Steph.en Wexler
English: Film & Literature
April 11, 2010
I Want My Mommy
Wrinkly, puffy, thin-skinned baby boy spews from the vortex of a watery and mushy vacuum of love. Straight into the hands of a lab-coated stranger he goes, spanking Baby Boy into a bloody hell of a wail; agony being baby boy’s first Earthly emotion. And then! Like an angel sent from above Allah himself (pretend you didn’t hear the “holy fuck!” spill from her mouth prior to baby boy’s spewage), a spotlighted and sweaty haired mother coos for Baby Boy. “C’mere my darling” she says as she cries a tiny tear for him, gives a tiny kiss to him, nestles her tiny arms for him; everything so irresistibly gentle and warm and gooey it’s hard not to gag a little. So Baby Boy gags. Sweaty Haired Mother finds this “just adorable.” Baby Boy shits. Sweaty Haired Mother turns to Husband and says, “I wish your crap was this cute!” Baby Boy pisses as Husband tries to pick him up. Sweaty Haired Mother giggles, “Oh aren’t you just precious,” she says with a puffy-lipped smooch. Baby Boy nuzzles in awe of this angel, this heaven sent beauty, this savior, this PENIS-LESS CREATURE OF GORGEOUSNESS! And The Oedipus Complex is born. Inescapable and timeless, the syndrome (not to be thought of as sickly), is a resilient theme in coming into adulthood, as well as a catalyst to the birthing of the male ego.
Let us not forget Sigmund Freud and his manifestation of the Psychosexual Stages of Development in which he suggests that there are five key stages to the growth of an adolescent, one in particular being the Phallic stage. The phallic stage is the most fundamental of Freud's model of development. It is thee phase of the genital region. David Stevenson quotes, “As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one.” The term Oedipus complex itself did not appear in Freud's published work until his paper "A Special Type of Object-Choice Made by Men" (1910h, p. 171). Freud's reference to the myth of Oedipus originates much earlier. In a letter dated October 15, 1897, to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, he wrote: "I have found, in my own case too, falling in love with the mother and jealousy of the father, and I now regard it as a universal event of early childhood. . . . If that is so, we can understand the riveting power of Oedipus Rex" (1954 [1887-1902] http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/OedipustheWreck/complex.htm).
Literature and film, being as they are historical documentation, speak widely of this collective truth. Phillip Roth’s character Alex in Portnoy’s Complaint gives prime example of an adolescent boy battling his innate fixation with his mother. The first spark of the novel opens with Alex stating, “[My mother] was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise” (Roth 6). Eloquently, Alex lunges into description of both his mother and father; the contrast being intensely noteworthy. He speaks of his father as consistently constipated, disappointed, disappointing, and bitter, while he speaks of his mother as though she is a shining specimen of superhuman; the dishes always steamed, her appearance always golden. He even explains a time where his father failed at baseball. This tiny tid bit depicting his anger toward his father’s “malfunctioning-parenting-skillz,” or better yet the purest form of his Oedipus Complex. Alex’s view of himself, as the ego eye views the body, spawns directly from this Oedipus relationship. Alex states to his mother, “...let's face it, Ma, I am the smartest and neatest little boy in the history of my school! Teachers ... go home happy to their husbands because of me ...(Roth 67)" Due to the fact that he believes each of his teachers is merely his “mother in disguise,” it is no wonder he feels they too, hold him in such high regard, as though HE is the reason they go home happy; A rumbling of ego splintering his walls of youth.
Portnoys Complaint is not the only fictional story that alludes to such suggestion. In Running with Scissors, the viewer is immediately introduced to Augusten’s narcissistic mother who requires all eye sockets on her when reading a poem she quite obviously deems brilliant. Augusten is sucked into her vortex; her little puppy, another wagging tail. Enamored and very willing of her attention, Augusten is nothing short of a slave to her vanity and dream. He licks her wounds with the same saliva he uses to tame her hair; his father, seemingly non-existent.
Alfred Hitchcock dabbles in this theme quite often with his characters Roger O. Thornhill (played by Cary Grant) of North by Northwest, and Mitch Brenner (played by Rod Taylor) of The Birds. In North by Northwest, there is clear indication that Thornhill is a “momma’s boy.”After getting arrested for drunk driving, he meets his mother for lunch in an attempt to prove his innocence. She is the one that calls after he gets caught, suggesting there is no other woman of high importance in his life. Hitchcock’s films tend to encompass a plot that includes a male lead who is dependent upon his strong-minded mother. The male’s bond with his mother is shown to affect the attitude placed on women in passing. The men in his films representing this tend to be bachelors straight into their adulthood.
Federman from The Buffalo Journal states,
“My complex surfaces when my mother gave me the last bath
I ever got from her. I was nine….My body was pale skinny
shivering in spite of the heat, but proud of the budding black hair
slready curling above my little reddish penis…my mother kept
saying arête de bouger, et arête de glousser comme ca. After she
wiped me with the big towel, she gave me a gentle tap on the derriere.
That day when I got my last bath from my mother, my father was
at the race track betting the week’s groceries on the wrong horse…
she said if she had the courage, she would kill him. For a moment I
almost felt like doing what my mother said she didn’t have the courage
to do“ (http://epc.buffalojournal.edu/authors/federman/shoes/oedipus.html).
Though to the naked eye the term Oedipus Complex may seem dated, it does show up quite boldly in pop culture today. Junkyard Junkie Kid Rock wrote a song in 2002 titled, “My Oedipus Complex” where he states, “And I believe it stems down from my family situation
I never liked my old man I couldn't stand to be around him, sometimes I sit all alone just staring at his picture My heart turns to stone and I think of this.” He goes onto state, “You never loved me you never held me tight instead you shook me like a beast to wake me up at night you tried to make me think that your ways were best when all I was, was an outlet for all your stress.” Clearly, the theme stands true through time, making it universally resilient.
Woody Allen also shows the concept some love in his film Oedipus Wrecks; a story about a New York Lawyer who is under the reign of his hyper-critical Jewish mother. A lot of Woody Allen’s movies tend to be based around his relationships with women, and essentially their downfalls.
Bond films also don’t fall far from the tree. Though not necessarily intentional, The Oedipus Complex is most definitely found on a sub textual level. Looking closer at the Bond films we find that most of the Bond villains are older than Bond representing angst for the “father figure,” and hence giving reason as to why pre-teen and teen boys find them so appealing. Many older Bond fans eventually feel severed from the connection they once had and claim that the films just stopped working. The films didn’t stop working; the matured mind-set watching is to blame. The fans grow up, out of the oedipal stage, and move on.
Goldfinger is a prime example of Oedipal subtext. The film begins with Bond telling the cabaret dancer Bonita, “I have a slight inferiority complex.” By stating this, the filmmakers launch the reality of psychological complexes in the land of The Bond. At the root of every male inferiority complex lays an Oedipal complex. Auris Goldfinger stands to be a father figure; Bond clearly taking the role of son. The base of the Oedipal drama is in this father/son relationship when stepping into his father’s sexual power, or, going for his “gold.” Bond eventually sleeps with Goldfinger’s woman (mommy dearest) when he is suddenly knocked unconscious by a “mysterious hand” (Daddy, is that you?), and when he awakes, Jill (Goldfinger’s woman) has been killed. She is smothered by Goldfinger’s Gold, and turned into a ceaseless object. Goldfinger sends an authoritative message here stating that is my woman.
The Bond and Goldfinger relationship plays into somewhat a strange but civil dance; like a seditious teen who sits at his father’s dinner table, secretly wanting to stab him, and the father who takes in his son’s murderous intent simply because he knows that his son isn’t man enough to take him on (www.commanderbnd.net).
Let us recall the laser table; or better stated, the castration device. Here, Goldfinger is going straight for the Bond “power” just as Bond had gone for his. Strangely enough, Bond does not escape. Instead, Goldfinger ends up sparing him proving that Goldfinger holds control the entire time and it is he who turns the laser power off. Bond’s sexual supremacy sits in the hands of Daddy; a gift from daddy, daddy’s love.
Later, after Bond makes a deal with his father, he awakens to find himself rewarded with a prostitute who states, “My name is Pussy Galore.” Real creative title. The filmmakers go out of their way to show that Pussy is not Goldfinger’s lover, but rather that he can’t have her. Once Bond realized that Pussy isn’t Goldfinger’s sexual “employee,” he chases her aggressively intending to establish himself as a man by conquering something that his father can’t obtain. He forces himself onto her, and wins her over.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill represents the impact of unresolved Oedipal conflicts on “bourgeois” families. The character Edmund engages in a power struggly with his father. He yells at his father stating, “You’ve never given (my mother) anything that would help her want to stay off morphine!...Jesus, when I think of it, I hate your guts!” and Tyrone (his father) responds, “How dare you talk to your father like that, you insolent young cub!”
Edmund also speaks of his fixated interest in his mother when he says, “If she’d had to take care of me all by herself, and had that to occupy her mind, maybe she’d have been able..” Here he displays his deep desire to have his mother to himself, giving his father the title of destroyer. Mary, Edmund’s mother, also notes, “All you need is your mother to nurse you.” Throughout the piece, Edmund and Mary are the only characters that consistently give signs of physical affection towards one another.
More times than not, our first true embrace is from our mothers. Our first sip, is from our mother. If we break it down psychologically, the theory has logic. A mother’s care tends to be gentle, comforting, and un-wavering; stereotypically speaking of course. A father on the other hand, tends to be less affectionate and affirming, leading to resentment from the son. Whether it be sexual or not, it becomes obvious that a son should gravitate to his mother, especially since the mother has “things” that the son, does not. It is the old repeated tale of the masculine competitiveness; the super-ego that buds from the male form. It is Tarzan batting his chest for Jane, and the ex-husband who tells you, “When you meet mom, make sure and wear something nice.” It is not a distant notion, it is all around us; the mother-son bond…
THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX.
