Batman Begins [With the Development of his Superego]
Movies and Psychoanalysis
(This analysis is
based on one version of the script, which is slightly different from the movie,
and the film itself).
Psychoanalysis can,
sometimes, be seen as a great tool used in a variety of fields. For individuals
unfamiliar with its purpose and methods, psychoanalysis tends to be recognized
as a form of therapy that deals with dream interpretation. However,
psychoanalysis can be so much more and this is evident in the range of book
titles that use it as a means of investigation (i. e. Psychoanalysis and
feminism, Psychoanalysis and religion, Psychoanalysis and art,
etc.). This plethora of combinations leads us to question the purpose of
psychoanalysis.
Well, the Chair of
Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and the President of the South
African Psychoanalytical Association, Mark Solms, hits the nail on the head
with his answer. He stated during an interview, "I think what
psychoanalysis does ... is so easily overcomplicated... at the heart of the
matter ... is to enable a patient to face the facts of their life" (1). In
other words, it aids with the search for truth, which is why it pairs so well
with other fields. With the lenses of psychoanalysis, it is possible to look at
other fields such as literature, history, politics, or in this case, cinema.
In this series, "Movies
and Psychoanalysis," psychoanalysis will be used to explore films and what
they can tell us about the human experience. Freud, the founder of
psychoanalysis, argued that there are constant unconscious expressions that manifest
in different ways, such as slips of the tongue, forgetting names, dreams, etc.,
which can reveal the mechanisms of our mental apparatus. He stated, "He
that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can
keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips;
betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” This makes it obvious why the
analyses of texts have been used to understand the human mind. It is because
they are expressions of the authors that, when analyzed carefully, tell us
about the human experience. And now we are about to do the same, but with films
instead. In this post, we will use the movie, "Batman Begins," in
order to understand the development of the Superego.
In order to begin the
analysis, we have to cover some basic terminology. Freud's tripartite model of
the mind consists of three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. The
first structure functions under the pleasure principle and it is the only part,
in this model of the mind, that is innate. In other words, the moment
individuals are born, they start seeking things that create pleasure, which
tend to be beneficial to a certain extent. For example, babies cry when they
want to be fed, when they want to be carried, when they are too cold or too
hot, when they are scared, etc. In order to satisfy these desires, parents
provide what creates pleasure in the babies. If this is analyzed with
attention, it appears as if all of these attributes have an evolutionary
advantage.
The second structure, the
ego, works under the reality principle. This means that this layer of the mind
is trying to satisfy the desires of the id, but it takes into account the
external world. The superego is in charge of reminding the ego the rules that
should not be broken. They can be political, religious, moral, etc. For
example, if we would observe a kid, without a developed superego, that finds a
cookie that belongs to someone else, he would instantly eat it. However, since
he did not ask for it, he could be reprimanded. Additionally, a kid that has
both his ego and his id developed would enter into a mental conflict. The id
wants to eat it immediately, but the ego knows the person could get caught, so
what might happen is that the kid might grab the cookie and hide it when nobody
is looking in order to eat it later. If this happens, it would mean that the
desire of the id was fulfilled, but in the journey of satisfying this wish, the
ego took into account the aspect of reality in order not to be reprimanded.
Finally, an individual with all three structures fully developed would ask for
the cookie because the id's drive would be to seek to eat it, the ego knows he
cannot eat it immediately, and the superego knows that stealing is not morally
right. In other words, the ego decides what course of action to take based on
the rules of the superego in order to satisfy the desire of the id. Obviously,
there are caveats and Freud's meta-psychology is much more complex, but for the
sake of simplicity, let us accept this model as is and continue.
Now, there is another concept
that should be covered and this is the Oedipus complex. Freud asserted that
male children made their mom their first love interest while being jealous of
the father since they attract the attention of the mother. He named it after
the play, "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles. In this play, a King receives a
prophecy that his child was going to kill him and marry his wife. Long story
short, his son unknowingly fulfills the prophecy and when he discovers what he
has done he takes his eyes out. Freud didn't include the latter in the complex.
Instead, he added that children come to an age when they discover that males
have penises and females don't. Moreover, since they have a negative attitude
towards their father because of their jealousy, they think that their father is
the one that castrates female children. Therefore, male children go through
something called castration complex, which is when they fear that their father
might chop their genitals. The moment they understand this is not going to
happen, they have solved the Oedipus complex in one way. In the end, the love
for their mom is transferred to someone else, they become friends with their
dad and learn from him what should and should not be done. This is when the
superego is developed. This solution is the most common one, but not the only
one; there are different ways in which the Oedipus complex can be solved.
Movie Analysis
We are
introduced to the characters when they are kids. Bruce Wayne, the main
character, is shown the head of an arrow by his best friend Rachel. He then
steals it, making it evident that he doesn’t have a developed superego yet.
This also suggests the point of the Oedipus complex in which he is in.
Currently, he is attracted to his mother and competes for her attention with
his father. This stage is represented metaphorically in the next scene where
Bruce falls into a yonic symbol, a well, that can represent Bruce’s unconscious
falling for his mom. Additionally, his father coming into the well to carry him
out and blocking the entrance suggests that he shouldn’t be there and blocks
future attempts of doing it again.
After we are introduced to the characters from the movie, the scene
takes the viewer into the present where Bruce still does not have a fully
formed superego. In a parallel to the previous scene in his childhood, Bruce is
in jail for stealing, which reinforces the idea of an undeveloped superego. Later,
Bruce is placed in solitary where he meets Ra's Al Ghul, who will be an unintentional
attempt at becoming the substitute of Bruce's father. Once, Ra’s Al Ghul starts
to spew his ideological point of view, the script literally states that Wayne
doesn’t do anything else besides nod and accept what he is saying. Thus,
suggesting that this is when Bruce's identification and acceptance of a
father's figure ideology starts.
In the next scene, Wayne is asked, “What
do you fear?” This is when we will introduce two new Freudian concepts, which
are the phallic and yonic symbols. The signified of the former is a penis and
of the latter a vagina. The phallic symbol is represented by any object whose
length exceeds its diameter, and the yonic symbols by any concave object. Then,
the sex act can be represented by the phallic symbol entering the yonic one. An
example of this would be a train entering a tunnel. The proposed claimed would
be that the bats in this movie are phallic symbols and the cave a yonic one. To
be more precise, the bat represents Bruce’s genitals and the cave his mother’s
genitals. This is when we back to that scene where Bruce is asked the question
of what he fears, which is when we see one of his memories. This is when he
enters by accident the cave. The entrance to the cave was blocked (a symbol
representing that he wasn’t supposed to be there; a forbidden entryway), which
could mean that the fear of bats and of entering the cave was only a repressed
and distorted thought of the realization that he had a sexual attraction
towards his mother (making a reference to the Oedipus complex). Like mentioned
before, the father is seen as competition for the mother and the goal of said
competition would be to enter the “cave.” Once Bruce is inside the cave, we see
his father descending into it as another phallic symbol, because of the rope
used, that comes with the sole purpose of removing his son from there. After
taking Bruce out, he blocks the entrance again and tells Bruce not to go in
there again. We can also listen to some of the teachings that would aid in the
development of his superego: “Why do we fall, Bruce? So, we can pick ourselves
up.” In the movie, this line is given by the father. However, in an earlier
version of the script, this line is not given by Thomas, but by who would
ultimately become his father figure, Alfred.
When the movie starts, Bruce
Wayne is at the late stage of the Oedipus complex. The attention is not on the
mother, but rather on the father. The attention placed on the father and not on
the mother can be seen by the number of times their names are mentioned in the
script. Martha's name is in the script eleven times and she only speaks twice.
In fact, even when she addresses Bruce, he doesn't answer back. On the other
hand, Thomas' name is in the script 49 times and he speaks 18 times. And, again,
the conversations he has with his son corresponds to what Freud described would
help form his sense of morality. For example, Thomas tells his son "Your
great-grandfather built the first trains in Gotham. The city’s been good to our
family- it was time to give something back...". In this example, he is
telling him that it is important to give things back, to help others. Moreover,
we later see another phallic symbol, which is the Wayne Tower. In the script,
there is a scene, which was not included in the movie, that states that Thomas
drew a circle on the window, signaling the city, then in the middle a dot that
represents the tower (a phallic symbol in the center of a yonic one).
Let’s introduce one more concept, that of
displacing the feeling towards a subject/object into another subject/object. In
this case, I’m arguing that the city of Gotham represents Bruce’s mother and
that he has engaged in the mechanism mentioned above. After Bruce’s parents are
killed, characters refer to Gotham as if it was almost a person. The first time,
it occurs after the murder, when Ra’s Al Ghul states that the city is beyond
saving and must be allowed to die. This could be interpreted as if he was
alluding to the death of his parents. In other words, forget them, what they
taught you, and move on (especially since Bruce’s father and Ra’s Al Ghul
morality and ideology conflict with each other). The next time the city is
alluded as Bruce’s mother is when Ra’s Al Ghul asks “can Gotham be saved, or is
she an ailing ancestor whose time has run?” Another clue hinting
at Bruce’s displacement is that instead of using the pronoun “it” (e.g."is
'it' an ailing ancestor..."), the female pronoun “she” is used instead.
Thus, referring to it, both, as a person and as a woman. It’s important to note
that in almost every conversation about Gotham, the topic of either death or
salvation pops up. For example, the first time Rachel speaks to Batman she
states that “corruption is killing Gotham.” This is exactly what happened to
Bruce’s parents when they were murdered; corruption had created a high level of
unemployment, which created people desperate to survive, which lead to Wayne’s
parents being robbed and assassinated. One last clue that indicates that Gotham
represents the mother of Bruce Wayne is when a character tells Bruce, "As
Gotham’s favored son ..." To summarize, the fact that the comparison
between saving his parents and saving the city is made, the fact that the
people refer to the city as a woman, and that at least one of the characters
refers to it as one of the parents of Bruce, indicates that Bruce has engaged
in displacing his feelings towards his mother and moved them towards the city
of Gotham.
The next scenes explain
where Bruce is in the development of his superego when his parents are killed.
This occurs after the conversation in the train, when we see Thomas asking
Bruce, "the bats again?" (This makes reference to the fact that not
only is Bruce still thinking about the cave, but struggling to process it).
Then, Bruce's father shows him a necklace that he will gift his mother, which
makes explicit the fact that there still competition occurring for the mother’s
attention. In the next scene, Bruce asks his parent to leave. When they exit
through the side door, Thomas and Martha get robbed and shot. Bruce being in
the last stage of the development of his superego loses three things. The first
being his mom as the aim of his love, then the proper way in which to act from
his dad, and finally the ability to realize that his father is not trying to
castrate him. However, since his parents are dead, this cannot occur, and we
can observe Bruce’s reverting back to an earlier stage. Evidence of this is
seen when the he sees the robber coming, he seeks protection behind his mother
not his father. Furthermore, the robber is fulfilling Bruce’s desire of getting
rid of his competition, of getting rid of that source of jealousy. However, in
Oedipus Rex, it is the main protagonist the one that kills his father, which
means that Bruce in this story loses the ability to do it himself or the
ability to understand that the father is not a competitor trying to castrate
him, but rather a moral figure. Bruce redirects his attention into killing the
man that murdered his parents. Nevertheless, when Falcone sends a woman to kill
the robber for snitching on him, Bruce loses the ability to kill the man that
killed his parents. Notice how up to now, we can see him operating under the
drive of the Id (wanting to kill the robber), the reality principle (waiting
until he is in the open, hiding the gun), but not under the morality of the
super ego (killing is immoral).
He then leaves everything behind in search of meaning. In search of that
which is unattainable: eliminating the threat that killed his parents. In his
search, as mentioned before, he ends up under the tutelage of Ra’s Al Ghul. The
leader of a group of vigilantes, known as the League of Assassins, trains him,
takes the role of a father figure, and tells him that executing criminals is
appropriate since it is for the greater good. This is Bruce’s final test. To
execute a criminal by beheading. However, the trauma of seeing the death of his
parents prevents him from doing this. Both in terms of death being distressing
and the morality provided by his father. This causes him to reject Ra’s Al Ghul
as a father figure and fighting back to the point where Bruce ends up destroying
the fortress of the League of Assassins. The culmination of all of this is when
Ra’s Al Ghul returns to Gotham to destroy it. His plan was to disperse a
chemical compound in the water supply that induces fear and evaporate it with
the help of a machine from Wayne Enterprises. To ensure the water supply was
evaporated, Ras Al Ghul attempted to destroy Wayne Tower (a phallic symbol) in
the middle of the city. This is symbolic of Bruce’s psychosexual stage. He
still thinks that Ra’s Al Ghul, the father figure, is trying to castrate him.
In other words, either Bruce rejoins him and follows his advice or Ra’s Al Ghul
destroys the phallic symbol of the Wayne Tower and has the city to himself. Batman
chooses to stop him. Bruce continues to listen to Alfred since he is the
reminder of what his father said. At the end, we get another glance at Bruce not
progressing in his development. Between choosing Rachel and the city (the
standalone for his mom), Bruce chooses Gotham. Nevertheless, Rachel tells him
that she will wait for him until he no longer feels the need to be Batman. Thus,
effectively remaining afraid of castration, ignoring the advice of his father
figure, retaining the mom as the love interest. However, he already started
listening to Alfred, a new father figure, and will date Rachel when he no
longer feels the need to protect Gotham, which means that he is not done yet,
but he has begun with the development of his superego.
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