Repression of the uncanny “Boys Don’t Cry”

The themes of sexual violence and gender conflict are pervasive throughout the movie Boys Don’t Cry, but a more subtle interaction that is equally important is the way that each gender coped with the uncanny nature of Brandon Teena’s identity.

Our natural inclination, as human beings, when confronted with an unfamiliar or uncomfortable circumstance or development, is to find a way cope. We try to find a way to make the unfamiliar familiar, thus diffusing the uncanny sensation which makes us feel uneasy. For example, Freud describes fetishism as one way that some men are able to diffuse the uncanny experience of witnessing the female genitals for the first time. They could, theoretically, re-fixate their attention (as well as their sexual desire) on the last familiar female body part or article of clothing they perceived before observing the terrifying vagina. In this way, they expunge the uneasy feeling and fixate their attention on the part of the female with they know and are familiar with, allowing “normal” sexual interaction to proceed.

When the truth about Brandon Teena’s identity is exposed, we see several different reactions from each gender. Lana, when she realizes that Brandon is biologically female, chooses to deny her femininity and cling to the familiar male Brandon persona, with whom she fell in love. While most viewers choose to see this as Lana’s tacit and liberal acceptance of the person who Brandon chooses to be over the person Brandon is biologically, Lana’s acceptance of Brandon’s male identity was essentially a repression of the unfamiliar; she refused to admit to herself that Brandon was not fully male. By fixating her attention on the emotionally familiar male persona, she diffused the uncanny sensation induced by the revelation of that which ought to have remained obscured.

Tom and John’s coping mechanism once they realized that Brandon had deceived them was opposite to, and markedly more violent than, Lana’s. When confronted with Brandon’s femininity, rather than cling to the male persona that Brandon sought to portray, they immediately began taking pains to solidify Brandon’s femininity in their own minds and in the minds of others. In order to cement the notion of the familiar female form (which to them was a purely sexual object), they chose to rape Brandon and use his body in the only way with which they were familiar. By fixating their attention on the sexually familiar female persona, they repressed and diffused the uncanny sensation.

The fact that Lana chose to fixate on the emotionally familiar whereas Tom and John chose to fixate on the sexually familiar speaks volumes about the fundamental differences between males and females, especially when confronted with philosophical crisis.

Tryon has a Fetish…and an Uncanny Double

Through all of Freud’s rambling about German words, I managed to make some connection between his statements concerning the “uncanny” and “fetishism,” so here goes:

Freud presents the idea of the “double” ( Uncanny 940), describing it as our conscience and our capability for self-observation. He notes that having adouble can be confusing; we can forget which is the real self, and which is the double-self, and it’s quite scary. At one time familiar in childhood, “the double has become a thing of terror, just as, after the collapse of their religion, the gods turned into demons” (Uncanny 941).

The duality of the “double” links to Freud’s later point about fetishism, which is that a a fetishist can maintain two, differing, realities regarding the object of their fetish; for example: “One current of [the two young men’s] mental processes had not acknowledged the father’s death; but there was another that was fully aware of the fact; the one which was consistent with reality stood alongside the one which accorded with a wish…” (Fetishism 202).Divergent narratives can exist side-by-side.

Applying the idea of the “double” to Freud’s description of simultaneous divergent realities, we can look at George Tryon as an example. He acted according to his caste, his culture, his nature, and has fallen in love with Rena, believing the choice to be in keeping with his identity. When her “stain” is revealed to him, he is repulsed and his entire understanding of himself changes–it is an uncanny moment: as Freud explains,  “An uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality...” (946). Tryon confronts by dual identities, one of which had been relegated to the world of the imaginary before it was revealed to him as reality. In one identity, he is a white man that capable of loving and marrying a black woman. As the second, he is a white man who would never be attracted to a black woman. In the aftermath of the discovery, Tryon struggles to hold on to both narratives, both fetishizing Rena to a certain extent, and clinging to his caste.

Would Freud’s Facebook say “Interested in: Mother”?

After reading the articles by Freud, and after two weeks of talking about the process of passing from one community to the other, I can’t help but wonder if any passing takes place on social networking sites such as Facebook. So far in class, I think we’ve boiled passing down to a few basic steps, and I will use Rena from House Behind the Cedars as an example:

1. She distinguishes who she is from how she appears to others, by resolving to keep her black heritage “secret” for as long as possible.

2. She chooses to live her life based on expectations of people whose opinion depends how she appears to them (versus how she actually is), by doing the whole finishing school thing, and then entering into a relationship with a white man.

3. She distances herself from the evidence of who she actually is, by leaving Patesville and a community aware of her ancestry