Sex is Violent: Civilization and its Discontents (Freud, 1929)

As part of the theory side of this project, I have decided to start by reading some Freud (apologies in advance for any Freudian slips that follow). I have a long list of his works to refresh myself with, but thought the most obvious place to start is with his most famous work (at least in popular culture: Civilization and its Discontents. My reasoning here (such as it is) is that Civilization and its Discontents is the psychological work that quite probably had the greatest impact on Occidental popular culture and, as it was a late work in his career (he passes ten years later in 1939), is also serves as a sort of summary of his previous works--all of which I will not be reading again for this project, though I have my eye on a complete used collection of the Standard Edition of his complete works at the Strand, if I could only find the shelf space and the extra cash. In any case, they are now available online.

Briefly summarized, the core argument (or discovery) of Civilization and its Discontents is that sexuality = aggression = civilization. And suddenly I have that Jane's Addiction song in my "Ted, Just Admit It . . . " (often referred to as "Sex is Violent" due to the refrain) off of their 1988 album Nothing's Shocking. Seriously, no one gets through undergraduate work in the US without some Freud, and his ideas are so iconic and prevalent in this country (this is probably also true in all of the West, but I'd better stick to what I know) that you can hear his core concepts come out of just about anyone's mouth, and his ideas were used (by his nephew, I believe, but I will have to check) to establish modern psychology-based advertising and shape the consumerist society we now live in. Nike? Freud.

This project is taking me weird places already! Cool. Cool. Cool. (*That being a reference to the TV show Community, in case you didn't recognize it.)

Among filmmakers Stanley Kubrick was heavily influenced by Freud and his successors--as is mentioned by virtually every critic on the planet and, as I mentioned in an earlier post (I have read, but will personally check) all of his films feature bathroom scenes, and coming to terms with excrement is one of Freud's major stages of development.

And, since I am always will to go for the scatological reference, it is interesting that most people--even those who know Freud's work professionally as I do--seem to forget his emphasis on the smell of feces (and the importance of smell to human psychology in general). I am not sure I will use that for anything on this project, but its an interesting notion to keep handy. Smell may be one of those things that films easily repress and maybe that is part of our enjoyment of them--they don't stink like real life.

In any case, as many critics have noted in one way or another, "sexuality = aggression = civilization" pretty much sums up the major trend of Kubrick's work right up to his death and nowhere is this more obvious than in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and 2001 (1968) where phallic and yonic objects not only abound (as they do everywhere), but are actually emphasized as such. Ride that bomb!

I am off to listen to some Jane's Addiction and read more Freud and I suppose I had better dig-out my copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am hoping to visit an archive in London next Spring that has a lot of Kubick's materials. It would be great to get my hands on some of the production notes and etc. for 2001!