When reading the Uncanny, a movie that stood out in my mind was Coraline, which seemed to exemplify every aspect of Freud's uncanny. For those who aren't familiar with the movie or needs a refresher, here's the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7wxoqeVK0 . The film Coraline is an adaptation of a children story about a girl who is bored with her life and wishes for a more exciting world. She finds the world within her house, but in order to stay in the world she must give up her eyes for buttons. The story seems to have Freud elements written all over it. First off, it's from the perspective of a child which whom Freud associates their perspective to be easily altered in seeing the Uncanny. In addition, the girl is basically trapped in the house from all the bad weather, thus developing a sense of claustrophobia and later on in the story posing magical elements to the point of being dangerously haunted. Another element is the idea of doubles and repetition. Freud suggests the idea of twins being uncanny, to the point of repetition becomes no longer a coincidence but odd. In Coraline's fantasy world, everyone she knew in the real world are almost exact doubles but has buttons for eyes. Thus bringing up another obvious element, the loss of eyes. This element becomes uncanny because something familiar in her world is almost the same but is odd in the sense of having button eyes. And in Freud's view, Coraline fears loosing her eyes because she may loose her own perception of reality.
-Cassie Hanks
I think that this is an interesting take, I find it interesting that the use of 'eyes' is a repetitive aspect in Coraline, Freud and even in the Stepford Wives. The eyes are usually connected to the idea or concept of the soul, so when the eyes are taken away, so then is the soul. The reason for mentioning the Stepford Wives is at the end of the movie when the wife is killed by her robot replica, the missing piece was the eyes, the robot's eyes were still dark and lifeless. So grouping the three, we are able to see that even though the eyes can be deceiving, they still encompass everything that is real and living.
ReplyDeletei watched yesterday this movie and the first thing that came to me was Freud and his uncanny. I think i d be awesome to connect Jentsch's theorie about doll's uncanniness and Otto Rank's Der Dopplenganger and of course the queen of Uncanny- Kristeva, with this movie. I think Freud goes more with castration motif about loosing eyes and pre-Oedipal stuff.
ReplyDelete