Jason Lieblang

The Queen sentenced Snow-white to death because she was deemed the most beautiful in the land by the magic mirror. After the huntsman had failed to do so, the Queen then attempted to kill Snow-white three times. The third attempt was proven successful until the Princes servants “stumbled over a trees-stump, and with the shock the poisonous piece of apple which Snow-white and bitten off came out of her throat” (257), as they were carrying her towards the palace. Snow-white had soon regained consciousness and married the prince. The Queen was then invited to Snow-white’s wedding where she “was forced to put on the red-hot shoes, and dance until she dropped down dead” (258). Evidently, the Queen had attempted to murder Snow-white four times for a vain motive but each attempt was a quick death. Assuming that dancing in an burning medieval torture device would take longer than a few minutes.

The torture that Snow-white sentenced the Queen to, proves that she is more evil than the her. The Queen sought relatively painless means of killing, compared to the “red-hot shoes” (258) that she had experienced. Snow-white wanted the Queen to suffer an excruciating painful death, as a punishment of the four attempted murders of her life. However, Snow-white could have avoided coming into contact with the poisonous corset, comb and apple if she simply did not talk to the old woman, a stranger. Especially after her first experience with the corset, Snow-white should have learned to not interact with strangers. If she had learned so, the attempted murders of her life would have remained at one, opposed to escalating to four. Regardless of the threats to her life, the torture device was unnecessarily cruel.

When discussing Snow White during the seminar on Thursday, the topic of Freud and his view on fetishism came up. The thought into how the glass coffin represented in Snow White is a form of a fetish instantly related back to Freud and his possible reason behind this. Strange as it is, it sounded quite interesting.

Similarly to what is covered in The Uncanny, the point of having a fetish is a a form of substitution. Freud wrote an essay in 1927 called Fetishism, argues that it is a special form of a penis substitution. In the boys mind, the mother’s lack of a penis is a representation of his own castration fear. (See the similarities between this and castration anxiety?) Therefore, suggesting that the female genitalia is an object of fear and horror. The normal adult male will learn to transform these objects into desires.

The possibility to think that the glass coffin that Snow White was in caused a barrier for the Prince to emotionally connect with her. The inability to touch Snow White could have affected him sexually and psychologically. Imagining the story of the Prince having no maternal figure in his early childhood, the development of the fetish for the ‘girl in the box’ could have been formed by this very scenario. As the fear and horror of castration has never been prominent in the Prince’s life, the paternal figure has been significantly stronger. The deprived young boy of a maternal figure was replaced through the desire of a girl inside a box in order to fill that void. Whether the Prince grew up normal, transforming the fear of the mother’s genitalia (object) into desire, the ability to fall in love with a girl inside a glass coffin has been the only encounter that aroused his sexual desires. This can be seen that the only form of love he has ever received from a female was from the outside, and was never direct. Blocking the Prince from being able to touch, talk or communicate can psychologically explain his ability to fall in love despite the barrier through a glass wall.

(This was possibly way out of context, but it made some sort of sense to me when relating to Freud.)

During Tuesday’s seminar, we had a discussion on the fact that incest has been an universal taboo throughout history for all cultures except in respect to royalty. The idea of royal incest is simply baffling and incomprehensible to most people today. Why did societal morals condemn inbreeding among commoners while at the same time tolerating and in many cases encouraging royals and nobles to do the same? Despite the fact that they clearly knew, as shown by texts such as Oedipus Rex and the Bible, about the birth defects that could result from such unions?

There has been lots and lots of examples throughout history of the physical and intellectual side effects of inbreeding, the most familiar to Western readers are the Habsburgs. The last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II’s jaw was so deformed that could not chew food properly and had a number of severe mental and physical disabilities in addition to infertility, which caused his line to finally come to an end. On the Austrian branch of the family, Emperor Ferdinand I suffered a host of problems including epilepsy (having up to 20 seizures a day), a speech impediment, and hydrocephalus and when faced with a revolution in 1848, famously remarked to his chief minister: “Are they allowed to do that?” Throughout this blog, I will be mostly examining their particular motives for inbreeding, though inbreeding was also common among many other royal houses throughout history, including the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt to which Cleopatra belonged as well as past Kings of Thailand and Korea.

The reason that inbreeding can cause so many negative characteristics is due to the fact that because the more similar the genetic information of both parents are, the more likely it is for negative genetic traits to be expressed and accentuated until they result in extreme examples like the Habsburg jaw. This greatly increases the chances for rare genetic disorders like hemophilia or schizophrenia to be passed onto their descendants.

The truth, as truths usually are, is a little more complicated than it may at first seem. There has been a good deal of contention over the topic of whether the incest taboo is a result of nature or nurture, whether it is an innate fear that we have or is it something taught to us by culture. Freud would no doubt tell you that this revulsion towards incest is an innate impulse which creates a sense of uncanny but it is also true that the definition of incestuous relationships differ from culture to culture, as well as from period to period.

Endogamy, marrying within one’s own social class or culture or religion in order maintain a distinct identity, has long been a common practice in a majority of societies across the world, royal intermarriage is just an extreme example of that. In many European countries, in order to ensure the elevated position of nobles and royals over commoners, laws were created demanding that people must not marry outside their social class.  In countries like Spain or Austria-Hungary, if the sovereign married a commoner, their children would be disqualified from inheriting the throne. And since according to the Great Chain of Being no one is equal in rank to a monarch except another monarch (not even the highest of nobility). Marrying one’s subject can severely upset the balance of order by causing the consort’s family to become overly ambitious and marrying a noble from one’s own country can cause rivalry between competing noble family. Marrying other royal families abroad is also an excellent way to increase diplomatic ties with another nation, with many important questions such as peace and war often resting on marriage alliances.

Marriage between different royal families was still problematic because this allowed the opportunity for dynastic lands to fall into the hands of rival royal houses; for example, the circumstance could arise where the king died without any issue and the next closest heir is the king of a rival kingdom. The Habsburgs were exceedingly good at this, inheriting huge swathes of territories by marrying into other noble and royal houses during the Middle Ages. This policy even gave rise to a motto: “Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!”, meaning “Let others wage war, you happy Austria, marry!”  Soon the Habsburgs became so terrified that someone else would try to steal all they’ve gained through this same method that they eventually resorted to marrying among themselves.

The Poster Boy of Royal Incest, Charles II of Spain

During the course of my research, I discovered the rather surprising fact that despite the Habsburg’s  reputation for incest, they never really committed incest as it is universally recognized. While certain types of inbreeding, such as sister-brother or mother-son relationships, has always been condemned throughout history,  partnerships between blood relations such as cousin-cousin relationships and even avunculate (uncle-niece or less commonly aunt-nephew) relationships were prevalent among all sectors of society in the West until quite recently and is still common in many parts of the world today. In many small, isolated communities, a certain degree of inbreeding was often unavoidable if the population wanted to avoid extinction.

This demonstrates that the original conjecture that there was one set of expectations for inbreeding for royals and one for everyone is far from completely accurate. The reason that inbreeding among royals and the nobility was so common was not so much because of personal preference as much a result of political paranoia. It just came to be that the Habsburgs were often too suspicious of other royals (often for good reasons) to marry them and because they had a duty to ensure the continuance of the House at whatever cost, they had no choice except to engage in interdynasty marriage, whether they liked it or not. As the role of royalty, and consequently royal marriages, became less important on the political stage, the practice royal intermarriage also died out, as monarchs are for the first time in history free to marry for reasons love rather than political expediency.

Why horror? When discussing Freudian question of how dominant ideology is transmitted, it is easy to look at the case of the horror film. Why do we seek out fear and are willingly frightened? Ultimately, how is the repressed represented in horror films?
For this we could look at Barry Grant and Christopher Sharrett’s essay Aesthetics of Fright. They discuss the body genres associated with horror such as pornography, and excessive violence of sex with phallic images. These genres all correspond to man’s innate nature to witness something taboo.
Horror films exploit the fear and anxiety of death but never actually put us in any kind of danger. Sitting in a movie theater we know that we will ultimately be safe. This sense of security is what blocks the true id, Other and monster from getting to us beyond the screen.
The essay goes on to discuss the portrayal of the repressed in horror films and from what we know, Freud’s definition stems from the Uncanny. His definition supports that negative aesthetics are feelings of repulsion and stress which take the form of the repressed.
Grant and Sharrett divide repression in horror films into two main groups: basic and surplus repression. Basic repression develops when we learn to postpone gratification and surplus repression must remain specific to a particular culture. From these two groups horror films split into reactionary and apocalyptic forms.

Reactionary

• Monster is simply evil
• monster is usually non-human
• repressed sexuality and confusion with sexuality
• Christian figures are prominent

Apocalyptic

• Shattering of ideology
• Emphasis on familiarity of the monstrous
• Normality as a manifestation

There is much to be learned from the commercial platform of horror films today. It was quite interesting to find that fear can be categorized.

One of the most famous examples of the uncanny – as explained by Freud – can be found in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). It continually questions the viewer’s perception of reality and makes them unsure of what would otherwise be everyday occurrences and objects. An interesting example of this is when Jack Torrance’s son, Danny, takes a ride on his tricycle through the hotel. This is a relatively normal occurrence for a child of this time staying in a remote hotel. The shot is sinister from the off (shot from the child’s, and eventually the viewer’s, perspective) and displays a prime instance of Freud’s theory that the mundane can sometimes belie something much more ominous. Danny sees two young twins who, in a later flashing vision are seen to have been murdered – their white dresses covered in blood – and this is symbolized by the two red doors that he finds at the elevator. Later, Danny’s mother Wendy comes upon them spewing a thick, blood-like liquid. Red elevator doors would otherwise not be anything to take notice of, but in the context of the murdered sisters, they take on a much more disturbing presence. In many ways, this unremarkable feature of the hotel is used to foreshadow the horrific events to come at “The Overlook” hotel. In one short, well-shot sequence early on in The Shining Kubrick manages to forewarn the viewer of what is ahead. The sisters, the innocence of childhood and the horrors that can be found in the ordinary all reference Freud’s theory of the uncanny and sum it up vividly.

Freud concludes the “uncanny” to be a “species of the familiar”, he states that the feeling of uncanny is invoked when something familiar to us but has been repressed resurfaces again. He uses many examples of infantile complexes to explain this theory, contributing uncanny feelings produced by the “double” to childhood imaginations of multiple selves and the fear of losing the eye to the castration complex. (wait, fear of losing the eye isn’t the uncanny though, what are you doing Freud?) Anyway, it seems that some of Freud’s ideas don’t really add up, and he seems to have incomplete analysis of his examples, namely “the Sandman”. So I’m going to share some of my thoughts on what is the nature of the “uncanny”.

I believe the feeling of uncanny is in fact rooted in our development as a species. To demonstrate this, I will bring forward a point by Ernst Jentsch which Freud rejects. Jentsch contributes the feeling of uncanniness to intellectual uncertainty. I believe this is an explanation of the uncanny that most people would agree with since it does seem true if we reflect the times we feel uncanny. The reason for this is based in our evolution. Human beings have adopted many traits to help them survive, fear is one of them, and it allows us to avoid potential danger. There are many things that could pose a danger to us, but the most prominent and most tangible must have been the fear of predators. If is often too late for us to be afraid when the predator is right in front of us, therefore, we became fearful of anything that could hint to an approaching predator, such as sounds, smells and other things. Over time we must have also realized that darkness hides predators from our senses, notably sight, so we adopted the fear of darkness, because we don’t know if a predators could be hiding in the darkness or not. The feeling of uncanny is a manifestation or reminder of this fear in a not so fearful situation. Take the case of the “double” for example, we are not really scared by seeing a double of ourselves, however, It does make us feel at unease because it creates intellectual uncertainty about whether the double is real or not and more importantly whether it would pose a threat to our well being. This reminds us of the fear of predators in the darkness where there is also intellectual uncertainty.

However, this evolutionary theory seems inadequate in explaining the uncanny feeling we get with extraordinary coincidences. When what we are thinking manifests themselves in our lives, especially multiple times or in close proximity, we become extremely uncanny. I think this has to do with the breaking of natural laws. We are used to living in a world where “mind over matter” is purely fiction, if something happens that seems to defy this law, then we are placed in a state of intellectual uncertainty. We feel temporarily unsure of whether “mind over matter” is purely fiction or not and more importantly whether we are really the masters of our lives. We would feel that a higher power is controlling us like puppets, and this creates a sense of helplessness in us which is manifested in the form of uncanniness. This form of uncanny cannot be adequately explained by the evolutionary theory, since the idea of a higher power controlling us doesn’t not contribute to survival, therefore we can’t explain why we could feel uncanny about it. So I guess my theory has some flaws too. Well feel free to make some comments on how you think this can be resolved, or your own theory of what the uncanny is.

Gothic is a bizarre film. Directed by the man who cast Tina Turner as a psychedelic  gypsy and Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt and centering around the antics of a man whose depravity would make the Red Hot Chili Peppers look like boy scouts, it’s also one of the strangest horror flicks ever conceived. There’s no Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees on a faceless chopping spree or a cowled Romanian gent sinking his teeth into young ladies. The monster is an unseen, possibly even nonexistent entity, tied in with the psychological flaws of the five depraved main characters. This element of reflection, creepiness, and paralyzing uncertainty combines to make for a film steeped in the uncanny.

It is a stormy evening in 1816 Switzerland, at the island mansion residence of poet, lover, soldier and debauchee Lord Byron. Three people arrive by boat: poet Percy Shelley, his lover and collaborator Mary Godwin, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, who is dementively infatuated with Byron. Aside from the servants, the mansion only houses Byron and his autobiographer-physician, John Polidori. After an evening of liquor, laudanum, and innuendo, they have a seance around the skull of a monk, as you do. The result is stormy weather, hallucinations, and the brooding fear that their machinations have spawned an eldritch monster.

Percy and Claire spend most of the film in laudanum-induced spells of lunacy, and the majority of the action centers around Mary, Byron, or the good Doctor. Each one experiences some kind of themed torment. Byron plays unaffected for most of the flick, disregarding Claire’s obsession and Percy friendship to hit on Mary and freely abusing Polidori, and takes until the end to fall prey to the lunacy around him. Mary’s gruesome recollections of her miscarriage and desire to resurrect her child form the genesis of Frankenstein, and she remains the only (questionably) sane person in the film. Polidori, on the other hand, is a Freudian bundle of Catholic guilt, repressed homosexuality (the closet’s fairly see-through) and leech-collecting blood-obsessiveness (I did not make a word of that up), which leads to him fleeing in the middle of the night and eventually writing The Vampyre.

Gothic has a share of jump scares and weird images (if you’re not good with pretty people covered in leeches, this is not the movie for you), but there is never any clarification as to the monster’s actual presence. The feeling of fear could owe as much to being stuck in a mansion with a handful of unhinged Europeans during a lightning storm as the predations of an abhuman entity. Retrospectively, the horror could have been entirely within the characters’ own minds. Coming face to face with the skeletons in your closet isn’t a pleasant experience by any means, and the reason Gothic can be so frightening is because, despite the paranormal pretense around the seance, the monster comes from within us. The sense of the uncanny is identification where it consciously shouldn’t occur, the image of ones own depraved doppelganger leering from the mirror. The fear you carry at the core of your being is the fear you can’t escape, and that sense of the uncanny is at the root of the Gothic (The Castle of Otranto), the culmination of Gothic (Frankenstein, the works of Poe and Lovecraft) and the film that ties it all together, in a meta-example too viscerally creepy to be ignored.

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud claims that some children who are attached to their stuffed animals or dolls would at one point, wish that they became alive. Speaking on behalf of my childhood-self, I must say that this holds true and that this theory reminds me greatly of my own experience..which I will now share.

My mother once told me that at night, when the clock strikes past twelve and the children are all sleeping, the dolls in the household would come to life. However, if the dolls sensed that even one child was awake, they would retreat back into their lifeless form. (Sounds like Toy Story, yeah?) As a child hearing this, I wanted to witness this magical event, but I could never keep myself awake long enough. Despite this, there were numerous instances where I had awoken in the middle of the night and could have sworn to hear faint murmurs and laughter. The dolls that I had were outside in the living room, one wall and corridor apart from the bedroom. On one particular night, I had awoken again and could hear from the bedroom wall, the same joyful, tiny, laughter and conversation. At this point, one may reason that it was my parents who were watching television outside, but let me assure you, they were not. At that time, we lived in a one-bedroom complex and my parents were already sound asleep next to me. Taking on the adventurous spirit found in most children, I lurked outside, venturing into the living room. I was convinced I would finally be able to “meet” my dolls in person, yet, the voices began to fade into silence as I slowly entered the room. Perhaps it was simply the lack of logical thinking (especially late at night and the influence of my mother’s tale) or memory that caused me to look at the placement of where I had last left my dolls (sitting in a row, backs against the wall, bums on the couch) and notice that one or two of them were out of place. (I will take any possibility of paranormal activity out of this situation, as I simply hate and fear the paranormal) After fixing their posture, I headed back to the bedroom and pretended to sleep. I had hoped to catch my dolls “in action” once more, however, as the time passed, nothing but silent snoring could be heard and I began to fall asleep. I made several more attempts the following days, all of which had failed miserably. The desire to see my dolls alive had then also moved on.

For many individuals, imagination is at its “peak” during their early years. Why must this ability fade as we get older? Of course, more responsibilities are adopted as we age, but this does not mean that we must altogether abandon imagination and creativity. For myself, I simply enjoyed the freedom to create, whether it be a silly character or situation. This passion has transformed into a hobby which drives me to express my imagination through my artwork and graphic novels (enjoyable to any person of age). Perhaps so many of us have trouble interacting with children and keep up with their mentality as we have long forgotten the process of our own imaginative thinking when we were once their age.

*if the above image is unclear, click into it — that should open an image with higher quality

When we were analyzing Hopkins’ “Gods Grandeur,” I couldn’t stop thinking about the similarities between it and the Wordsworth poem  “The World Is Too Much With Us” (which also happens to be the only Wordsworth poem I’ve read). Both poems deliver a similar message; they describe the worsening disconnect between man and nature and refer back to a time when the beauty and power of the natural world was appreciated. In both poems, a Petrarchan sonnet is the form used to deliver such a message. Petrarchan sonnets are unique in the way which their form is utilized: the octave generally presents an issue or problem, and a response or solution is proposed in the following sestet. Both Hopkins and Wordsworth present the issue of a growing disconnect from nature, which they then later claim needs to be appreciated as the divine form that it is.

It can be seen that both poets have chosen to begin the poem with “The World” (1). Once again, their similar thoughts are evident in that the environmental issues associated with industrialization are described as something global, a problem which encompasses each person who lives in the world. Hopkins and Wordsworth then both claim mankind is responsible for such a disaster: Wordsworth describes mankind as being “out of tune” with nature, and Hopkins similarly says that men have lost all connection with nature.

In the sestet, differences between Wordsworth and Hopkins begin to emerge. Wordsworth  blatantly claims that he would rather “be/ A Pagan” than suffer through an increasingly unnatural world. He then goes on to refer to divinity in nature with ancient Greek figures, specifically naming Proteus and Triton. This clear rejection of established, industrial England is very different from Hopkins’ sestet, which proves to be much more optimistic. He claims that “nature is never spent” despite all it has gone through, and proceeds to describe a beautiful image of “the Holy Ghost” which can be seen as the world recovers. Hopkins’ optimistic, religious conclusion can be contrasted with Wordsworth’s much more pessimistic and cynical conclusion. Despite these overall differences, the two poets show great similarities in the way which they perceive and communicate ideas; it is no wonder that they are now both recognized as great figures in English poetry.

It is undeniable that religion played a crucial role in the poetic imagination of Gerard Manley Hopkins even though his writings occasionally contradicted and challenged certain aspects of accepted Catholic doctrine.

Hopkins was born in a deeply religious household belonging to the High Church branch of Anglicanism, which differed from the more evangelical and populist Low Church Anglicanism in its Catholic-like emphasis of ritual, theology, and hierarchical structure. Hopkins also grew up in an artistic family, with his great-uncle, Richard James Lane, being an acclaimed portraitist and of his two of brothers later becoming successful artists. Before realizing his love for poetry, a young Hopkins had ambitions of being a poet. Even as a child, he was highly eccentric, experimenting with asceticism by not trying not to drink water for a week (which was cut short by his tongue turning black and by him passing out) and on another occasion, not eating salt for a week.

When Hopkins first arrived at Oxford to study Classics, he was a generally outgoing and social young man, writing poetry at a prolific pace. However, as time progressed, Hopkins became more shy and withdrawn. During that time, he deeply affected by the writings of the poet Christina Rossetti, medieval mysticism,  the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and the religious arguments concerning the place of ritual and tradition in the High Church versus the more individualist focus of the Low Church. At the age of 21, Hopkins composed his most austere poem to date, “The Habit of Perfection” in which he denounced sensory pleasures and praised poverty. In 1866, Hopkins decided to convert to Catholicism and to dedicate his life to God, alienating himself from many members of his family and friends.

In May, 1868, Hopkins, shortly before entering seminary to become a Jesuit, he made a bonfire of his poems and stopped writing poetry for nearly seven years, believing that it is not possible to dedicate oneself to worldly beauty in addition to God. Eventually, after reading the works of Duns Scotus, Hopkins began to reconcile his love of the natural world with the higher spiritual duties of the priest. In 1875, Hopkins finally resumed writing poetry but only at the insistence of his church superior, who wanted him to write a poem in commemoration of the shipwreck of the SS Deutschland, which had aboard it five nuns fleeing German persecution against Catholics. The resulting “The Wrecking of the S.S. Deutschland” marked a clear departure from Hopkins’ early works by being the first to feature the unusual meter and sprung rhythm common in his later poems. It was not particularly well received, although the Jesuits did not reject it they also did not publish it in their official publications.

In addition to his artistic dilemma, Hopkins might have also conflicted with his chosen faith due to his sexuality. There is strong evidence from his diary and correspondence and poetry that he was in love with fellow poet and cousin of Robert Bridges, Digby Mackworth Dolben. They two regularly wrote letters to each other, after Hopkins’ church superiors forbade them meeting in person, until Dolben drowned in 1867, which had a deep emotional impact on Hopkins.  Two of Hopkins’ poems, “Where art thou friend” and “The Beginning of the End” are explicitly about Dolben, with the second poem containing the line “The sceptic disappointment and the loss/A boy feels when the poet he pores upon/Grows less and less sweet to him, and knows no cause.”

By failing his final theology exam, Hopkins was denied the chance to progress any further in the Jesuit order from his rank of priest He eventually obtained a position of Classics professor at University College Dublin, although by all accounts the shy Hopkins was not a very commanding teacher. Hopkins then entered into an ever-worsening spiral of depression, aggravated by feelings of home-sickness. Hopkins also felt a sense of artistic and religious dilemma, believing on one hand that publishing his poem would expose him to vanity while also feeling that it is crucial for a poet to have an audience. His poems of this era like “I Wake and Feel the Fell of the Dark”, often called the “terrible sonnets”, reflected this growing sense of failure and doom. In 1889, at the age of 44, after suffering long bouts of both physical and mental illness, including chronic diarrhea and severe depression, Hopkins died from typhoid fever. Despite his persistent battles with regret and anguish, his final words were: “I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life.”