This last year I started Grad School. Eek. At the request of a few buddies, and considering the fact that this is also sort of a movies blog, here is the paper I turned in for a class that had nothing to do with just about anything I wrote about. I got an A somehow. Notes and citations are near the bottom.
Projections:
Seeing Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce Through The Stereoscopic Lenses of Jung's Psychoanalytic Dialectic and Feminist Discourse
“If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus,” Woody Allen once quipped1, referring to the 1968 film adaptation of John Fowles’ 1966 book of the same title. This film remained the pinnacle of terrible film adaptations until 1985, when author Colin Wilson allegedly contacted John Fowles, congratulating The Magus on losing its title to an adaptation of one of Wilson’s books, The Space Vampires. That film was Lifeforce (1985).
To say that Lifeforce was poorly received would be an injustice. Critics loathed it, calling it an overplayed, underdeveloped2, nonsensical, fragmented, sterile3, top-heavy4 object lesson in failure5. Wilson himself substantiated the above rumor, stating that Lifeforce was “the worst film ever made6.” Some historians would continue the bashing, writing it off as overly cerebral7, lavish, crazed8, a complete failure9. Not all its criticism was this harsh, however.
While there were a handful of optimistic reviews nearer the theatrical release of the film, historian Brooks Landon writing in 1988 that it “offers much for serious analysis10,” around the time America saw the home video release of Lifeforce, a flurry of positive reviews emerged11, as noted in John Kenneth Muir’s elucidating, career spanning biography of Tobe Hooper, Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre (2009). These critics saw the film in a new light, with fresh eyes, calling it stylish and haunting12, one even going so far as to say it “may be the last great science fiction film to come out of England13.” While he did note what he thought to be Lifeforce’s shortcomings, Muir found much to praise in his chapter specifically on the film14, Muir appearing to be the first to take up Landon’s charge of analysis.
Muir reads Lifeforce as a warning against homosexuality, and indeed sexuality at all15, the film using the topic of AIDS16 as a way to touch home with the audience, the images on screen mirroring the all too real epidemic sweeping across the nation during the 1980’s17. The film’s emphasis on male-to-male infection drives Muir’s thesis to his conclusion that “Lifeforce … is a nightmare about the consequences of sex in all its sizes, shapes and forms18.”
While this is by all means a competent and nearly complete critique of the film, Muir’s analysis leaves a great deal of questions unanswered. Once seen in a stronger light, Lifeforce’s message become clear. Through employing feminist rhetoric, primarily that of Luce Irigaray, regarding the concept, and inherent destructive nature, of the gender binary to help view the implementation of an intentionally malformed version of Jungian theories of the psychopomp, specifically that of the manifestation of the Anima/Animus and the journey it takes The Ego on towards self-discovery, Lifeforce presents the idea that Man’s inability to relinquish masculinized power in the gender binary will result in the prolonged and perpetual suffering of the human race. This can be shown through comparing the two male protagonists, the unnamed female alien, and the journey on which she leads the two men to the Jungian theory of the Anima/Animus and The Self, dissecting how they relate and how they differ, then interpreting these differences with feminist rhetoric.
The primary action of the film follows an all-powerful alien, who has taken the form of a human female and is simply credited, and henceforth regrettably referred to, only as Space Girl, as she wreaks havoc across the English countryside. Hunted by two men, US Air Force Colonel Tom Carlsen, the astronaut that unwittingly unleashed the alien on the human race, and Colonel Colin Caine, a Special Air Service Agent sent by the English Government to oversee and assist in any way possible in stopping Space Girl19. These characters can be read as representations of the archetypes present in Carl Jung’s theory of The Self.
Carl Jung, German philosopher and analytical psychologist bridging the gap between the 19th and 20th century, theorized that The Self, one’s total personality, was broken up into a variety of facets20, the sum of which only being capable of being seen and understood by an outside perspective21. The first and arguably most important aspect of The Self is The Ego, which Jung says sits at “the centre of the field of consciousness; … [it being] the subject of all personal acts of consciousness22,” and that “no content can be [made] conscious unless it is represented to a subject23.”
The Ego is separated into two bases, the Somatic and the Psychic24. The Somatic basis represents the physical world, things with which we interact in the physical world25, and the Psychic basis represents the unconscious world, the world in our minds, things with which we interact inside our heads, as it were26. These two basis are themselves split into different groups. The Somatic basis is halved27 into a Conscious side: the parts of the physical world that we can knowingly observe, touch, taste, smell, and an Unconscious side: the parts of the physical world with which we unknowingly interact that actively, if subliminally, affects us, such as sexual drive/pheromones, breathing in general, and so on28. The Psychic basis is separated into three groups: Memory, “temporarily subliminal contents that can be reproduced voluntarily,” Personal Unconscious, “unconscious contents [within one’s own mind] that cannot be reproduced voluntarily,” and Collective Unconscious29, “contents that are not capable of becoming conscious at all30.”
All of these facets that make up The Self can be put into two categories, Personal or Impersonal/Collective31, meaning either things with which the ego can in some way access, verses things to the ego which remain inaccessible. The Personal category consists of Memory, Personal Unconscious, and the Conscious group of the Somatic basis. The Impersonal/Collective category consists of the Collective Unconscious. Jung’s description of the two categories makes it possible for the Unconscious group of the Somatic basis to belong to either, or both, category/categories32.
In linking this theory back to Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, it becomes is key to note that Jung is stating that The Ego is incapable of choosing to access the Personal Unconscious and Collective Unconscious33. The problem with this is explicated when Jung describes that, as man becomes more civilized, losing touch with his instincts, his uncomplicated, uncivilized origins, he develops neurosis34, and that in an attempt to compensate with this, to cleanse his psyche35, his Ego attempts to understand every facet of The Self, including all parts of the Personal and Impersonal/Collective categories36. Resulting in, The Ego hopes, creating for itself a more harmonious and overall less neurotic existence37. But with The Ego unable to access The Self’s Personal and Collective Unconscious, there isn’t an immediately evident way to achieve Jung’s proposed goal of The Ego to completely understand of The Self.
Jung finds his solution to this in archetypes, specifically in that of the psychopomp, which Jung describes as “a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious[,] and a personification of the later38.” These “personifications,” or “projections,” Jung goes on to say, “change the world into a replica of one’s own unknown face39.” Here is where Lifeforce begins to link up with Jung’s theories.
The Ego’s antithesis, the Shadow archetype, Jung introduces first, evidence for which found springing from the “contents of the personal unconscious40.” It is the manifestation of The Ego’s dark side41; not true evil, but simply the evil within that The Ego knows itself to be capable of, but is kept at bay42. This isn’t a projection/psychopomp in the strictest sense, but the archetype remains psychically tangible, a representation of the Personal Unconscious, and as such an important feature of The Ego’s journey to understanding the complete Self, as “its contents can … be made conscious without too much difficulty43.”
Jung then introduces his concept of the Anima and the Animus. These are proper psychopomps. It should be noted that the function of both the Anima and the Animus are the same, and when Jung talks about “psychopomps,” “projections,” and “personifications,” he isn’t speaking about hallucinations, or things that The Ego appears to be seeing represented in the tangible world, but, instead, of things that “appear spontaneously in dreams and so on44.” It is only odd that these psychopomps should function the same, yet have two different names, until Jung reveals that, in his theory, the psychopomp for women appears as male, taking the name Animus, and the psychopomp for men appear as female, or Anima. Jung proposed that they each represent what The Ego is lacking, the Animus for a female Ego “correspond[ing] to the paternal Logos,” an ancient Greek term correlating to “knowledge” and “reason,” and the Anima for a male Ego “correspond[ing] to the maternal Eros,” referring to the Greek god of love and compassion45.
Representing, within The Self, the Collective Unconscious46, the role of the Anima and Animus, regardless of the genders of their respective Ego counterparts, is much more complex than that of the Shadow. They are to personify the contents of Collective Unconscious, and present itself to The Ego as a projection47. When the Anima/Animus withdraws from the projection, “[the contents of the collective unconscious] can be integrated into consciousness48.” They take this route for two reasons, first being that to “make a person see the shortcomings of his attitude[,] considerably more than mere ‘telling’ is needed49,” and the second being that “though the contents of [the Anima/Animus] can be integrated[,] they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes50.” Once The Ego integrates the contents of their Anima/Animus’ projection, thus coming closer to understanding the contents of the Collective Unconscious and how it constitutes a part of The Self, The Ego will become closer to ridding itself of its neurosis, thus living a healthier, happier life51.
With all of this in mind, it is an easy task to link the primary characters in Lifeforce to the archetypes present in Jung’s theory of The Self. Special Air Service Agent Colonel Colin Caine could represent The Ego. While his character is introduced almost a fourth the way through this two hour epic, he is the veritable voice of reason, the undeniably the authority in any given situation. On their journey tracking Space girl across the English countryside, everyone stands at the ready when Caine approaches, opening up as he probes for answers. The knowledge, or intel as it were, of those around him is always and unquestioningly made available.
Astronaut Colonel Tom Carlsen could represent The Shadow. Essentially only allowed to accompany Caine due to his history with Space Girl, that of being her first contact with humans, his subsequent obsession, and his possibly being psychically linked, throughout the film he proves himself to be more of a burden than an asset. He first becomes obsessed with Space Girl, stumbling upon her ship on a routine mission investigating Halley’s comet, and after convincing his crew to bring her back to Earth for further study, he is possessed by jealousy, killing said crew and escaping the spaceship to avoid any nasty questions upon returning to Earth. Once he weasels his way into joining Caine in tracking her down, he consistently abuses his power, intimidating and sometimes simply brutally assaulting others to find his way back to Space Girl. Caine allows this, standing aside and, in his own words acting as “a natural voyeur52,” allowing Carlsen to use unconventional interrogation techniques, including beating a woman he claims to know is a masochist, or the injection of overdose-level quantities of sense-dulling solutions into a man he’s only just met.
Space Girl, thus, could represent the Anima. Near the end of the second act, when it appears as though Caine and Carlsen have finally caught up with her, Space Girl reveals that she took her shape from Carlsen’s mind when he first approached her ship, that she entered his mind, and “found there new bodies53.” Space Girl appears to be female, as the Anima of a man would be54, she is an unknowable being from beyond all understanding, as this type of psychopomp is considered to be55, and is guiding our protagonists on an epic journey, possibly of self-discovery, which is the proposed function of an Anima/Animus56.
Arguably, The Self could be interpreted to be the British Government, since England is primarily where the story takes place, but being that our male protagonists are from two different world super-powers, the United States and England, it seems more likely that The Self, in this context, could be more aptly interpreted as mankind itself. As members of mankind, Caine, The Ego, is its eyes and ears, investigating and probing at itself and this new apparent intruder, and Carlsen its Shadow, the dark companion and violent antithesis to The Ego, able and all too willing to do what The Ego is capable of, but compels itself to abstain from. Space Girl is, again, the force driving them to ask questions, presenting them with signs they don’t have words to describe in an attempt to connect them with the unknown and hitherto unknowable aspects of themselves.
In analogizing the primary players in Lifeforce with Jung’s figures of The Ego, The Self, The Shadow, and the Anima, it becomes clear that the metaphor falls short, despite supporting evidence to the contrary. Space Girl, throughout the film, is seen telling the men who approach her, either through body language, physical coercion, or simply verbalization, that she loves them, that she wants them to use her body, that she wishes to be “one” with them. She then kills these men, absorbing their soul, and infecting them with a highly contagious disease, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. By the end of the film, Space Girl’s campaign of carnage completes with her syphoning off the last of London’s remaining souls, which were conveniently loosened from their catching’s by her expertly transmitted disease, and simply flying away in her space ship. Caine, appearing to be one of the few surviving Englishmen, is left to watch it recede into the distance, looking upward in wait of some sort of answer, some revelation. It never comes, and as the credits roll, seconds after Caine’s final shot, it is evident that it never will.
If not simply because she admits to breaking the order of operations in revealing that she took her form Carlsen, our supposed Shadow, instead of Caine, our Ego, or even mankind, The Self, then based purely on her actions, it is clear what her intentions were from the start. Space Girl was willing to use anyone in her way in order to get what she wanted, which was simply to collect a sufficient amount souls to prolong her own existence. Much like Jung himself envisioned, only an outside perspective is capable of seeing someone else’s Self57, Space Girl looked into Carlsen’s mind, and chose the shape that would most efficiently deceive him, and allow her to move, unimpeded, through his world.
When Carlsen, on a routine investigatory mission, finds Space Girl and her space ship drafting Halley’s comet, he finds a dying creature. In the film, it is proposed that she and her shipmates, fellow vampiric aliens, have been floating in the comet’s tail since the last time it neared Earth, which coincidentally matches up with canonical major world events mirroring that of vampire attacks. The ship is filled with the desiccated corpses of Space Girl’s companions, dried up, devoid of any signs of life. Carlsen stumbles upon her, and she is too weak to move, too weak talk, or really give any sign of life, other than to change her perceived form to fit Carlsen’s idealized woman and enter his mind. Carlsen himself admits that this is when her power over him took root. She was just powerful enough to implant an obsession, and from there, after being taken back to Carlsen’s ship, she started feeding on the life, the spirits, the souls, of the crew.
Space Girl was not yet the all-powerful, unstoppable force that she becomes by the end of the film. Had she been, there would have been no need for deception, she and her companions would simply have swooped down to Earth, absorb an adequate amount of souls, and receded. She needed a way in, and in looking into The Self that Carlsen both embodied and helped comprise, she found her shape. Space Girl appeared as a woman.
Given the relatively disempowered position women represent in a patriarchal society such as that in the film, and indeed in our very own58, Space Girl’s choice may seem counterintuitive. Considering the success of her mission, her choice becomes anything but arbitrary. Space Girl is, in effect, using the tools of the patriarchy, specifically that of the gender binary, against itself, in an attempt to deceive, overpower, and command it.
Gender is, as defined by feminist theorist Joan Scott, the “perceived differences between the sexes59.” not only implying that it is a construct, but also that this construct implies a total of two sexes. In this gender binary, men and women are defined in terms of one another60, with man as the default, and woman as the complement61. This is not inherently problematic, excepting that differentiation infers hierarchy, with men placing women at the bottom62, a choice possibly stemming from man feeling alienated from his species’ reproduction, resulting in a “‘need’ to dominate the female63.” Scott continues by saying the construct of gender is, in and of itself, primarily a way of “signifying relationships of power64.”
Men succeed in placing women at the bottom, in defining themselves as default, in a multitude of ways, the primary way being sexual objectification65. Art historian and theorist Kobena Mercer states while discussing the concept of “the nude” in the realm of fine art, by sexually objectifying women, “men assume the active role of the looking subject[,] while women [become] passive objects to be looked at66.” The institutionalized norm of objectification is made evident when hypothetically considering enforcing feminist theorist Luce Irigaray’s proposed “sexuate rights,” which range from “[t]he rights to human dignity ... [and] identity,” which feels sufficiently banal as these rights ought to already be promised, to “[s]ystems of exchange, such as linguistic exchange, for example, shall be revised in order to guarantee a right to equivalent exchange for men and women,” the logistics alone making its enforcement nearly impossible to imagine67.
Irigaray’s purpose here is not to actually see her list of “sexuate rights” put in place, but to “[jam] the theoretical machinery68” of the patriarchy with the fact that her proposal sounds implausible69. She wishes to express through the idea of these rights, which seem both necessary, or at the very least imaginably reasonable, and ridiculous, the fact of an invisible, institutionalized patriarchy. This is compounded by the fact that, once trapped, women are not given the tools by the men in power to either recognize their position, or to find a way out of it, transcending objectification70.
The problem is not just that it is women who are at the bottom of the binary’s hierarchy, but that the binary exists at all, as men, even though they are positioned at the top, are themselves hurt by the existence of said binary71. Man has imprisoned himself in their own self-sustaining, narcissistic, illusory “palace of mirrors72, which even if he wished to escape, if the “heavenly” trappings are unwanted, he would be unable73.
Jung unknowingly supports this concept. Jung’s “projections” are just a way for man to regulate his actions, while allowing himself to continue to be in control of them. Irigaray theorizes that not only does man see woman as “object,” but that he sees her as “the other74,” and since woman is always thought of in relation to man75, she is subsequently “his other,” and that she is not only defined by him, but that she is a product of him76. Jung himself stated, again, that “[p]rojections change the world into a replica of one’s own unknown face77,” this time the key part of the statement being “one’s own.” These projections proposed by Jung are, by his own admission, effectively endlessly enumerated self-sired mirages78, that man employs simply because he “only asks (himself) questions that he can already answer, using the supply of instruments he has available...79,” as Irigaray would put it.
When Space Girl looked into Carlsen’s mind upon their first encounter, she saw this dynamic playing itself out. She knew that man was perpetuating images of himself in a self-serving, self-defeating attempt at personal discovery and self-actualization, and thus decided to take the form of a woman, Jung’s archetypal shape for a man’s Anima, the major player in this veritable vision quest. Space Girl’s intentions were not to guide man, but to fulfill his desire to be guided. With the promise of becoming whole, at the hands of an unknowable, ancient being beyond all comprehension, Space Girl was able to manipulate mankind into giving up its greatest gift, life itself, without having to sacrifice a single thing in return.
In the final shot of the film, Space Girl safe aboard her ship, it being filled with the souls she’d gleaned from Earth, lazily retires to its previous position, drafting Halley’s comet. It is not a dramatic narrow escape, for she knows those left alive, much like Caine, are all simply looking up at her and her shipmates, their hunger for human souls now satiated, waiting for a revelation that, as stated before, never comes. We as an audience are left with a growing sense of dread and disappointment. Disappointment that man has allowed such a system to be put in place and propagated, and that he would be so blind, so self-involved as to allow himself to be so completely manipulated. And dread, because the alien space ship travels in the tail of a comet stuck in orbit, its path intersecting with Earth’s every seventy-six years. Without recognizing the tools of their destruction, mankind is destined to have this horror, his neigh-complete annihilation, perpetually return.
However, the argument could be made that Space Girl did in fact function as an Anima. It could be considered that the image she was embodying, or “projecting,” for Caine, Carlsen, or mankind in general was that of destruction. It could be that she was showing the men, through her trail of devastation, that they too are capable of these things, that this is what is truly locked away in their Collective Unconscious. Truly this would approach what Jung intended when he alluded to the Collective Unconscious harboring true evil80. This falls flat when considered, again, that the function of an Anima is to intentionally show someone their shortcomings81, working as “a mediator,” in service to The Ego82. If anything, the Anima is supposed to, misogynistically, represent Eros83, again referring to the Greek god of love and compassion.
Space Girl represents none of these attributes, is in no way acting in service of The Ego, and is flippantly flying in the face of both love and compassion. Her intentions, again most easily inferred from her actions, are simply to manipulate mankind into allowing her to feed off their souls allow her to prolong her own existence, and arguably the existence of her fellow celestial vampires. With this in mind, it is clear that, to restate the thesis, Lifeforce presents the idea that Man’s inability to relinquish masculinized power in the gender binary will result in the prolonged and perpetual suffering of the human race.
Films are, at their root, a collection of signs, signs themselves being something which, as British Semiotician Daniel Chandler says, “take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects84.” Chandler goes on to say that, when we engage with media, such as film, we “both act and are acted upon85.” Films use signs to tap into our Jungian Somatic: Unconscious, the aspect of our Self that is part of the physical, tangible realm, but not immediately accessible to The Ego, as the messages it receives are subliminal86. It is possible for the signs films present to our Somatic: Unconscious to cross the threshold, to become perceptions, leaving The Ego able to understand these messages these signs, and internalize them, finding meaning therein87. It could also be thought that, in the same way that Jung’s Anima and Animus function, films are doing more than just “telling” us about our shortcomings88. Chandler submits that, in the same way Jung’s Anima and Animus shows, or projects, itself to The Ego, taking its shape from the Collective Unconscious and presents it to The Ego to dissect meaning89, that “we actively create [meaning from signs] according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware90.” It doesn’t hurt that films are, quite literally, projections.
Muir was right, when he wrote that Lifeforce was about a freshly evolving terror concerning the AIDS epidemic91. That reading is definitely in there. But a deeper reading shows the root of that terror. This terror of AIDS, as Muir himself points out, is a fear of homosexuality92, homophobia having its roots in men fearing being treated like a woman (as made evident in that the “idea of masculinity rests on the necessary repression of feminine aspects93”), which itself has its roots in fearing the loss of one’s position at the top of the gender binary hierarchy94.
This revelation after a deeper reading shows that not only are there multiple layers, multiple ways of dissecting a text, but that new readings are only possible after a period of growth, sometimes both on an individual level as well as a cultural one. It may also be that this underlying meaning in Lifeforce was only capable of being read in a time more aware of certain social issues95. Chandler says that the “study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit96.”
Chandler’s warning is sound and, when considered with the lesson Lifeforce presents, stirring. Joan Scott says that “[t]here is no such clarity or coherence for either race or gender97” when discussing the problems inherent in battling the concept of the gender binary as compared to battling classism. While not her intended message in that statement, what she said is nonetheless powerful; that the distinction between genders is unclear, reinforcing the idea that “gender” is a social construct98. Social constructs are a result of civilization. With any luck, and the help of films like this one, the contents of our collective unconscious will continue crossing the threshold into our consciousness, and we’ll be able to avoid the propagation of our perpetual imprisonment in the same palace of mirror in which the protagonists of Lifeforce find themselves.
Annotations
1) “If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus.” (Guttridge 2005)
2) “Overplayed and underdeveloped, the film's main saving grace is the intensity of its action sequences, which contain enough frenetic energy to prevent it from being a complete bomb.” (Karp 1985: I-4)
3) “... two things become clear: that this film is going to make no sense, and that Mr. Hooper's directorial work on ''Poltergeist'' may indeed have been heavily influenced by Steven Spielberg…” “its style is shrill and fragmented” “...with the batty illogic of the screenplay's better lines.” “...most of it is painfully solemn” “...the results are nonetheless sterile.” (Maslin 1985).
4) “But he needs a more cleanly crafted outlet than the top-heavy Lifeforce can provide.” (Muir 2002: 94) It should be noted that John Muir’s career spanning biography of Tobe Hooper, Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre, was instrumental in assisting with the procurement of a handful of more obscure reviews, this one included.
5) “Apart from a few lively shock scenes, an object lesson in failure.” (Muir 2002: 94)
6) "Unfortunately, Lifeforce was the worst film ever made, so nothing happened!" (Robertson 1988: 42)
7) “... critically maligned for the overly cerebral Lifeforce,...” (Hanke 1991: 266)
8) “Lavished, crazed, and having almost nothing to do with Wilson’s novel, Lifeforce was a critical anomaly…” (Dixon 2010: 150)
9) “Lifeforce … fails completely to translate the horror of the original to the screen…” (Menville 1985: 186)
10) “Lifeforce may come to be considered a note-worthy science-fiction film precisely because it is so relentlessly unsentimental and edgy. … the film has something to offend almost everyone but offers much for serious analysis” (Muir 2002: 93)
11) “Only when the film finally arrived on home video did Lifeforce get the audience it deserved and begin gaining momentum - and cult following. …” (Muir 2002: 33)
12) “Tobe Hooper did sci-fi fans the supreme favor of combining a stylish and haunting space-opera with a good old-fashioned blood-sucker epic when he helmed his classic vampire hybrid…” (Muir 2002: 93)
13) “Lifeforce may be the last great science fiction film to come out of England.” (93)
14) “After a slam-bang introduction, the film degenerates into a slow mystery…” (Muir 2002: 100)
15) “Yet Lifeforce is not an indictment of homosexuality so much as it is a warning against succumbing to all manner of sexual urges.” (Muir 2002: 98) and “Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce parallel[s] the development of AIDS in another way: [it has] a serious homosexual undercurrent. … In Lifeforce, there is more than a single-sex grouping of victims (and the beautiful Mathilda May makes a fetching feminine evil), but there is nonetheless an emphasis on male-to-male infection.” (Muir 2002: 98)
16) “In Lifeforce, the rising ‘gay plague,’ a dangerous sexually transmitted disease of the early 1980’s later identified as AIDs and recognized as an epidemic, is the subject informing so much of the terror.” (Muir 2002: 98)
17) “With its obsessive romance, blatant eroticism (unusual for a major genre release) and ‘disease metaphor’ in the pattern of alien ‘infection,’ the film spoke more clearly about the dreads of the time (Specifically the developing AIDS epidemic) than critics had heard on its original release. … Still, that’s slim comfort for Tobe Hooper, who had to wait a good fifteen years for the world to catch up with Lifeforce.” (Muir 2002: 33-34)
18) “Lifeforce … is a nightmare about the consequences of sex in all its sizes, shapes and forms.” (Muir 2002: 97)
19) (Hooper 1985: Lifeforce)
20) While Jung never specifically states that there are different facets to the self, it is evident that he believe there to be so, if only by his figuratively dissecting the self into smaller facets in these passages.
21) “... On the contrary, the most decisive qualities in a person are often unconscious and can be perceived only by others, or have to be laboriously discovered with outside help.” (Jung 5) And “No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself” (Jung 1970: 9)
22) “The ego … forms … the centre of the field of consciousness; … [it] is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness.” (Jung 1970: 3)
23) “...no content can be conscious unless it is represented to a subject.” (Jung 1970: 3)
24) “Experience shows that [the ego] rests on two seemingly different bases: the somatic and the psychic.” (Jung 1970: 3)
25) “The somatic basis is inferred from the totality of endosomatic perceptions, …[and] are produced by endosomatic stimuli…” Jung 1970: 3)
26) “...The same is true of the psychic basis: on the one hand the ego rests on the total field of consciousness, and on the other, on the sum total of conscious contents.” (Jung 1970: 4)
27) “The somatic basis of the ego consists, then, of conscious and unconscious factors.” (Jung 1970: 4)
28) “A considerable proportion of these stimuli occur unconsciously, that is, subliminally. … But there is no doubt that a large proportion of these endo somatic stimuli are simply incapable of consciousness and are so elementary that there is no reason to assign them a psychic nature…”(Jung 1970: 4)
29) Jung doesn’t refer to the latter two groups as “personal unconscious” or “collective unconscious” until this later passage: “Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are so acquired during the individual’s lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning.” (Jung 1970: 8)
30) “These fall into three groups: first, temporarily subliminal contents that can be reproduced voluntarily (memory); second, unconscious contents that cannot be reproduced voluntarily; third, contents that are not capable of becoming conscious at all” (Jung 1970: 4)
31) “But from the standpoint of the psychology of the personality a twofold division ensues: an ‘extra-conscious’ psyche whose contents are personal, and ‘extra-conscious’ psyche whose contents are impersonal and collective.” (Jung 1970: 7)
32) “The first group comprises contents which are integral components of the individual personality and could therefore just as well be conscious; the second group forms, as it were, an omnipresent, unchanging, and everywhere identical quality or substrate of the psyche per se.” (Jung 1970: 7)
33) See Note #30
34) “It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that compensation works with entire success. The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature.” (Jung 1970: 20-21)
35) “It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of the psychic hygiene to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and compensating function of the unconscious ensures that these dangers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure be avoided” (Jung 1970: 20)
36) “Recapitulating, I should like to emphasize that the integration of the shadow, or the realization of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in the analytic process, and without it a recognition of the anima and animus is impossible” (Jung 1970: 22). And “The more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self” (Jung 1970: 23). And “Hence it is of the greatest importance that the ego should be anchored in the world of consciousness and that consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation.” (Jung 1970: 24)
37) “All in all, it is not only more beneficial but more ‘correct’ psychologically to explain as the ‘will of God’ the natural forces that appear in us as instincts. In this way we find ourselves living in harmony with the habitus of our ancestral psychic life.; that is, we function as man has functioned at all times and in all places.” (Jung 1970: 27)
38) “...a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious[,] and a personification of the later.” (Jung 1970: 16)
39) “Projections change the world into a replica of one’s own unknown face.” (Jung 1970: 9)
40) “[The Shadow’s] nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious.” (Jung 1970: 8)
41) “To become conscious of [The Shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.” (Jung 1970: 8)
42) “In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.” (Jung 1970: 10)
43) “Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost their personal unconscious, and its contents can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty” (Jung 10). And “Hence it is much more difficult to become conscious of one’s anima/animus projections than to acknowledge one’s shadow side” (Jung 1970: 17).
44) “Many of [the contents of the anima and animus] appear spontaneously in dreams and so on…” (Jung 1970: 19). And “The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather, the unconscious as represented by the anima. Whenever she appears in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being” (Jung 1970: 13)
45) “The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros” (Jung 1970: 14).
46) “The anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized” (Jung 1970: 10). And “She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious” (Jung 1970: 13-14)
47) “The autonomy of the collective unconscious expressed itself in the figures of anima and animus. They personify those of its contents…” (Jung 1970: 20)
48) “...when [the Anima/Animus is] withdrawn from projection, [the contents of the collective unconscious] can be integrated into consciousness. To this extent, both figures represent functions which filter the contents of the collective unconscious through to the conscious mind.” (Jung 1970: 20)
49) “To make a person see the shortcomings of his attitude considerably more that mere ‘telling’ is needed, for more is involved than ordinary common sense can allow” (Jung 1970: 19).
50) “...the reason for their behaving in this way is that though the contents of anima and animus can be integrated they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes. As such they are the foundation stones of the psychic structure, which in its totality exceeds the limits of consciousness and therefore can never become the object of direct cognition. Though the effects of the anima and animus can be made conscious, they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and beyond the reach of perception and volition.” (Jung 1970: 20)
51) See note #37
52) “Not at all. I’m a natural voyeur.” (Hooper 1985: Lifeforce, 1:06:16-1:06:19)
53) “Our bodies are unimportant. As you and your men approached in your ship, we changed them for you. We entered your minds, and found there [(as this line is spoken, and the screenplay unpublished, this word could also be “their.” This, however, doesn’t appear to fit within the context of the entire quote)] new bodies. I took my shape from your mind. I took your language. I became the woman I found there, in your deepest thoughts … your deepest needs. I am the feminine in your mind, Carlsen” (Hooper 1985: Lifeforce, 1:16:01-1:16:34)
54) See note #45
55) See note #50
56) See notes #48, 49
57) See note #21
58) “We should not confuse difference with impoverished models governed by sameness, insofar as they subordinate women to a masculine reference point.” (Deutscher 2002: 31)
59) “Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power.” (Scott 1986: 1067)
60) According to this view, women and men were defined in terms of one another, and no understanding of either could be achieved by entirely separate study.” (Scott 1986: 1054)
61) “... [history of western culture] has not wanted women and femininity to be more than opposite, complement, or same as the male.” (Deutscher 2002: 29)
62) “...gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power.” (Joan Scott, 1069), and “If we employ Jacques Derrida’s definition of deconstruction, this criticism means analyzing in context the way any binary opposition operates, reversing and displacing its hierarchical constructions.” (Scott 1986: 1065-66), wherein Scott accepts the premise that difference infers hierarchy.
63) “The ‘scientific’ appropriation of women's reproductive powers is an essential part, perhaps the ultimate move in creating time as an unfrayed rope with which to hang our species” (O’Brien 47), and “Theorists of patriarchy have directed their attention to the subordination of women and found their explanation for it in the male “need” to dominate the female. In Mary O’Brien’s ingenious adaptation of Hegel, she defined male domination as the effect of men’s desire to transcend their alienation from the means of the reproduction of the species.” (Scott 1986: 1058)
64) See note #58
65) “‘Sexual Objectification’ is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object.” (Scott 1986: 1058)
66) “Within the dominant tradition of the female nude, patriarchal power relations are symbolized by the binary relation in which, to put it crudely, men assume the active role of the looking subject while women are passive objects to be looked at. Laura Mulvey’s contribution to feminist film theory revealed the normative power and privilege of the male gaze in dominant systems of visual representation. The image of the female nude can thus be understood not so much as a representation of (hetero)sexual desire, but as a form of objectification which articulates masculine hegemony, and dominance over the very apparatus of representation itself.” (Mercer 1994: 177)
67) “She calls for sexuate rights,...
1. The right to human dignity
2. The right to human identity
…
6. Systems of exchange, such as linguistic exchange, for example, shall be revised in order to guarantee a right to equivalent exchange for men and women,” (Deutscher 2002: 35-36)
68) “In other words, the issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which women would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself..” (Irigaray 1985b: 78)
69) “Thus the point of the reforms would be not that they sound plausible but that they do not.” (Deutscher 2002: 41)
70) “Meanwhile, the excess in this universal fascination is that “she” also turns upon herself, that she knows how to re-turn (upon herself) but not how to seek outside for identity within the other…” (Irigaray 1985a: 134)
71) “Men are not exploited or oppressed by sexism, but there are ways in which they suffer as a result of it” - (Hooks 2000: 73)
72) “Everywhere he runs into the walls of his palace of mirrors, the floor of which is in any case beginning to crack and break.” (Irigaray 1985a: 137)
73) “Why he is repressed too? But high up, in ‘heaven’?” (Irigaray 1985a: 135)
74) “What disaggregation of the subject would that entail? Not only on the level of the split between him and the other, who is always to some extent his Other, even if he does not recognize himself in it, even if he is so overwhelmed by it as to bar himself out of it and into so as to rain at the very least the power to promote his own forms” (Irigaray 1985a: 135)
75) See note #61
76) See note #74
77) See note #39
78) “What disaggregation of the subject would that entail? Not only on the level of the split between him and the other, who is always to some extent his Other, even if he does not recognize himself in it, even if he is so overwhelmed by it as to bar himself out of it and into so as to rain at the very least the power to promote his own forms” (Irigaray 1985a: 135)
79) “But man only asks (himself) questions that he can already answer, using the supply of instruments he has available to assimilate even the disasters in his history.” (Irigaray 1985a: 137)
80) See note #42
81) See note #49
82) See note #38
83) See note #45
84) “In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects.” (Chandler 2013)
85) “When we engage with media we both act and are acted upon, use and are used.” (Chandler 2013)
86) See note #28
87) “Sometime [unconsciously occurring stimuli] are capable of crossing the threshold … of becoming perceptions. But there is no doubt that a large proportion of these endo somatic stimuli are simply incapable of consciousness and are so elementary that there is no reason to assign them a psychic nature-unless of course one favours the philosophical view that all life-processes are psychic anyway.” (Jung 1970: 4)
88) See note #49
89) See note #47
90) “Meaning is not ‘transmitted’ to us - we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware.” (Chandler 2013)
91) See note #16
92) See notes #15-18
93) “The idea of masculinity rests on the necessary repression of feminine aspects” (Scott 1986: 1063)
94) “As with any system of privilege that elevates one group by oppressing another, control is an essential element of patriarchy: men maintain their privilege by controlling women and anyone else who might threaten it.” (Johnson 2005: 14)
95) “The meaning of a sign is not in its relationship to other signs within the language system but rather in the social context of its use.” (Chandler 2013)
96) “The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit.” (Chandler 2013)
97) “There is no such clarity or coherence for either race or gender.” (Scott 1986: 1055)
98) See note #59
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