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While spending most of our lives pondering our own psychological and emotional issues, it is interesting to have someone help us work through these types of problems in a more removed and objective way —by film—a medium that allows us to identify with the various characters, yet lets us keep a sense of emotional distance.
I attended the third film of the series, Lars and the Real Girl, which was about a quiet man in his mid-twenties who is under the delusion that a sex doll is his living, breathing girlfriend. After the film, Noreen Honeycutt, Ph.D., led the discussion with her psychoanalytic observations. According to Dr. Honeycutt, Lars had used the doll as an apparatus to work through deeper conflicts, stemming from his lack of motherly affection and resultant inadequate social skills. She pointed out details in the film (especially oedipal ones like the symbolism of the color pink and Lars’ use of a blanket as a fetish object) that left the audience with a greater insight into Lars’ delusion.
As the audience’s questions were answered, it all became a bit like a night of group therapy. Our society is so heavily invested in analytic theory that it is often into how we experience all art. Films like Lars and the Real Girl present fictional story lines that help us work through our own actual anxieties and desires, without the need for a professional help. But on this night having a professional there to guide us through her perceptions of meaning enriched the experience making it all the more worthwhile.
While psychoanalytic theory (from Freud to Lacan) is criticized as pseudoscience and debunked as “truth”, it continues to maintain a profound effect on our society. Symbolism and belief in the subconscious remains a mainstay of almost all forms of therapeutic practice. Popular television shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Nip/Tuck all present baffling storylines full of cryptic symbols and interpersonal conflict that leave their audiences excitedly puzzled over the unanswered questions about the core of characters’ psyche and values. The search for answers as characters work out their arch-typical conflicts is what draws the audience back for more every week. The success of the Psychoanalytic Films Series at the BMA can be attributed to similar satisfaction—the psychoanalyst enhanced our own questions about the films, and through engaged investigation, we were able to find some plausible answers.
Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis Film Series
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive
Baltimore, MD 21201
April-May, 2009
http://www.mdpsychfoundation.org/pdfs/2009filmseries.pdf
by Alyssa Hawn
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