The Opposite of Homosexuality

"The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality.  It's holiness," says Alan Chambers "ex- homosexual" and leader of Exodus International.  This is a Christian group that is disillusioned enough to believe that it can cure homosexual tendencies through prayer and "Christian counseling".  And yes, this dumb ass actually said that holiness and homosexuality are opposite of one another, but I will move past what an idiot he is for a moment so that I can discuss the article from The Times that discusses this atrocity and its relation to the Gothic.  This Fundamentalist Christian movement towards un-gaying people through the use of Jesus boot camps is an undeniable case of "othering" in this day and age.

"You are invited to a conference unlike any other"

Maybe we can look at this video and see why people are interested in attending such a conference.  The inspirational music, the promise of happiness and support, the idea of freedom: it all sounds so promising.  And when you've struggled your entire life with who you are, this might be exactly the type of environment that seems inviting. Maybe, just maybe, you can be "fixed."

But In her article, Lucy Bannerman contradicts the pretty picture painted in the advertisement stating that, "it has been claimed by critics, many of whom have undergone treatment themselves, that some same-sex attraction therapy can exacerbate anxiety and depression, in extreme cases leading to suicidal feelings."  Basically the camps bring people in and berate them with the notion that a homosexual lifestyle is unacceptable if they desire to get past the pearly gates.  The statement that being gay is actually the opposite of holiness is the perfect example of how this "treatment" can cause greater problems within the self.

Those who have been raised to see Heaven as the ultimate goal of life are bound to depression under this way of thinking.  Bannerman spoke to one woman who put these exact feelings into words, " I'd love to be openly gay and have a completely satisfying relationship with God. But I don't know how that can be done."  It is through this way of thinking that these Christian programs manage to breed self-loathing.  Not only are the heterosexual members of the church placing these pressures on their gay counterparts, but people like Chambers who "suffer from same-sex attraction" are promoting an idea of self-othering.

What is so sickening to me that it's almost laughable is that the clients of this camp are openly acknowledging their Id, and the people who run the program are not even trying to hide that they want them to repress their true selves.  Chambers makes the shocking admission, "I live a life of denial and I love it. I didn't choose my same-sex feelings but I do choose how I'm going to steward them. Freedom is possible.”

At least he can acknowledge -what many wackos often deny- that his feelings are innate, but he is telling these people that denying the true self is enjoyable.  It is disturbing that he can promote his resistance to homosexuality in this way.  He is influencing an entire group of people and saying that hating yourself is really fun if you just pretend like you don't.

I can't help but see this as a direct assault on the writings of Robert Luis Stevenson, who basically had to write an entire novella full of innuendos to make his point about the dangers of sexual repression.  These people may not be out trampling little girls or committing murders, but they are suffering greatly: enough to cause self-harm.  How can we possibly accept a group of people promoting "a life of denial" as preferable to happiness in self- acceptance?  And how can the participants not see the flaws in the cult that they are giving in to?

 

Films like Saved! (2004) and But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) have brought this boot camp sensation to light in comedic ways.  Hilarious as they may be, these movies really have not put enough pressure on our society to make people understand that homosexuality is not something to deny within one's self.  I don't understand how we can sit back and let people be forced into seeing themselves as others.  But I suppose there is really no way of breaking people free of this way of thinking, if it has been socially constructed by their families and community throughout their entire lives.

Just another example of the power struggle between the Super Ego, Ego, and the Id to gain control of the self.

"A Profound Duplicity of Life"

"With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two" (Stevenson 108).

Through the use of this one sentence Stevenson pithily puts into words the sensation that Freud describes in his work The Ego and the Id.  So Dr. Jekyll is left to face the multiple aspects of his personality.  The book gives the two halves of the Dr. the basic attributes of "good an evil," which simplifies the greater idea that applies in a more general self.  We hide or "Hyde" our Id within ourselves in order to contend with the super ego found in the world around us.

The point that Stevenson successfully makes is that the Id isn't necessarily evil so to speak, but is looked at as evil by society and therefore the ego of ourselves.  So assuming that Jekyll is the Ego and Hyde is the Id, people like Utterson, who exist in the greater world, can be considered the Super Ego.  And if we are to relate the theme of "black mailing" in this novella to illegality of sodomy, then we can say that the Id is likely meant to represent homosexual tendencies in Jekyll- and the other men in his circle.

So it is no wonder that Jekyll wishes to separate the two parts of himself that he has been forced to live with his entire life.  Jekyll includes in his confession, "I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame" (Stevenson 107).  His "irregularities" cause him to invent the potion that lead to his ruin.  This intense suppression of his Id results in the greater explosion that we see in Hyde.

What I find interesting is that even after Jekyll has allowed Hyde into the world, he still feels incredibly guilty about the actions of his other and "he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde" (Stevenson 119).  After realizing the damage that Hyde is doing, Jekyll continues to release him because of the high he gets from decompressing his Id.  The problem is that he does not learn from this separation of self.  He cannot get out from under the thumb of the Ego and Super Ego that control his life.  There is only extreme, a happy medium cannot be found.

Despite recognizing the duplicity within himself, Jekyll cannot find a way to cleanse away the Id that he so despises.  The reason that he moves so towards Hyde is that Hyde is his true self.  When Jekyll is Jekyll, Hyde is still within him, when Jekyll is Hyde, Hyde is only Hyde.  It is in his self hatred that Jekyll turns to what he supposedly hates within himself, rather than being a person that he can control.

Stevenson clearly realizes that there is a lot of power in not having to hide the "evil" within yourself, because you have no sense of the shame that society forces upon you.

The Object as the Identificatory

I have so much to say in response to Robert Stevenson's, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I am most certainly not finished with The Yellow Wallpaper, but I'd just like to first respond to a question posed in class.

First though, I want to reinstate the classifications that Professor Moglen gave for Freud's concepts of the love towards parents:

Identifacatory Love- Parent with whom the child identifies and wants to be like.
Object Love- Parent that one can imagine loving in the future.

Someone asked what would happen in the case of an abnormal family atmosphere, such as a single parent or a homosexual parents.  Professor Moglen responded that this question is often asked of Freud's theory and remains unanswered.

To a certain degree, I can see Stevenson's novel as a bit of a response to this question.  There are hardly any women in the novel and Jekyll lost his mother during his own birth.  His father at this point is a single parent, left to fill two roles.  As a result Jekyll is likely to love his father as an object as well as identify with him.

Stevenson may be making a commentary on this dual relationship through the homosexual tendencies within the novella, particularly in the case of Jekyll's club of gentlemen located on "queer street."  The secrets that they keep for one another suggests an unspoken understanding of this sort of behavior.  The lack of women and families in their community questions the ability to find someone to fill the role of object love who is not a man.  They definitely don't seem to be looking to find women and family on top of that.

So this is what I propose:  Dr. Jekyll feels as though he should repress these implied desires because he is Gentleman, as his father was.  As a result Hyde escapes from within him and lives out all of Jekyll's dirtiest desires without shame or remorse.  One reading we could make is that he didn't even have a mother to identify with in an effeminate manner, thus making him feel alright about his desires.  No, he was left to take on the role of the man that his father was, as well as see men as objects of love.  But because of the former, he cannot accept the latter!

Really, that would drive anyone crazy.  It's no wonder he developed multiple personality disorder and caused his own downfall.  It's a lot to handle.

Seeking the Gothic

Since beginning this class, I have made it a point to look for Gothic themes in every movie I see.  I have to admit that I do this partially out of a desire to lengthen this blog, but I also have found it to be an fascinating lens to look through when observing the world around me.

This left me with an interesting read of the French film, Amelie (2001) which I had the pleasure of watching this weekend.  I could not help but notice the influences that Freud seemed to have on Jean- Pierre Jeunet  in his creation of this particular film.  The story plays out as though it was meant to be directly attributed to the analysis of Freud, with the exception of the fact that it follows the life of a young girl rather than a boy, which would have applied to his work more directly.

The story opens with the supremely clinical description of how Amelie came to be, displaying a montage of images: sperm racing towards an egg, the maturity and growth of a pregnant woman, and finally a the head of a child emerging in childbirth.  This is very realist beginning for a girl who will later live a life full of purely Gothic moments.  There is then a home video- like reel, where we are given a quick overview of Amelie's happy, curious childhood, before her parents are introduced to us.

Freud bases much of his analysis on the relationships within a family, particularly focusing on the interactions between child and parent. The narrator continues Amelie's tale by describing the personalities of her father and mother, while they are displayed on screen (pointed comments are also written out describing certain attributes.)

We are first told about her father, "an ex-army doctor," is presented in his lab coat, standing stiffly in front of the spa where he now works.  An arrow pointing at his mouth leads to script explaining: "Tight lips, hard heart."  Her mother, a school teacher, also stands in front of her work, she is given the description, "Facial twitch, weak nerves."

This film -as is the case with many Gothic texts, in my opinion- is a comedy.  The moments of her childhood that are most important for future character development are equal parts dark and silly.  For instance, when she is six years old and "she'd like to be hugged by her daddy" she is overexcited during the only time he touches her, during her monthly checkup (he does, after all, have a "cold heart").  This is the reason he thinks her heart is irregular as well as the reason she is forced into home school.  Blubber, her suicidal fish, and only friend is dropped into a stream, due to her mother's previously mentioned "weak nerves."  This loneliness only increases when her mother is actually killed by someone else's suicide.

Left only with her distant father, she grows into identificatory love and has no parent with which to direct an object love, so she just doesn't.  This, I am lead to believe, accounts for her disinterest in men and relationships for most of her life.

"She tried once or twice, but the results were a letdown"

Instead, like her father, she distances herself from the world around her, content on observing people and avoiding being the object of observation for others.  Her trip into her own unconscious begins when she knocks away a loose tile on her bathroom wall to find a hidden box filled with toys.  As she opens this passage way into the dark tunnel of her wall, so opens her own mind.

In her quest for the owner of the small treasure box, she begins to interact with her neighbors as well as people who once lived in the building.  The first real connection we see her make is with the old man who tells her the name of who she is searching for.  "We all need a way to relax," he says.  She responds in a whisper, "I skip stones."  In this moment she can see some of herself in this old man and whoever "we all" entails.  She makes good deeds a part of her daily life and in doing so she continues to make similar little connections, and also discovers that she too has been observed. 

Her mission leads to self realization, largely at the hands of her neighbor, Raymond Dufayel, who helps her to connect with the man with whom she most relates.  At her first meeting with Nino Quincompoix the narrator tells us that, "When Amelie lacked playmates, Nino had too many.  Five miles apart, they both dreamed of having a brother and sister to be with all the time."  Despite their different reasons, the two are connected in their need for and lack of companionship.  It is in Nino that Amelie finds her other and can finally step out of the cold shadow cast upon her by her father.  She is free to make a loving connection with a man who is nothing like her father.

Can't Find an Other? Make Your Own!

It worked for Frankenstein didn't it?  Well...worked is relative here, but he certainly did it!

We are introduced to Victor through his letters at the beginning of the novel, in which he tells the reader of his childhood and his family life.  It is clear that he has love for his mother, who dies just as he is going away to school, however he does not entirely connect with her on any intellectual level.

He then goes on to talk about his introduction to science and his growing infatuation for the subject.  This is where we first see the emergence of M. Waldman as "a true friend."  Seeing as how Victor quickly surpasses the masters, it can be said that he is not looking for an equal, but someone who will "express the most heartfelt exultation in [his] progress" (Ch.4)  He does not necessarily need him to understand the work that he is actually doing so much as how excellent and important his findings are.

Frankenstein's description of, "one of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted [his] attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life," is particularly foreshadowing of the events to come.  In the same passage he talks about how the "fine form of man was degraded and wasted," which is another moment that implies how he might feel about the monster he has yet to create (Ch.4).

Frankenstein's reaction to he man he makes later on in the book shows how he is very much Waldman's opposite.  He takes no pleasure in the development of the creature, nor does he make any attempt to understand it.  He simply flees at the sight of "the wretch -- the miserable monster whom [he] had created.".  This is an interesting outcome considering the project was aimed at manipulating the human body, which he found so fascinating and beautiful.

He looks into, "his eyes, if eyes they may be called," and this moment he faces his other, which he never intended, or wants, to see (Ch. 5).  This is a pseudo Mirror Stage moment in Shelley's novel that gives the reader their first glimpse into Frankenstein's true nature.  Here we have an unreliable account of our protagonist, because he has been the one telling his own story.  The ugliness that is seen in the monster acts as a physical manifestation of what he has been holding within himself.

The action of running away from the monster serves as a representation of Frankenstein's repression of his own id.  The monster within him has now been unleashed into the world and even after being forced to face the creature, Frankenstein still wishes to pretend as though it does not exist.  As Professor Moglen likes to remind us: the greater the repression, the greater the eventual explosion is bound to be.  Thus is the case as the monster continues to roam about the world, and eventually seeks its revenge on Frankenstein.

In his vengeance, the monster kills several of Victor's loved ones, but what serves as a concrete action of "otherness" is the murder of his father.  Victor, who for all intents and purposes is the monster's father, was never active or present after it was "born."  The monster takes from Frankenstein exactly what was deprived of him.  Now, they are both orphaned.

Frankenstein continues to repress the monster that he has let out into the world and the matching id still within him rages on as he keeps the secret of his science project to himself.  In the end, he reveals this secret and it is not he who works out his own unconscious, but rather it is left to Walton to unravel the story of Frankenstein's id: his monster.