Skyscraper! You dastardly power phallus, you!

Oh! That complex weave of mush we call brain. Left to our best devices, we posit that not only what we perceive, but also how we perceive are likely both products of some hidden, unsatisfied or untapped desire tucked away in an inconceivable nook, waiting to leap forth at an inconvenient time and pull our inner puppet strings.

Psychoanalysis is always a Pandora’s box (jar) for me. Both the Freudian and Lacanian approaches to the psyche are informative and entertaining at the same time.  This is due mostly in part to the imagination-stretching applications in which they both may be applied. For example, the power-to-maleness analysis is important, but also laughable. Though phallocentrism may be very real, it’s hard to argue its prevalence when so many things in our world seem to be long, tall, or penisy. “One need only to consider how many tools and structures made to signal awe and power are shaped like a phallus: rifles, rockets, skyscrapers, the Washington Monument, etc.” (159).  It’s hard to argue those things are phallic when you put it that way, right?  Such a suggestions seems to imply that things that are large and wide instead of long and tall are less powerful. Now I feel unnecessarily sad for the Hoover Dam (so powerful) or the Mall of America (what a footprint!) because they lack the phallus to be powerful.

Thankfully, the conical nature of the mountain offsets this skyscraper phallus fest.
(Mountains are powerful too, right?)

My imagination can’t help but wonder what psychoanalysis would have been like if men hadn’t been leading the game. I’m not thinking anything novel here, the text even covers how some feminist theorists have re-approached psychoanalytic theory as a model of contemporary gender inequality. Something tells me that even if there were such a thing as “the woman gaze” initially, it would have had the expected male twist of “the woman looks onto the man, drawn in by his power, and her desire to have a phallus.”

Of course, none of this is the fault of the authors. They’re merely trying to represent psychoanalysis in a quick survey-like fashion.

Thankfully, our reading subsequently takes us through the Feminist and Queer approaches to analysis.

I was delighted to see that the previous owner of my text had used a highlighter in only one section of the entire book—the Feminist Analysis section. And, you guessed it, with PINK highlighter!

A combination overview of psychoanalytic theories coupled with feminist and queer theories always has the same result for me. I’m always more prone to lean toward a feminist analysis because the placement of gender binaries is much more conceivable than the harder to believe psychoanalytic approach—especially with movies, shows, and literature.


Final words

It would be an interesting discussion to combine last week’s talk on governmental control of media with the “Queerness and Visibility” sections of this week while also mixing in (the somewhat dated) notion that the degradation of media and morals is what impacts what and how relationships and people are portrayed in media. Is the current portrayal of homosexuality in media a product of our American culture or a product of some bigger hand?

Upon reflection, this week’s reading sent me through a fun rollercoaster of self-analysis followed by a liberating sense of awareness. It’s been years since I watched any film or show for the sake of entertainment and, frankly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. There’s a freedom in analysis that you can’t get with submersion.