What a Wonderful World...

Jonah Bossewitch

VIS 342

Professor P. Adams Sytney

May 13, 1997

In his book Modernist Montage, P. Adams Sitney convincingly argues that Chris Marker's La Jetée is an allegory for Freudian psychoanalysis.1 Sitney notes the representation of the primal scene in the protagonist's repressed memories, the transference between the patient and the chief doctor, as well as the visual similarity between the experimenter's laboratory and a psychiatrist's office. La Jetée is thinly disguised as a science-fiction story, exploiting the fantasy of time-travel as a metaphor for memory and prophesy. In a run-of-the-mill time-travel tale, the traveler journeys through objective time, physically traveling in the external world according to the rules laid out by the director. However, in an allegory for the systematic exploration of the subjective world, the subject journeys to the past by remembering, and to the future by planning. The mastery of subjective time-travel is required in order live a heathy mental life in the present, and this paradoxical existence underlies the transition from childhood to spiritual adulthood.

Marker does a wonderful job representing classical psychoanalysis in La Jetée, but as Michel Foucult would attest, the history of civilization and madness does not begin, nor end, with Sigmund Freud. By the time that Terry Gilliam decided to remake La Jetée as the Hollywood thriller 12 Monkeys, the relationship between society and sanity had changed dramatically. The years separating La Jetée and 12 Monkeys witnessed a pronounced change in the ways that humans interacted with consciousness, and this was reflected in the manner that Doctors treated the mentally divergent.2 With the advancements in neuroscience and biochemistry came new forms of treatment that circumvented the body's natural interface with the mind, namely, the five senses. While Freud himself believed in the mind's reduction to biochemical reactions, his therapy for neurotics consisted solely of verbal exchanges (most of the time they were one way) with his patients. To be sure, long before Freud, annoying deviants had been treated with/to imprisonment, violence, deportation, and even death. However, the introduction of neuroleptics and electro-convulsive shock "therapy" added a new dimension to the torturous horrors inflicted on mental patients in the twentieth-century.

The Compulsion to Repeat (Myself)

As Alfred Hitchcock reminds us in the film Vertigo, history is composed of endless repetition, and the cycles of oppression/worship of the mentally divergent are no exception. What changes between cycles is their context, and for this reason Gilliam was forced to modify La Jetée in order to preserve its essential theme—the hostility engendered by the scientific/medical attitude towards statistical outliers. Gilliam did not neglect the psychoanalytic themes that are represented in La Jetée, but since psychology has evolved past the time period represented in La Jetée, Gilliam updates his allegory of the psychiatric establishment, and indicates where particular schools of thought have become obsolete. A film which was literally faithful to La Jetée would have been redundant, and for this reason Gilliam needed to make the changes that he did to remain thematically faithful to the original work, without copying it. He accomplishes this goal by representing the developments in the field of psycho-therapy which followed the period addressed by Marker.

12 Monkeys picks up the story of society's understanding of consciousness (and its corresponding relationship) right where La Jetée leaves off. The pivotal moment in classical psychoanalysis occurs when the patient successfully time-travels, and recovers a repressed memory. The archetypical repressed memory is the primal scene, and the patient's complete recovery is catalyzed by the transference his feelings towards his father (to the analyst), and the subsequent venting of his repressed aggression. This process is based on Freud's earlier work, grounded on the idea that all of mental life can be explained by the 'pleasure principle'. This much is depicted in La Jetée, but Freud was later forced to revise his theory in light of certain phenomena which he could not explain.

One of the most pivotal moments in the development of Freud's theory was his recognition of 'traumatic neurosis'3 which indicated the "mysterious masochistic trends of the ego."4 This neurosis manifests itself in the compulsion to repeat, particularly in recurring dreams. Eventually, Freud found it necessary to postulate a primary drive separate from Eros (a.k.a. the pleasure principle) which he termed the 'death instinct'.

If we take into account observations such as these, based upon the transference and the life histories of men and women, we shall find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle. Now too we shall be inclined to relate this compulsion to the dreams which occur in traumatic neurosis and the impulse which leads children to play.5

Gilliam's decision to spin the plot of 12 Monkeys around Cole's recurring traumatic nightmare in which he witnesses his own death is a deliberate break from La Jetée's repressed primal scene imagery. This choice reflects the fact that Gilliam's narrative must trace psychology's break-up with Freud, which begins when Freud starts to question his own theories himself.

On the Impossibility of Standing Still

Gilliam is fully cognizant of the fact that he is continuing the story that La Jetée began, and in many ways 12 Monkeys can be considered its sequel, as opposed to a remake. Aside from thematic continuity, Gillian artfully transforms and captures many of the visual and aesthetic elements present in La Jetée. 12 Monkeys certainly stands on its own two feet, however, after seeing La Jetée I found it impossible not to appreciate Gilliam's acknowledgments of the inspiring work.

The most immediate difference between the two films is Marker's montage of still photographs as opposed to Gilliam's conventional motion picture. Although commercial considerations, no doubt, played a role in this change, the association of motion with 12 Monkeys

is appropriate given Gilliam's thematic motivations. Motion pictures highlight action and behavior in a way that frozen images can only allude to. This change reflects the fact that Gilliam decides to confront the major opponent of psychoanalysis (within the domain of psychology)—the specter of Behaviorism. Behaviorist idealogy denies the meaning of all psychological terms which cannot be verified empirically, essentially refuting all discourse about our internal mental lives. While many mistakenly believe that Behaviorism has been soundly refuted,6 modern day psychiatry still primarily operates under the behaviorist paradigm. A cursory glance at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders7 (the book that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, or in other words, the modern day definition of madness) demonstrates this point clearly.8 The emphasis on action and motion represents the strong influence of Behaviorism on psychiatry, and the downplay of Freudian ideas in the treatment of the mentally ill.

Within the confines of the mental hospital, electrical, chemical, and physical stimulation/sedation have replaced talking as the primary mode of therapy. Gillian represents this reality with the futuristic time-machine, which strongly rhymes with the ECT paraphernalia used today throughout the world. Gillian hints at this association when Cole escapes from the locked unit and witnesses a fellow patient being "treated" by such a device. Ironically enough, while ECT therapy has the reputation for healing the terminally depressed and violent, it is notorious for erasing the memories (long and/or short term) of its victims. Gilliam's time-machine, as opposed to Marker's, has the paradoxical property of eliminating any possibility for the patient to time-travel, electrically sealing shut the doors to the past, instead of slowly talking them open. Not surprisingly, Gilliam associates this form of therapy with the electric chair (the one that shackles Cole when he is talking to the scientists), for in a meaningful sense, the destruction of a person's memory permanently alters his identity, and is equivalent to death by electrocution and/or the creation of a Frankenstein-like monster with a bolt of lightening.

"Know your drugs. Know your doses. It's elementary."—Jefferey Gaines. In modern day mental institutions, drugs function as chemical straitjackets, with long term doses accomplishing the same effects as a frontal lobotomy, without all the blood. Not to suggest that patients are treated like human beings if they take their medicine, as meds are typically administered along with violent beatings by orderlies, followed by hours in restraints and solitary confinment. I laughed when Cole was roughed up, drugged down, and scoured off in a parallel fashion, both in the present and the past (some things never change) but Gilliam's warning is quite serious. The hypocritical Psychiatrists won't go near the tranquilizers, for, as Railly remarks "I hate those things. They mess my head up." Instead of teaching patients to work through the painful memories of their childhood, Gilliam depicts an institution which prefers to eradicate those memories so they no longer cause any trouble. "The charge nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She can't turn back time..." at least not with the shots that Gilliam and his nurse have administered.

The Transfer of Authority

Freud is not absent from the psychological reality that Gilliam portrays. On the contrary, he is omnipresent, having percolated his way into the collective unconscious, his ideas are, by now, ingrained and explicit in most western minds. While most practicing Freudians exercise their craft on symbols rather than patients, the popular success of Freud's work is evident in the fact that most of us have become amateur analysts. Concepts such as projection, denial, repression, and transference have all entered our everyday vocabulary, and Gilliam incorporates these elements throughout the film.

This is one of the points that Gilliam is trying to make by having Cole fall in love with his psychiatrist instead of the innocent beauty in La Jetée. Allthough this move is undeniably cheesy, and panders to the sexual appetites of the commercial audience, it is not fatal to the sophistication of Gilliam's remake. Thanks to Freud, everybody is a psychotherapist, and it is impossible to enter into a relationship without being subject to the psychological scrutiny and mistrust of a patient-doctor relationship. Due to the mistrust that exists at the outset, classical transference is rendered virtually impossible, and Railly oscillates between her hatred/fear and love/trust for Cole. In Gilliam's allegory, nobody is spared the anxiety of being restrained to the couch, even if you never step foot into a shrink's office.

Classical transference is still represented (or at least refferenced), in Goines' relationship with his actual father, but Gilliam's portrayal of this process is somewhat of a farce. In the narrative of the film, the 'Army of the 12 Monkeys' is a red herring, and this betrays Gilliam's hostility towards Freudian psychoanalysis. Railly herself concedes that psychiatry is the modern day religion, and Freudian analysts have often been compared to cult leaders. If we trace the film's own metaphor of mental illness as a virus or a plague,9 then Dr. Goines, the virologist, represents Dr. Freud, the psychiatrist. Following this train of thought, Jeffery might represent a Jungian figure (Freud's best student, who developed a father/son relationship with Freud) and the twelve monkeys become the twelve disciples of the false god (at one point, Jeffery even claims that his father is god). I could develop this Christ analogy further (who's the Judas, who gets crucified, etc), but I think you get the point. Gilliam does more than pay homage to La Jetée by placing token symbols in his film. He manipulates and modifies these symbols to convey his own opinions (often hostility) towards the issues that Marker's raises.

Futuristic Memories and Revisionist Prophecies

Another glaring modification of La Jetée, is Gilliam's decision not to send Cole into the future. Instead, Gilliam sends us to the future as we participate in his grim prophecy of what the tomorow will bring if hypocrisy persists. I'm not talking about any apocolytic delusion of plagues or nuclear war, rather I am speaking of the continued oppression of the mentally diivergent at the butal hands of hypocritical "healers". Todays society has replaced the carring, sensitive, (fictional) therapist with a team of cold, arrogant scientists, backed-up by thugs who theruputically scream "Take him down! Take him the fuck down!". If this state of affairs persists, Mankind will inhibit his own psychological development, and never achieve the state of spiritual maturity the Marker's future represents.

"To get at the content of the analysis, the neurotic problem, we must resign our efforts to distinguish between reality and fantasy or dream in the central story of the film and we must simultaneously grant an equal "psychological" status to the interruptive frame story."10

One of the most effective methods for improving our understanding of these types of phenomena is by studying the boundary cases which define and delimit them.