<i>Daddy</i>: The Subversive Potential of an Aesthetic of Masochism (with Original 1974 Notes for Screening)

Abstract

Daddy:The Subversive Potential of an Aesthetic of Masochism (with Original 1974 Notes for Screening) Laura Mulvey (bio) When I wrote my original notes on Daddy (in 1973 or 1974), I had just recently discovered psychoanalytic theory through a Women's Liberation reading group and was extremely excited by its potential for enabling feminist thought on women's oppression. This was still some time before I began to write about film, and specifically about film and spectatorship. At the time, Daddy presented a challenge; I was not necessarily attracted as a feminist to its imagery and themes, but its direct representation of gender and sexuality, and its evocation of relevant fantasies, enabled my first experiment in applying psychoanalytic theory to film. Now, four de cades later, I see the film in both similar and different terms. Here, I have kept the titles I used for my original notes, but altered my approach to the film. First are my original notes followed by my updated view. I feel that this rereading is closer to Daddy's own spirit and intentions, while reflecting contemporary film theory and its political perspectives. The Unconscious It is impossible to understand the full meaning of Daddy without approaching it from the point of view of psychoanalysis. The film is about the unconscious: repression and desire and the phantasies they produce. It is real in the sense that it confronts problems that exist, but it is a reality that cannot be perceived concretely. Daddy explores this secret world, which deals with how people are formed and how they acquire a sexual identity as male or female. I still feel that it is impossible to understand Daddy without approaching it from the point of view of psychoanalysis. However, I am now struck by its [End Page 606] explicit use of masochism as a narrative device and as a spectrum through which to comment on gender politics. The film reflects the way that the psychic structures of masochism have been explicitly "recuperated" for their subversive implications. Here, Gilles Deleuze's 1967 book Presentation de Sacher-Masoch has been powerfully influential and has been applied to psychoanalytic film theory, both in terms of narrative and spectatorship, by Gaylyn Studlar. The Family Daddy takes place within the narrow, claustrophobic limits of the restricted family.This is the context in which the question of male and female roles and identification arises. It is through desire for (incestuous relationships with) the mother and father that sexual identity is acquired. The film brings out the way in which desire gives way to identification. But this pro cess is full of contradictions and can never be completely achieved. It is these contradictions that Daddy is dealing with. Daddy projects the iconographies and "dramatis personae" of masochism and locates them within the "familiar" scenario of the family. As a result, the film pauses on the threshold of the Oedipus complex, allowing the child's fantasy to dwell on the figures of the powerful mother and castrating/castrated father. While the father's power and symbolic attributes are carefully constructed (in almost Lacanian terms), in order to be taken apart in acts of ritual humiliation, the story emphasizes ambivalence. The ambivalence at the heart of the little girl's seduction fantasy generates a consequent fantasy of revenge. But the visual language and tableaux through which the fantasy is enacted are those of a male masochist's desire for humiliation. These factors oscillate, moving backward and forward, destabilizing narrative core and continuity while insisting on the foundation of desire and the sexual drives within the structure of the patriarchal family. The Patriarchy The film is placed squarely in the male-dominated world we live in. The contradictions brought out by Daddy exist in terms of the power of the father and of the phallus. It shows how women are thrown into an ambiguous relationship with their femininity, when femininity is equated with passivity and lack of power. It shows how the male-dominated world breeds repression (through patriarchal law and tyranny), which affects men as well as women. The man is subject to his own phallic power. The iconographies and scenarios of masochism are symptomatic of male ambivalence...