OPPOSITES ATTRACT: Sexuality and Spirituality in The Master

OPPOSITES ATTRACT:

Sexuality and Spirituality in The Master

 Lancaster Dodd is a man of ego – the only time we see him involved in any sort of traditional sexual activity is when his wife masturbates him in front of his own reflection. But more about that later. In general he is a man who forgoes sexuality in order to focus on what he sees as higher concerns: spirituality, the soul, human nature and the self. A man of pseudo-science and pseudo intelligence. The Master of the title. Apparently.

Freddie Quell is the opposite – barely a man, more an animal of basic instincts. He succumbs to impulsive pleasures compulsively. He cannot control his sexual urges – one of the first things we see him do is masturbate into the sea publically. He reacts to situations he cannot control with aggressively violent behaviour that requires no intellectual processing. He seems to disprove Dodd’s theory that human beings are not animals. He grunts his way through conversations and lives day to day, not millennia to millennia, like Dodd.

They are opposites when they meet. One of the most curious things about the film is how they each transform once their paths cross. They provide each other with the opposite of what they are.

The idea I am suggesting is that Dodd is gay. PT Anderson’s description of this film as a love story may be as literal as that. However, my argument is that it is one sided in terms of sexuality. Dodd is actively working to conceal and repress his homosexuality as a leader of a community, a husband, a father and a spiritual man in 1950s America. This also links in with ideas about Scientology’s apparent belief that homosexuality must be some kind of illness. From the moment Dodd lays eyes upon Freddie the sexual attraction is unmistakable; he rarely takes his eyes off him, he refers to him playfully as a ‘scoundrel’ and a ‘naughty boy’. Even after an intervention by his Lady Macbeth-esque wife and family, he refuses to give up on Freddie – or simply give him up. Because he wants him. After his release from prison, Dodd runs to Freddie, embraces him and wrestles him to the ground where they roll with each other and laugh. As well as being a valid way that Dodd can express his sexual urges for Freddie, Anderson also uses moments like this throughout as a juxtaposition; Dodd’s central philosophy revolves around the idea that we are not animals – Anderson takes every opportunity he can to show us people acting like them.

So Freddie awakens in Dodd a dormant, repressed sexuality. Whereas Dodd awakens in Freddie a barely understood desire to embrace something bigger than himself that he cannot comprehend or articulate. Freddie doesn’t understand Dodd’s ideas – he is not an intelligent man. But something about the way Dodd speaks to him and takes an interest in him soothes him spiritually. We see Freddie constantly and instantly giving in to his urges – sex, drinking, violence – he is clearly a manifestation of Freud’s Id. But Dodd causes him to stop, just for a second, and examine himself. This doesn’t necessarily imply that he gains self-awareness (although the ending implies that he does) but it still allows him some form of contemplation and comfort – something that physically and mentally he has not felt, perhaps, ever.

So what we have here is essentially the film Vice Versa starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Judge Reinhold and Joaquin Phoenix as Fred Savage. But instead of concerning itself with the physical swap of two people, The Master is about two people swapping emotional, spiritual and mental states. Yeah, it’s Vice Versa directed by Sigmund Freud.

Didn’t see that reference coming did you?

After this almost instant attraction between the two men – an attraction for opposing reasons – we have the first ‘sex’ scene between them. The unbelievable Processing sequence – when Dodd repeatedly and incessantly questions Freddie on everything from his past failures to incestuous sex with his aunt - is treated by Anderson as an aggressive, passionate sexual encounter. The camera shifts unflinchingly back and forth between tight close ups of the two men over and over again until the tension is finally released and the two men fall back exhausted into their chairs. They then even light (post-coital) cigarettes and smoke them silently for a second, a humorous inversion of this cinematic cliché utilised by Anderson to make it clear that this was something more than a conversation – this was Freddie losing his spiritual virginity and Dodd having sex properly for the first time.

Dodd’s wife Peggy is not an idiot – she may even be The Master of the title (there is a wonderful sequence where she rants at Dodd as he types. A first reading of the scene seems to suggest Dodd trying to collect his thoughts and carry on writing whilst she interrupts him. An alternative reading suggests he may be typing down exactly what she is saying) – and she can see the two men are sharing something much more intimate than she shares with Dodd. In the scene where she masturbates Dodd in front of a mirror, she tells him to come only for her. In the next scene she reproaches Freddie for drinking and encouraging her husband. By placing these two scenes next to each other, Anderson uses juxtaposition in order for the audience to understand something that Peggy knows all too well – Dodd and Freddie are an item, just not in a conventional way. There is also a suggestion in the sub-text that Dodd may have slid partly down this path before; he has had a series of marriages that haven’t survived – could his repressed homosexuality be the reason?

One of the most peculiar things to happen in the film is the moment when Dodd sings to Freddie at the end. If we read the film as I have so far discussed, it makes perfect sense. Dodd sings “I want to get you on a slow boat to China, all by yourself, alone.” The meaning here makes no effort to be evasive – it is as clear as a crisp day. Dodd wants Freddie for himself. It might not be love and it might not be tender, but it is passionate and lustful. It is with a beast-like intensity that Dodd yearns for Freddie, something that is highly ironic and another moment where Anderson decides to show us a human responding to subconscious animalistic urges, despite assertions to the contrary from the animal himself.

Freddie cries as Dodd sings not because he feels the same lust, but because he senses the absolute finality of this moment. Freddie tells Dodd he cannot stay with him and go along with his beliefs – even as an unintelligent man, Freddie can see Dodd’s ideas are full of nothing. He cries because being with Dodd is a comfort to him, ever since that first ‘sex’ – he gets spiritual warmth and a womb-like protection from Dodd. 

This then makes the final sequence make sense too. As Freddie falls back into his lifestyle, impulsively picking up a woman for sex – he comments that he has lost his erection. It is then that he starts to question her and repeat phrases from the processing scene – the moment he lost his spiritual virginity to Dodd. That moment was so monumental for him, so life-changing and shot through with passion and intensity, that the only way the can function now as a man – both sexually and spiritually – is to return to it. A return to that comfort, that joy; the warmth and protection of the womb.

The final thing we see is Freddie curled up next to the sand-woman, foetal, his head nestled into her.

Kind of says it all.

 

When Structures Become Shackles

WHEN STRUCTURES BECOME SHACKLES

IDEOLOGY IN THE DARK KNIGHT RISES


This analysis contains spoilers.

Recently a right-wing analysis of the final instalment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy emerged online and promptly went viral. In the piece, John Nolte argues that The Dark Knight Rises is a searing indictment of liberal policy, that the poor of Gotham City who migrate to the sewers to find employment with Bane are “...insecure thumbsuckers raging with a sense of entitlement, desperate to justify their own laziness and failure...” and it suggests that the film is a love letter, by proxy, to liberty, free-markets and capitalism.

This is certainly an interesting theory.

If we look at the second film – The Dark Knight – we could also interpret certain elements as displaying a clear conservative ideology. In the film our hero, Batman, in order to catch a nihilistic, existentialist terrorist who is seeking to destroy the city, decides to impinge on the basic human right to privacy; he hacks into citizen’s mobile phones in order to use this information to track down The Joker. He justifies this to Lucius Fox as a necessary evil. This is remarkably similar to the debate surrounding The Patriot Act – the piece of legislation created by the Bush administration that gave them unprecedented power to hack into emails, phone calls and personal messages if there was even the slightest possibility that it could lead to information on terrorist activity. This was derided in left-wing circles as a government using fear and manipulation in order to push through its own republican agenda. But whichever way you choose to respond to The Patriot Act itself, there is an undeniable link between that and what happens in the final third of The Dark Knight.

Many will see this as conclusive proof that the only way to read The Dark Knight is as a conservative parable; they read Batman as George W Bush – a leader who must make difficult decisions while his people fight a war against a terrorist who is willing to sacrifice himself for his own cause. These people might apply this same ideological approach to The Dark Knight Rises. Here, they might see Bane as representative of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – in the film we see the poor of Gotham join forces to attack the Stock Exchange. We see them throw the rich out of their luxurious abodes and set up a people’s court that tries the 1% and sentences them to icy death. We see them led and inspired by an evil, hulking villain and we see our hero, Bruce Wayne, placed in cold opposition to them. Here is a film where our protagonist is a billionaire capitalist seeking to destroy and suppress an uprising by the people of Gotham City who are sick and tired of being marginalised and mistreated by the wealthy. As Selina Kyle whisper’s into Wayne’s ear: “You and your friends better batten down the hatches, cause when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us." But even she, eventually, comes round to Batman’s way of thinking.

So that’s that then, yes? Nolan has presented us with a right-wing, conservative epic?

I don’t think so.

The main issue here for me is that commentators and critics seem to be looking at this from only two fixed perspectives; left-wing and right-wing. My suggestion is that there is a third way to look at the film which is not as inherently political but more humanistic in its approach.

To me, The Dark Knight Rises seems to be a film that wholeheartedly supports the ideological viewpoint of Individualism.

Consider this: what Nolan appears to be presenting to us is a world where all structures are broken. Yes, he seems to suggest that an anarchic uprising of people will ultimately lead to violence and chaos. This pleases right-wing commentators. But they are conveniently ignoring the fact that Nolan also, in an even clearer fashion, presents the police, the government and rich corporations as corrupt and morally-bankrupt, all the way from Batman Begins.

In Batman Begins, Rutger Hauer plays a businessman who seeks to bully his way into a position of power in a large conglomerate, a position he then ruthlessly exploits. Meanwhile Ra’s Al Gul reminds Batman that Gotham is so corrupt he has managed to infiltrate its entire infrastructure.  In Batman Begins and The Dark Knight the police force is portrayed as being riddled with leaks and informants and as containing officers willing to use their positions of authority for greed or personal gain. Even believing in Harvey Dent isn’t good enough – Gotham’s saviour and District Attorney ends up a homicidal maniac who almost kills a child.

This extremely negative portrayal of the institutions and people that the right-wing usually holds up as examples of heroism and pride reaches its conclusion in The Dark Knight Rises when arguably the trilogy’s most decent human being – Commissioner Gordon – is accused of being morally corrupt. As Officer Blake tells him – “Your hands look plenty filthy to me.”

And this is where the third way of looking at The Dark Knight Rises – the Individualism Approach – really starts to take shape. It is too easy to label Nolan’s film as right-wing or left-wing. Or rather, it’s too difficult, because it just doesn’t fit. Nolan isn’t siding with either liberals or conservatives  – he is saying that all institutions, all organisations are corrupt. What he seems to say is that the power to really change things lies in the hands of the individual.

Batman, when boiled down to his bare essentials, is a vigilante. An individual who seeks to make a difference. Nolan allows Batman to exist all the way through the trilogy in a moral grey area; he never really attempts to decide whether Batman is right or wrong because he is often both or neither. He never really attempts to align Batman with a strong political ideology because he doesn’t have one. He is an individual. Gotham City is ultimately saved from annihilation not from an organisation or the government or the police or the people – they are saved by the heroic sacrifice of an individual. There are also obvious Christ parallels in Batman’s story arc – left for dead, betrayed by his own people, destroyed and buried, only to rise, save the people and ascend into the light. This makes sense when we acknowledge the possibility that Christ himself was resolutely individualist in his outlook and preached about how one man could make a difference and, if he existed at all, it is almost certain he would be appalled by the wealth, hypocrisy and structures of the modern day, morally suspect Catholic Church. 

When, at the end of the film, John Blake – the only character in The Dark Knight Rises whose dignity and morality remain intact throughout – symbolically throws his police badge into the river and claims that structures become shackles, this is the clearest evidence to back up the Individualism Approach. This is a film that above everything seeks to remind us about the difference that one person can make. It tells us that as personal visions and ideas become diluted and distorted by committee and ‘structure’, they become corrupt and less powerful in their ability to create actual change for the better. It’s no accident that the final image we are left with is Blake rising into the light. Nolan is telling us that he is the best hope for Gotham because he, like Batman, believes in the power of the individual. Nolan is telling us that what the world needs, more than anything, is for individuals to act, regardless of politics.

As Rachel Dawes said:

“It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.”

It seems Individualism was right there from the start in Batman Begins.