During our seminar on Freudian Theory and psychoanalysis, we were a shown a fabulous surrealist film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali of which absolutely nothing made sense. It was sick, full of unusual stuff and was simply amazing to watch. You either loved it or hated it, and due to the silliness and stupidity of the entire film, I loved it!
The film, of course, was shot in black and white which was nice to watch for a change as your mind was forced to fill in the gaps where the colour was lacking. It was a welcome change to be able to imagine what was happening instead of being given the entire plot throughout. It starts with a completely psychotic scene of a man cutting his partner's, I presume, eye out with a shaving knife. It also ends with as much wacky eccentricity! The idea is that the film makes no sense at all, though our minds will try and find a rational explanation for what has happened, even though the creators intentionally gave it no real purpose or meaning.
Cultural influences will manipulate our opinions and thoughts on what happened within the film, which can give for some interesting answers if you ask different generations to analyse this film. I related this to Freudian Theory easily as there was obvious aspects of fear, death and sexual desire. These are thoughts and feelings suppressed by the "id", the part of us that tried to hide our deepest, darkest thoughts and locks them up from the prying eyes and beliefs of society. I believe that we all have a sick fixation with something. We all have fetishes and desires that would be seen as taboo in society, therefore our id keeps those at bay. Psychoanalysis can be applied to many different films and animations. I plan to hunt down some interesting animations beyond my knowledge and will keep them posted!
Although I blogged about Tool's Vicarious for my other module, I still go back to this as it has strong implications of fear, death, psychological instability, and eccentricity. On the one hand, you could say it makes no sense at all, but on the other, you could interpret to however you see fit. I personally view this as a human becoming the host for a parasite, which could be the media and consumerism worming its way into our skin without us knowing, or rather us freely allowing it to do so.
