Mother, they’re still not sure it is a baby!
Image by 顔なし
(Caveat, this is a pretty much unedited reaction to my viewing of Eraserhead, I haven’t really edited it or arranged it to read as an academic critique, so please forgive me if I fail to mention or arrange it in a sensical way)
a few months ago there was a post to the name that film group asking for people’s reactions and thoughts to David Lynch’s Eraserhead. After following the discussion and reading the film’s wiki and related websites my interest became peaked in it. Before all I had known about Eraserhead is it was Lynch’s first feature, and a weird surrealist and sometimes disturbing film that was hard to follow. I usually avoid surrealist/arthouse/weird stuff because of the mindset I usually get put into after watching them. I get punchy and irritable and more or less locked into my own head. Good horror films usually do a similar thing to me; the lingering effects of the scares and heightened adrenaline stay with me for hours and sometimes days after the movie. I didn’t go to bed let alone sleep the night after I watched Ringu, I stayed up all night watching old sitcoms. But I digress, and back to Eraserhead.
Eraserhead was my 4th Lynch film. The Elephant Man, Dune and Wild At Heart being the others I’ve seen. The Elephant Man and Dune aside, I had an interesting experience with Wild At Heart. I actively hated it the first time I saw it. It was nonsense, pure postmodern drivel. Weird for the sake of weird and nonsensical to boot. It’s as if Lynch went out of his way to say, "This movie is not for you. I did not make it for an audience or anyone." Which ultimately is fine, but it still really pissed me off at the time. I had watched it for a Film Analysis class though, and here was the rub, I had to do an 8-10 page right up on it. I ended up thinking a lot about the movie, trying to work an overall reaching symbol scheme and tie everything together. I worked out, at least in my own head, what characters and scenes represented, and maybe while it’s not what Lynch was intending, I got the film to make "sense" for me (quick aside, It amuses me how much I feel the need to use quotes around words when talking about Lynch movies). Upon my second full viewing of it I really enjoyed it. I laughed and smiled the whole way through. I got it. Well at least I got what it meant to me and was able to make sense of it.
After reading that most people feel all Lynch needs repeat viewings (with the exception of maybe Dune) I took it that I would have a similar experience with Eraserhead. I violent distaste after the first viewing, and after much introspection and thought, getting it and ending up liking it after subsequent viewings. With this, I was more or less let down. My initial reaction to Eraserhead was akin to my intial reaction to Citizen Kane. Excellent lighting, full of a lot of pretty and well set up visuals and scenes, but dated and more or less devoid of any relevance to me. (after subsequent viewings of Kane my opinion has changed but I won’t digress into it)
I was disappointed. I wasn’t rattled, I wasn’t even really weirded out, and only once during did I feel uncomfortable, but I just grabbed another pillow and that fixed that. The movie was more or less short and quickly paced at that. It was that bizarre or abstract (you know, as far as movies noted for being bizarre and abstract go); it was really straightforward. Here was a film about the fear of being a new father and the weird changes in life that come with it. Everything happens so quickly and you feel at a loss of what to do and people see you differently and you see yourself differently and you go and hide and hope in fantasies that will no longer come because of these new responsibilities, however awful. Ho hum.
This explanation didn’t sit that well with me. This on the surface is seemingly what the film is "about" but again, I’m disappointed with the film as such. The images could have been more disturbing, the actions of the actors more awkward, the mood of the film more uncomfortable. So since watching it I’ve been putting a lot of thought to it. The film for me is not about fear or fatherhood or a weird allegory for life and death. And while I agree with those who have put forward that those things are what the film is "about" and can see all those things in it, for me I can’t tie up all of the scenes and images neatly to fit into those explanations, and since it is Lynch, everything has meaning and a purpose to end "goal" of his film.
The movie for me is solely consisted of dreams. All of the dreams are related but they don’t follow a single chronological and sensical narrative. There is no moment in the film, for me, which is supposed to represent "reality" or better put, a living breathing world where multiple personalities are represented. It is the dreams of a single Dreamer, and I will assume that the single Dreamer is the main protagonist, Henry, though I could see digging deeper into the movie and positing another Dreamer. Since these are the dreams of one person, all characters in the film are a representation of that person. While they may be people he knows in the world of wakefulness, for my purposes everyone he sees and interacts with are in someway himself (since in our own heads that is all anything is, manifestations of our own personalities or expectations).
The film thus deals with dreams and sexuality in a fairly Freudian manner. I read a lot of the images and symbols to be particularly Freudian. The tree that sits at Henry’s bedside is a masculine image, and it is barren, indicating Henry’s recurrent sexual frustration. The weird bush onto of Henry’s dresser as female pubic hair to which Henry holds up a picture of Mary, the mother of his child. Water or liquid images are symbolic of sexual intercourse, fertility, and the female. The box on the wall as womb and thus incubator for the pithy worm-cum-phallus the Henry puts in it to kindle his sexuality.
The film starts with a superimposed shot of "the planet" over Henry’s head. I read the planet thus as being Henry’s head. Or more specifically The Planet is Henry’s dream-world and all the events there-in. We then see the Man-in-the-Planet, a disfigured man pulling levels which cause events to happen. I read the Man-in-the-Planet as Henry’s Superego. The Overseer. That which makes sure we do things accordingly to our world view. He is Henry as the challenger of what he desires and presents how things should be. The Woman-in-the-Radiator is Henry’s Ego. His personality as manifested on acting on pleasure and desire. She sings, "In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.You’ve Got Your Good Things, And You’ve Got Mine." Henry thus, is the Ego. The medium ground between the two. He is awkward and quiet, not quite sure of how to resolve between The-Man-In-The-Planet personality and The-Woman-in-the-Radiator personality.
And how wonderful and simple a dichotomy is that? Henry’s Masculine Side against Henry’s Feminine side. Neither of which he can resolve into one cohesive personality. The Man’s first action is to send the brain-and-spinal-cord-sperm out from Henry, thus destroy his sexuality and identity,whereas the Woman’s first action is to stomp on and destroy these brainspinalcordsperm and thus free him from the responsibility that comes with such. When he first approaches the Woman and takes her hands and is bathed in the bright light of pleasure/happiness/irresponsibility he is scared and nervous at first and ultimately his indecision leads to the appearance of the Man. The lead up is filled with apprehension and ultimately fear at the appearance of the Man, who replaces the Woman. Henry’s head falls off, and is replaced with the head of "The Baby".(oh, yeah, I haven’t even mentioned the Baby, Mary, Mary’s Family, or Henry’s neighbor yet and I doubt I will feel like going into it here, but I have resolved them into my big Freudian reading of Eraserhead, so if you want to ask I can shortly sum up.) Henry has been replaced by his offspring, of which are no recognizable features of himself. His head sinks into a pool that has issued forth form the barren tree which cuts to perhaps what is one of the funniest and most comical scenes of the movie. For the benefit of summation Henry’s head is used to make pencil erasers. The pencil, a phallus, a useful object, which is more potent and useful than Herny has been.
Cutting this short, you know, because I have actual paid work to do today, I read the movie as a a Freudian analysis of Dreams and Sexuality. There are many clues for me as to why the entirety of a movie is supposed to be taken as a dream sequence. The weird interactions between characters, the lack of any hint of passage of time or chronology, the way things are accepted by characters to be fact and the way thinks instantly happen; Looking at a picture of Mary, and then we see the actual Mary, and Henry is at Mary’s house. This horrible creature is my child, and I must take care of it. The baby is sick and suddenly it appears to be sick. The way things just are, unquestioned and unrationialized.
So my weird relationship with Lynch’s stuff continues. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch them but I enjoy how they are usually one half of a conversation. How they are these type of introspective puzzles which need to be worked out to fully enjoy. Just being a passive viewer of the film only gets me halfway and dissatisfied.
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