The title here is taken from a recent post by mlawski on the difference between [Strong Female] Characters and [Strong Characters], Female. The image is a painting by the French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly, which (according to the exhibit guide at the museum I saw it in) is a symbolic representation of “the phallic mother.”
More chicks with…you know…below.
The Phallic Mother is a Freudian concept. The idea, as I understand it, is that little boys, confronted with their own mothers’ sexual difference, construct a fantasy image of a powerful, desirable woman who just happens to have an enormous threatening wang. Apparently this helps the boys deal with castration anxiety? I guess the theory is that “well, if women have a phallus, then everyone has a phallus, and if everyone has a phallus then it must be impossible for my phallus to shrivel up and fall off.” In art, the phallus is replaced with a phallus analogue, such as a pool cue, or a sword, or a gun, or what have you.
I don’t know how much I buy Freud’s explanation of this. Film scholars and literary critics are maybe a little too quick to cite Freud on everything, considering that most actual psychologists stopped believing in his theories long ago. (Searching for Freudian symbolism in Psycho doesn’t make that much more sense than searching for Lamarckian symbolism in the Star Wars movies.)
Oh, uh, spoiler alert, I guess. My bad, guys.
So yeah: Freud’s concept of the Phallic Mother is probably as outmoded and tendentious as his concept of Penis Envy. But our culture does seem to have a weird affinity for this image. Particularly in advertising campaigns. Observe:
Two relatively straightforward examples to start with. Note that the men on the covers aren’t holding their weapons anywhere near their groins.
A two-fer from the recent French horror movie Haute Tension. (Yeah, I used the original French title. If you were wondering exactly how pretentious I am, now you know: that pretentious.)
Now some firearm pics. The Coffy one is much less blatant than most. Still, if you trace the line of the gun barrel down into her body, you will end up where the artist wanted you to go, know what I mean?
So far, we’ve mostly just seen Phallic Women, so I thought I should leave you with a couple of legitimate bad-ass Mothers. These are also respectively the most and least ridiculous examples of the trope that I have come across. Ripley hardly deserves to be included: the gun, while enormous, isn’t pointed anywhere inappropriate, and this image wasn’t even part of the advertising campaign as far as I can tell. Sarah Connor, on the other hand… yikes.
What about the mother of all, um, Phallic Mothers:
Cherry from “Planet Terror”?
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm844206848/tt1077258
I rest my case.
lee: I think I’m glad I never heard of that movie.
Just to play Devil’s Advocate again…
Panic Room? Or is the fact that Jodie is in pajama pants and a spaghetti strap a problem?
http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/020327/124151__panic_l.jpg
Gab, I must admit, I’m actually unironically a big fan of “Planet Terror” and unironically recommend it as a terrific over the top rendition/spoof of a zombie movie.
As for the sexploitation aspects of it, well, it’s a stripper with an M-16 for a leg. This is clearly part of the over the top/spoof aspect of the film, though the filmmaker probably uniroinically thought that it looked hot, and that a largely male audience would agree.
Oh gosh… I’m actually intrigued. I do enjoy a good bad movie.
Planet Terror is totally worth seeing, providing you have access to a sarcastic friend and some alcohol.
I don’t think Jessica Alba’s character actually wields a gun at any point in Sin City. She doesn’t need one.
That’s not innuendo, by the way; she simply doesn’t need a gun.
i think this whole “phalic mother” thing is overthinking it (sorry for the pun). a woman holding a phalic symbol between her legs/aimed at her crotch sounds to me like another, way more common (and less freaky/incestuous) type of innuendo entirely, if you catch my drift. and if the phalic symbol is a weapon, so much the better–after all, you can’t spell “bloodlust” without “lust.”
it’s all sex, is what i’m saying.
Well, I certainly hope I’m overthinking it. :) You may well be right. Occam’s razor dictates that we search for the simplest explanation, and although what Occam is actually supposed to have said is “entities should not be multiplied without necessity,” we could probably posit a second razor that goes “it’s really all about sex.”
But I’m not totally convinced. Question for you: why is the business end of the implement in question always pointed away from the woman’s body? If she were pointing the gun/sword/whatever towards her body, wouldn’t the feeling of the image totally change?
well, of course it’s not pointed towards her–for one thing, that would be WAY too obvious (you might as well have her masturbating with it), and for another, who points a weapon at themselves? that would be dangerous and stupid–which is NOT the message they want to be sending, especially not subliminally. although if they did, it might cut down on the teenage birthrate in places that believe in “abstinence only ‘education.'”
and yeah, occams razor was what i was thinking of. after all, we already know that sex is at the center of a whole lot of human behavior, so why add in this whole “entity” of the phallic mother which ties into sex or subliminal fear of losing one’s penis (which ties into sex) or whatever?
“Freud’s concept of the Phallic Mother is probably as outmoded and tendentious as his concept of Penis Envy.”
I totally agree, Freud is over rated!
JK.. I dont agree at all with his concept, but everything and everyone points at his ideas and our society does seem to be overly absorbed by this
Is it possible that this positioning is widespread simply because it shows the female form to the greatest advantage? The pose of the woman in ‘Red Sonja’, for example, shows off her hips, arms and a hint of boob. In contrast Ah-nuld’s pose doesn’t show much of anything.
The woman in ‘High Tension’ though is probably a different case again– it seems to me that it could easily have been a guy in that pose. Indeed I first mistook her for a guy.
No need to revert to Freudian nonsense, imo.
I realise that this post is way old, and that the following isn’t even a movie, but I just have to add this example, for anyone who comes across this in the future:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Manhunter_KateSpencer.jpg
@Anke: Oh my freaking GOD.
@Anke: Oh my freaking GOD. YES INDEED!!!!!
Hey, i like this site!!!
….okay, so maybe that one was intentional. Heh.