Fountain (Dir. Aronofsky, 2006) and Titanic (Dir. Cameron, 1997), both of which in their different ways attempt to deploy unconscious archetypal material. What I am suggesting is that a film like Dumbo succeeds in maintaining its affective charge because it deals with emotions that are relatively close to consciousness. Films such as Titanic and The Fountain are much less successful in this regard because they try to render in the light of consciousness what is essentially an unconscious process. That said, it will also become evident that the process is actually more complicated than this suggests. But for the moment I want to foreground the distinction between those films that deal with emotions that are relatively easy to access, and those that knowingly set out to deploy the archetypal aspects of the unconscious.

I accept that I am making a personal subjective judgement about films that work emotionally: it is in part a reflection of my own tastes and indeed of my psychology. That said, my views about these films are also informed by having shown them, or extracts from them, to numerous groups and discussed people’s responses. In doing so I was attempting to find out why films that it seemed would work psychologically left me cold. If you find yourself in strong, powerful and emotional disagreement with me then you might want to jump to the final chapter in this book where I get to the nub of the personal psychological relationship that individuals have with films, both in the cinema and in therapy. However, I am not the first to suggest that the relative psychological neutrality of a film, novel or play might actually turn out to offer fertile ground for psychological material. Jung did not write much about literature, or film, or art, but he did sometimes attempt to reflect psychologically on them. On one such occasion he comments:

In general, it is the non-psychological novel that offers the richest opportunities for psychological elucidation. Here the author, having no intentions of this sort, does not show his characters in a psychological light and thus leaves room for analysis and interpretation, or even invites it by his unprejudiced mode of presentation…. An exciting narrative that is apparently quite devoid of psychological intentions is just what interests the psychologist most of all. Such a tale is constructed against a background of unspoken psychological assumptions, and the more unconscious the author is of them, the more this background reveals itself in unalloyed purity to the discerning eye. In the psychological novel, on the other hand, the author himself makes the attempt to raise the raw material of his work into the sphere of psychological discussion, but instead of illuminating it he merely succeeds in obscuring the psychic background. It is from novels of this sort that the layman gets his ‘psychology’: whereas novels of the first kind require the psychologist to give them deeper meaning.

(Jung, 1930/50: para. 137)

A quite common way to talk about films is as the creation of their directors. Along with film stars, directors are household names while editors, camera operators, special effects technicians and the other members of the production crew are much less familiar to film viewers, although one or two composers of film music have become well known. However, it is primarily directors who carry with them the pervading myth of authorial intentionality and vision. Film studies has been somewhat critical of this notion, seeking to see meaning as more complex and distributed than the ‘auteur theory’ suggests (cf. Caughie, 1981). In particular, recent theoretical work on fan culture has shown how the meaning of films exists outside the confines of the authorial text, as fans appropriate films for their own purposes. From this perspective it is not quite so surprising that our psychological responses might run counter to the intentions of a film’s director.

The interference of consciousness with creative processes

In psychotherapy, it is known that when something that is unconscious is made conscious ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The consciously constructed film
• 2 Being in the cinema
• 3 Reflections of the body
• 4 Being mindful of the image: the psychodynamic and the cinematic
• 5 Seeing the image
• 6 Being touched by the image
• 7 Feeling the image
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index