Movies and the modern psyche
by Tom Ruffles
[ bookreviews ]
As well as being an MD, Sharon Packer is an "adjunct professor of media studies", which implies she is considered inessential by her institution. I think much the same can be said about her book, which looks at the relationship between cinema and psychology. Despite her clear reservations about the efficacy of psychoanalysis, she appears to have adopted a stream of consciousness approach to her writing which isn't too bothered about the minutiae of research.
The contents page sounds promising. After an overview of the relationship between film and psychology, subsequent chapters look at Freud, dreams, hypnosis, asylums, madness, psychological thrillers, Freudian westerns, film noir, Cold War paranoia, depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder, drugs, doppelgängers, Woody Allen, and the move from psychoanalysis in films to an emphasis on explanations of mental illness in terms of brain chemistry, as well as the physical treatments that that shift suggests. Unfortunately, Movies and the Modern Psyche is filled with cavalier errors of fact and superficial analyses embedded in a breathless and repetitious style. Some pruning would have helped enormously; but however shortened, this book still should have been issued with a red sticker urging the reader to double-check before taking any statement in it at face value. Patience only allows a selection of examples to give a flavour.
On page 1 we are told that in 1878 'a photographer named Muybridge succeeded in producing motion photography'. That was the year Eadweard (misspelled in the index) Muybridge produced the celebrated The Horse in Motion, which was a series of still photographs of a galloping horse. He later combined short sequences of photographs with what was essentially a phenakistoscope, and a magic lantern, to form his zoöpraxiscope. This device projected motion, but it was first presented in the autumn of 1879, and initially consisted only of painted images based on the photographs. On p16 we are told that Muybridge was "nearly lynched" after shooting his wife's lover, but although lynching was mentioned at the time he was being taken into custody, it seems clear that he was not in physical danger after shooting Harry Larkyns. It is misleading to say that the judge at his trial rejected his insanity plea but acquitted him; the jury ignored the judge's direction that they had to find him guilty unless they concluded he was insane, and found him not guilty but not insane.
Packer maintains (p17) that Edison changed the name Kinetograph to Kinetoscope, which is not true: the former recorded the images; the latter showed them. William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson is passed over as merely "an Edison employee named Dickson" filming Fred Ott's Sneeze (aka Record of a Sneeze), with no acknowledgment of his key role in developing the technology. On the other side of the Atlantic, it is a shame to see the hoary old myth repeated that spectators fled screaming from the cinema when confronted by the Lumière film 'The Arrival of a Train at the Station', i.e. L'arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat (p15). The elderly Méliès did not sell toys in the street (p42), a statement conjuring up an image of him with a strap round his neck holding up a little tray. He had a small shop on the Gare Montparnasse, which though still a sad comedown for a great pioneer, is not quite the same as being on the streets. It's also unfair on Pathé Frères to say that they put him out of business (p57). He signed a distribution contract with them, thereby losing his independence, but his production methods, and static camerawork, were not sustainable in a changing world.
Metropolis surely is not a "forerunner of sci-fi" (p88, a ghastly expression used throughout): it is science fiction. How else might you characterise it? Perhaps Lang's M is "the first psychological thriller" (p87), but I would have liked to see some discussion of Hitchcock's The Lodger, four years earlier, as a candidate for this honour. The Nazis did not just subsidise Triumph of the Will (p53): they paid for the entire production. Leni Riefenstahl never joined the Nazi party, contrary to Packer's assumption (p54). John Wayne was a "war hero" (p103)? That's John Wayne the actor, not his screen persona. Really? Pity John Ford didn't know that because he might not have taken the micky out of Duke quite as much as he did on that very score. Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom stabs his victims with a 'sabre', we are told (p111). It's a spike on a leg of his tripod, not a sabre. How would he manage to film his victims' deaths with a slashing instrument, or keep it hidden when not in use? Packer also seems to be unaware that the father in Peeping Tom's inserted home movies tormenting his son is actually Michael Powell himself, and the young Mark is Powell's real-life son Columba, adding an extra Freudian frisson that Packer would have enjoyed. There is no way that Jacob Singer's bizarre experiences in Jacob's Ladder could be attributed solely to "smoking pot in Nam" (p155); being bayoneted in the stomach was surely a more significant factor.
Roman Polanski was not "banned from re-entering the United States" after he fled in 1978 following his plea of guilty to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Nor was he was 'stateless' (p158). He did not want to return from France, where he was born and whose citizenship he retained, to face a possible lengthy sentence, and has avoided the US (and countries from where he might be extradited to the US) ever since. There is an entire chapter on another director Packer regards as having behaved in a deviant manner (many words on Soon Yi), Woody Allen. His Hannah and Her Sisters is "a throwback to Bergman's sensitivities" (p160). One would assume that this was a reference to famous director and acknowledged influence Ingmar, but the index tells us it is actually Ingrid. From the brief synopsis of Scanners, it is apparent Packer has not seen the film.
It is not just the film history that is shaky. Descriptions of scientific concepts are often open to dispute. Screen memories are described (p18) as "the snapshot memories that we carry around with us from childhood." The term snapshot memory seems to be more in line with what psychologists call "flashbulb memories", those memories we have of where we were when a significant event occurred, such as when we heard of John Lennon's or Diana, Princess of Wales's deaths, or when we found out that Jade had been evicted from the Big Brother House. A term from Freudian analysis, screen memories are ones in which an early memory is used as a screen for a later event, so rather more is going on here than just vivid recollections. Packer misquotes Haeckel's 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' while misattributing it to Darwin (p62).
Some pronouncements seem just plain daft: "After September 11, Americans were forced to face the prospect of death, to a degree they had not faced since World War II." (p141). So what about Korea? Vietnam? New York City in the 1970s? Gary, Indiana? And some are just careless: Queen Victoria died in 1901, not 1902, and it is a gross simplification to say that "[s]pirit photography delighted the Victorians" (both p146).
There is often a sense of bathos in the prose. On p36 we learn that 1939 was clearly a busy year. Freud died of jaw cancer; Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and Poland (actually, the Sudetenland was annexed in 1938, other bits of Czechoslovakia by Hungary and Poland. The rest of the Czech areas went the following year, and Germany invaded Poland in 1939); the Second World War broke out (that's true); television debuted at the [New York] World's Fair (actually it 'debuted' in a number of places in a complex history well before that). But, "ironically, 1939 was the best year ever for film. More great films were made in 1939 than ever before (or ever after)." That's what I like to see: a glass half full. This is also a good example of the prevalence of unsupported assertions. By what criteria was it the best? Later we are told solemnly, and with similar lack of supporting evidence (p124) that "Considered [by whom?] to be one of the finest films of all times, The Deer Hunter is more than a war movie or a buddy film. It is also a tale about the danger of drugs."
There is a distinct US-bias. For example, as well as the TV example, the European origins of both Muybridge and Dickson are ignored. Lamenting the lack of realistic depictions of the usual horrible circumstances in which mental patients have to survive in the community, Packer acknowledges that Spider is one that does do so, yet goes on "but it features a halfway house in the United Kingdom rather than in the United States." Shame - it could have been so good... Reassuringly, in a discussion (pp129-30) of how "The Wizard of Oz is considered to be the classic American myth of self-discovery and self-reliance...", she tells us earnestly that "Americans realize that their own ingenuity surpasses the abilities of the sham wizard who rules an illusory world." I assume she is obliquely referring to George W Bush, a subtlety not much in evidence elsewhere.
But to be fair, Packer has not been served well by the publisher. Does nobody at Praeger own a blue pencil? The same pieces of information are presented over and over again. For example, we are repeatedly told that Freud was definitely not a movie buff: "...Freud dismissed film's significance." (p2); "Yet Freud himself was no fan of film." (p33); "Freud never gave cinema much credit..." (p18); "Yet Freud himself was no fan of film." (p33); "...Freud scorned film..." (p56); "It is well-known that Freud dismissed the significance of film" (p101) etc, etc. It certainly should be well known by now, having been mentioned so frequently. There are many, many more examples of repeated sentences and even passages, too tedious to enumerate. The index is totally inadequate, often wrong, and pages of text seem to have been reset after it was compiled, making some of the references out of step. And so on. Everyone involved should be embarrassed by this book.
