Abject Spaces in American Cinema

Institutional Settings, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film

Frances Pheasant-Kelly

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781848855977
• eBook ISBN: 9780857733672
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, thi book analyses a range of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) through to cult films such as Carrie (1976) and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). In these films, locations of coherence and order become places where the internal and repressed aspects of the body, individual and social, threaten to overwhelm the individual. Identity is compromised through harsh conditions, extreme discipline, the exertion of absolute control, and above all the restriction of personal space.
Symbolically infantilised, forced to reassess aspects of the adult, the only escape is through violence; the eponymous Carrie escapes from her cupboard for a massacre, the women of Girl, Interrupted mutilate and annihilate themselves and Kubrick's Gomer Pyle shoots sadistic patriarch Sergeant Hartman in the 'head'. By analysing scenes of horror and disgust within the context of abject space, Frances Pheasant-Kelly reveals how threats to identity manifest in scenes of torture, horror and psychosexual repression and are resolved either through death or through traumatic re-entry into the outside world. Bringing together contemporary theoretical debates and critical disciplines, Abject Spaces in American Cinema offers a coherent and meaningful analysis of institutonal films and shows that the chaos of the abject space cannot be resolved- only escaped. This readable and engging tour of the abject in the institution of film will be immensely valuable to students of Film Studies, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies.

PART I

BECOMING A MAN/WOMAN: SPACES OF TRAINING

According to Kristeva, abjection is a necessary part of the process of attaining coherent subjectivity. Logically, therefore, institutions that contribute to the development of a coherent adult identity provide ideal opportunities for examining abjection. Places of training abound in cinema, ranging from films of the high school genre to those set in the military boot camp, and are sites that address the individual’s various physical, social or educational aspirations. Here, a range of genres, including Carrie, Remember the Titans and Full Metal Jacket, illustrates how the transition to adulthood leads to the production of abject space.

In general, Foucauldian analysis dominates scholarly accounts of the institution in relation to training and education. Foucault describes how ‘rank’ begins to define the great form of distribution of individuals in the educational order – rows or ranks of pupils in classrooms, corridors and courtyards¹ – and asserts that this homogenization was a direct result of a number of disciplinary processes that aimed to render the body ‘docile’. These included adherence to a timetable, the correlation of body and gesture, and exhaustive use of the body within space as ways of exercising order and maximizing efficiency. As a result, educational space became highly regulated. In the high school film examined here, there is evidence of a similarly exacting control, with regulation maintained by timetables, codes of conduct and negotiation of space. Yet, within this highly homogenized structure are processes and rituals to encourage individualization and development towards a stable social adult identity.

In the context of training, Foucault also refers to the precise physical control of the military body, which he defines as ‘body-object articulation’.² He describes the movement associated with, for example, the rifle drill, and explains that the soldier should, ‘raise the rifle with the right hand, bringing it close to the body so as to hold it perpendicular with the right knee, the end of the barrel at eye height, grasping it by striking it with the right hand.’³ Such instruction is evident in Full Metal Jacket, in which a repeated failure to master this eventually leads to chaos. Although Foucault draws attention to an intense spatial ordering of the body, the process of training in Western societies is not solely concerned with physical control, but also involves appropriate social conduct. A fundamental aspect of educational regimes relates to personal hygiene, which is intrinsic to notions of Western civilized behaviour.⁴ The contemporary rigour of this regimen results, in part, from health education films of the early twentieth century. Boon⁵ describes the intense proliferation of such films in the interwar years (1919–39), commenting that they ‘did not simply represent medicine and health, they were conceived as instruments’.⁶ Boon observes how the films suggest an association between health and morality, and order and cleanliness. Social training films also appeared in the classroom. In a study of the intersection of cinema, genre and youth, James Hay⁷ notes how, in the 1950s, the classroom became another site of behavioural control; ‘classroom films in the 1950s, were a technology adapted, by all kinds of professionals, to making the school and classroom a proper setting for linking moral and behavioural training about fashioning, developing, and conducting oneself properly in different social settings and activities.’⁸

Hay observes how these films prescribed social modes of behaviour, frequently in relation to gender, noting ‘classroom films were often about gendered regimens for self-improvement and usually were used for gender-specific screenings (for example As Boys Grow, Molly Grows Up, The Story of Menstruation).’⁹ His study illustrates how real life training institutions are therefore concerned not only with the physical and educational enhancement of the body but also with ordering or repressing its various functions, especially those pertaining to the ‘lower bodily stratum’.¹⁰

A particular aspect of such regulation relates to the feminine reproductive body. In some cultures, menstruating women are segregated¹¹ while in Western society there has been a tendency to suppress elements of the feminine reproductive body. Lack of control associated with the body in current culture, particularly in relation to hygiene and weight, is also often perceived as undesirable, whereas the sanitized, weight-controlled body is the ideal. Bodily regulation therefore concerns not only suppressing links with function, but also with food intake and exercise. Gail Weiss¹² links these two aspects via her discussion of anorexia, which, in the female, controls body image and simultaneously negates menstruation.

It is with the regulation of the ‘lower body stratum’ that Carrie is concerned, while Full Metal Jacket and Remember the Titans explore the articulation and mastery of the physical body in space. In this part, therefore, I examine three different types of training institution – that concerned with education and the social control of the body; sport and the physical development and control of the body; and the precise ordering typical of the military institution. These films address both female and male dominated institutions of different genres, namely the horror genre, the war film, and the sports training film. Each suggests that mastery of the physical aspects of the body is essential to attaining a coherent adult identity, while failure of control, mediated through various spatial scenarios, equates to an inability to achieve adulthood.

Chapter 1

Schooling and the Feminine Body: Carrie

The film Carrie (1976, directed by Brian De Palma), considered one of the most successful horror films of the 1970s,¹ has been the subject of much critical debate. In part, this centres on the destabilization of the American home and family unit apparent in the film.² It inevitably attracts comments on its deployment of Hitchcockian themes and stylistic devices,³ while other critical attention centres on either its generic characteristics,⁴ or its Gothic tendencies.⁵

The film tells the story of a young girl, Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), who develops telekinetic powers at the time of her menarche. Oppressed by her mother, who frequently locks her in a prayer closet, and derided by her school peers, she is the victim of a student plot to humiliate her. Her school peers plan to crown her prom queen and then, by suspending a bucket from the rafters above the stage of the prom, spill pig’s blood over her. When this occurs, she retaliates by summoning up her telekinetic powers, causing widespread mayhem and death at the prom. Consequently, scenes related to the female reproductive body have also generated significant discussion.⁶ The implication of the feminine body as a source of chaos inevitably prompts accusations of misogyny,⁷ especially as the film is interspersed with several narratively superfluous scenes of voyeurism.

Because of the relationship established between aspects of the female body and disorder, Creed⁸ adopts Carrie as a central text with which to illustrate her discussion of abjection. Drawing on one of Kristeva’s⁹ key points about abjection, namely the one relating to menstruation, Creed’s analysis of the film seems to corroborate Kristeva’s argument with regard to the abject female body. Its theme of maternal abjection is the other main reason for its inclusion in Creed’s anthology. An inability to break away from the mother figure arrests Carrie’s developing adult identity, and returns her to an infantilized state. As Creed notes, ‘by refusing to relinquish her [the mother’s] hold on her child, she prevents it taking up its right and proper place in relation to the symbolic.’¹⁰ In short, Creed’s overall argument in relation to Carrie is that episodes of transgression in the film invariably relate to either the menstruating or the maternal body, which subsequently become sources of horror.

There is no doubt that Creed’s argument is relevant in the context of Kristeva’s notion of the abject. Her approach, however, varies from that of Kristeva because she expounds on links between witchcraft and femininity as explanations of irrational behaviour. These episodes of transgression specifically involve Carrie’s telekinetic powers and lead her mother (Piper Laurie) to label her as a witch, an aspect that Creed develops in her reading of Carrie as an example of the monstrous-feminine. In many respects, however, this is incongruous, not least since the mother herself has witch-like qualities. Margaret White has long flowing hair, wears dark clothing and her figure behaviour mostly entails sweeping, unnatural movements. We often see her through extreme camera angles, thus heightening her appearance as evil and irrational, while Carrie persistently appears innocent and victimized. Although Creed also recognizes Carrie as a victim, she tends to centre on her supernatural powers, using this to corroborate her abject femininity.

In addition, there are other abject elements of the film, which often relate to the film’s spatial dimensions. Kristeva’s¹¹ explanation of the feminine body and maternal world as abject are derived from the child’s relationship with the mother and an inability to recognize itself as a separate entity. Carrie attempts to break away from her claustrophobic home life by venturing into new spaces that are specifically associated with the development of subjectivity and sexuality. While Creed takes account of the uterine nature of the prayer closet within the film, she does not discuss the implications of space further. This is unusual since, typically for the horror genre, there is a marked emphasis on space, especially the constriction associated with the White family’s house and the oppositional freedom of the prom ball. Indeed, in horror discourse generally, the spaces of Carrie have attracted little attention, though Rick Worland comments on the paradox of the closet in Carrie, interpreting it as both womb and tomb. The boundary of the closet is therefore implicated as both protective but constraining.¹² Worland also highlights similarities between the spaces of Carrie and those of Gothic literature. For example, in discussing Carrie’s home, he describes the Gothic character of its interior archways. Furthermore, he observes how in horror narratives, the house, like the castle or manor of Gothic literature, is often destroyed, noting, ‘the catastrophic finale may mark liberation from the injustices, debaucheries, and crushing guilt of the past.’¹³ Valdine Clemens extends this relationship by suggesting that the Gothic castle is analogous to the maternal body, and that ‘the dark tunnels and underground passages of Gothic edifices represent descent into the unconscious, away from the socially constructed self and toward the uncivilized, the primitive. Violence, pursuit and rape occur in these lower depths, yet they are also the realms where valuable discoveries are made.’¹⁴

Clearly, a theme of abjection again emerges in relation to certain spaces, especially in correlations between the maternal body and Gothic architecture. In Carrie, the home similarly becomes an extension of the maternal body, with the mother’s death reflected in its collapse.

While I do not intend to oppose Creed’s analysis of Carrie, I aim to rationalize her argument in relation to space and reconsider sources of monstrosity in the film, as well as comment on the theological implications of abjection. The significance of space to Carrie’s adult identity is not only evident in the destruction of both the school and Carrie’s home, but is also expedited through the social space of the school prom.

The high school prom is a focal point of American socio-cultural tradition, important as a rite of passage and in establishing a coherent body image. Amy Best’s¹⁵ analysis of the prom may explain the representation of its spaces in Carrie, suggesting ways that we can read the development of Carrie’s adult sexuality and subjectivity through her spatial negotiation of the prom ball. As Best asserts, ‘largely designated as a feminine space of spectacle and pageantry, the prom emerges as a place where girls announce themselves to their immediate social world, make a dramatic statement about who they are.’¹⁶ The relationship between space and subjectivity becomes evident in the chaos that occurs there following Carrie’s public humiliation, with Carrie subverting expectations of conventionally ‘safe’ spaces.

Furthermore, while abjection is allied to space rather than solely the feminine body, other characters are arguably depicted as more monstrous than Carrie, namely Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen), Norma Watson (P. J. Soles) and Sue Snell (Amy Irving). While men appear easily manipulated, they too are shown to be capable of abominable acts, namely that of animal slaughter. Moreover, the religious references that permeate the film frequently invoke abject spaces (hell) or abject acts, and there is repeated reference to the blood of Christ and the sins of the flesh. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva describes how abjection arises in relation to sacrifice, animal slaughter and bloodshed, aspects that feature prominently in Carrie. The interpretation of the feminine body as the sole source of monstrosity is therefore debatable.

Thus, while abjection is an irrefutable aspect of both the horror genre and the feminine body, I suggest that, in a broader context, space in Carrie is implicated in abjection insofar as it relates to self-image and ego formation. Therefore, in this chapter I explain how Carrie’s subjectivity directly relates to her negotiation of various social spaces. It charts her development from an infantile state to the transient femininity that she attains at the prom. However, in her reversion to an infantilized state, she ultimately returns to the semiotic space of the prayer closet. Her subjectivity thus reflects the space to which she has access. Within spaces of restriction, she is childlike, while in spaces of freedom there is clear evidence of an adult identity constituted through the conventions of femininity. However, when private space becomes public (as in the shower scene and, effectively, in its reiteration at the prom), she becomes a source of abjection through the cruelty of the others. Ultimately, her school peers provoke the chaos that she mediates through her telekinetic powers.

While the central source of Carrie’s repression arises in relation to her home, her student colleagues also revile and oppress her. Two separate and opposing institutions, the home and school, thus govern Carrie. The school trains her to be orderly, controlled and socially constrained; Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) tells Carrie to ‘grow up, stand up and take care of yourself.’ Such instruction reflects Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s discussion of the bourgeois body in which they describe how

the vertical axis of the bourgeois body is primarily emphasized in the education of the child: as s/he grows up/is cleaned up, the lower body stratum is regulated or denied, as far as possible, by the correct posture (‘stand up straight’, ‘don’t squat’, ‘don’t kneel on all fours’ – the postures of servants and savages), and by the censoring of lower ‘bodily’ references along with bodily wastes.¹⁷

Carrie’s mother, on the other hand, encourages Carrie to repress any signs of adult desire or bodily function. Therefore, while the film does not display the overt control and physical domination associated with total institutions, such as the prison, it de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Institutions, Abjection and Subjectivity
• PART I: BECOMING A MAN/WOMAN: SPACES OF TRAINING
• 1. Schooling and the Feminine Body: Carrie
• 2. Training the Athletic Body: Remember the Titans
• 3. Ordering the Military Body: Full Metal Jacket
• PART II: MAINTAINING SELF: SPACES OF DISCIPLINE
• 4. Staying Clean and Proper: The Shawshank Redemption
• 5. Performing Masculinity: Lock Up
• 6. Resisting the Gaze: The Last Castle
• PART III: THERAPY AS SURVEILLANCE: SPACES OF CARE
• 7. On the Edge: Girl, Interrupted
• 8. Maintaining Life: Coma
• 9. Confronting Death: Bubba Ho-tep
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Filmography
• Bibliography