November 2024
(Essays on this site are from my time at NYU. This essay was for a Freud class at Gallatin. I’d seen Frownland in high school and then a handful of times after that but never got a chance to write about it until now. It’s been sort of a north star for me as a film student, especially as my prospects of making a feature draw nearer.)
In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud posits the foundation of psychical life, both in dreams and reality, as “the operation of two psychical forces,” where expression “constructs the wish,” and repression “exercises a censorship upon this dream-wish,” effectively “bringing about a distortion in the expression of the wish” (Freud 168). By this, Freud means to say that the unconscious mind is still active when awake, but only gets to express itself in the dream-state, yet in doing so, that expression is still censored, to the extent that the dream wish is never communicated with clarity by the unconscious to the conscious mind.
This operation assumes that the unconscious mind is fundamentally driven to ceaselessly express itself, and this pure expression gets filtered into dream content—a.k.a. dream plot. Within this dream content lay both manifest and latent content, the former of which refers to the discernible action that the subject can recall upon awaking from the dream, while the latter represents the disguised inner meaning represented by the dream through symbols. In other words, manifest content are the distorted manifestations of latent content, of which we have no clear image of, but can assume based on the principle that the unconscious mind is expressing itself through the dream, albeit filtered.
Since the nature of expression and repression contradict each other, their inner and external manifestations naturally generate friction. Freud charts the path taken by the repressed unconscious into dream expression when he explains, “while we are awake, we are aware of a diffuse general sensibility…but only as a vague quality…At night, however, it would seem that this same feeling…becomes the strongest and at the same time the commonest source for instigating dream-images” (Freud 67). Specifically, Freud makes the distinction that what is repressed in the unconscious is pulled and ‘stored’ (without exertion) from the content of our waking lives. This implies that a human’s ability to function upon awaking from a dream and going about their daily life without immeasurable shock (for the most part) stems from the direct closed system stringing reality into our unconscious, then our dreams, and back out through one’s often sparse, but still conscious interpretation of the dream after waking up.
According to Freud, repression is not limited to occurrence in one’s unconscious mind. Studies on Hysteria makes the argument that repressed material can make its way through the body and become observable as neuralgia, a process known as somatic compliance. Things like tics, mental pain, or vomiting are theoretically all bodily impressions of our unconscious mind rerouting trauma (rooted in memory) into a physical sensation. Somatic compliance can be overcome through abreaction, in which a patient “brings clearly to light the memory of the event by which [the hysterical symptom] was provoked” (Freud 6). By putting the affect into words, the traumatic memory supposedly loses the chance of becoming a neurotic disruptor to the subject. Of utmost interest is Freud’s following statement, which admits to the limited effectiveness of abreaction, and his stunted findings: “a neuralgia may follow upon mental pain or vomiting upon a feeling of moral disgust” (Freud 5). Here he describes seemingly more complicated, less easily curable forms of the repressed unconscious expressing itself in waking life. While he notes the connection is not unlike those formed in dreams, this form of somatic compliance suggests an unexplainable, incurable fraction of the unconscious mind’s expression: in some cases, even upon exiting the body and engaging in abreaction, neuralgia is bound to remain.
This begs the question: if Freud suggests some people are trapped with their symptoms, despite an escaped repressed unconscious, what causes this malfunction? He clarifies this phenomena’s cause is “not the trifling psychical injury but the affect of fright,” meaning the lingering fear or anxiety surrounding the trauma-memory point is the dominant force at work (Freud 6). Therefore, the limits of Freud’s theory in regards to how one’s waking life and personal relationships can be affected by the repressed and expressed unconscious are boundless. One must make the argument that repressed content unintentionally escaping a subject (unlike intentional abreaction) can become a habitual method of expression. Specifically, if expression and repression are always occurring within a subject, one could source the cause of their neuroticisms, physical and those found in their character, directly back to the same mechanism censoring the dream wish. If leaving dream wishes unconfronted results in observable change in human behavior, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that personality, and as a result, one’s general philosophies and outlook on life can be intensely affected by the limitless ‘affect of fright.’
At its most uncontrollable, the power within the unconscious mind’s need to express itself can completely dominate a human being’s nature. This semi-hopeless framing of humanity is explored to a radical extent in the contemporary cult-classic Frownland (2007), an American indie film that, due to its disorienting and fairly unfamiliar thesis, was unable to acquire a distribution deal upon its initial release in the United States. The DVD’s back-cover describes it as “a pitch-black character study of Keith Sontag, a neurotic, manipulative, stridently unloveable New Yorker whose pitiless roommate aptly describes him, to his face, as ‘a burbling troll in his underwear.’” While this description might make the reader assume the film’s tone as being somewhere along the lines of shocking or unsentimental, what makes the protagonist an apt filmic example of a malfunctioning patient in Studies on Hysteria is writer/director Ronald Bronstein’s mise-en-scene, or lack of it. In spite of Keith’s (Dore Mann) unsocialized, abrasive manner of being, it’s a matter of principle to Bronstein that the aimless character be documented with a sensitivity to reality and an unwavering degree of patience. This is made possible by the crew’s minimal aesthetic approach: no filmic lighting, expository dialogue, or easygoing, audience-oriented edit.
The film follows Keith over the course of a week whereupon his relationship with teenage Laura (Mary Bronstein) is in the midst of imploding, his self-absorbed roommate Charles (Paul Grimstad) refuses to pay rent, and his only remaining semblance of a friend Sandy (David Sandholm) does everything he can to avoid interacting with him. A key moment in Keith’s arc shows him calling Sandy in the middle of the night to let him up to his apartment, thinking he might have left his nametage behind. Sandy searches around and, upon Keith suggesting he check under his stack of magazines, finds it. Though it’s never exactly proven, it becomes clear upon Keith’s later arrival to retrieve the object and subsequent attempt to socialize that the entire event was staged: Keith left the nametag under Sandy’s magazines on purpose, forcing his own presence upon Sandy who wants nothing to do with him, let alone in the comfort of his own home.
Frownland is entirely made up of scenes like this, where Keith’s social rejection, (which he’s very much aware of) regurgitates out of him into observable action: he’s stuck in a cycle of awkward interactions that are painful to watch, which he seemingly partakes in (for the most part) to prove to himself that he is needed. Bronstein’s thesis, however, is that Keith is not needed. To get an idea of his uncanny vision of a manic episode, Bronstein cites Frederick Wiseman, the infamous documentarian whose work (Titicut Follies, High School, Welfare) bluntly studied and resultingly exposed corruption within countless American institutions, as he and cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ key photographic influence. The visually grimy atmosphere this provides is directly in tune with Keith’s deranged persona. Bronstein describes his fixation with the not-so prototypical protagonist’s neuroticisms, explaining “I actively groped to puncture the way neurosis is commonly represented in movies....as something sort of attractive or… harmlessly nebbishy… which belies the sort of knee-jerk antipathy that real neurosis catalyzes in people who come into contact with it” (Bronstein). Frownland acts as a direct confrontation of a subject theoretically trapped within a perpetual state of shock, caused by the friction generated by his expressive and repressive instincts, and it implies a coinciding, neverending life of distress.
Like with any film, the viewer aims to root for and identify with the protagonist, but there is little content for one to latch onto that makes Keith’s actions and behaviors relatable. And when there is said content, Keith does something to offset the moment and completely lose any personal connection with the audience. A clear example of this occurs in the film’s only moment of introspection (if one can even call it that), when Bronstein drops the audience into the middle of Keith’s therapy session. Here, Keith’s therapist attempts to help him navigate a traumatic memory where he claims to have felt betrayal upon seeing his mother tear off his father’s toupee. Referring to his father’s absent hairline, Keith explains, “He gave me hope for the future,” followed by a demeaning chuckle from the therapist. They continue working through the memory, but Keith seems to not understand how therapy works: he answers follow up questions with an unsure tone, as if he were being quizzed for a test. It’s clear that even when engaging in abreaction, Keith is clueless as to how exploring himself can assist in his journey of self-betterment.
The fever-dream nature of Keith’s surroundings point to the idea that the reality he’s experiencing, presented as docu-fiction, parallels that of an attempt at recording the unconscious mind expressing itself, in the sense that the audience has a more objective view of the happenings in Keith’s life than Keith himself. To add to that point, the entire nature of cinema, arguably the closest audiovisual medium one has to compare to a real dream, parallels the expression/repression dynamic found in that of the film/filmmaker’s relationship, respectively. Especially in the case of Bronstein who, in an exchange with film scholar Ray Carney, wrote the following: “I put so much of myself...and the crummy discomfiture that I felt all through my 20's...into that character… to the point that i was originally going to play him myself” (Bronstein). One is thus reminded of the independent artist’s cliche mode of being, that expression in a work of art is a biological need in order for the artist to function on a daily basis. In the 5 years it took to make Frownland, Bronstein engaged in a lengthy, paradoxical form of abreaction that when taking his future role as co-writer/editor with Josh and Benny Safdie (Good Time, Uncut Gems) into account, one can assume the filmmaker’s neuralgia, like Keith’s, was destined to remain. Bronstein and Keith are bound to each other, and one can’t exist without the other.
If Frownland exists as a filmmaker’s expression propelled by the unconscious mind’s driving force (the affect of fear, according to Freud), one can view the film’s plot like an extension of the subject’s manifest content, a distortion (albeit consciously and intentionally constructed) of what’s inside. To the average viewer, what’s “inside” Bronstein may seem akin to a nightmare; the film’s climax comprises of a long take in which Keith projectile vomits, literally struggling and ultimately failing to contain himself. But that’s not where the film ends. Bronstein stages the film’s final moments on a rooftop the next morning, where Keith wakes up in a daze and stares out at the city, the sun blinding the camera as it rises. This one scene flips Bronstein’s initial thesis on its side, hinting that the fever dream may never end for Keith, but it’s at least not always a nightmare. While what’s expressed onscreen has been primarily self-effacing and torturous, bringing things down to a light simmer makes one wonder if Bronstein feels keen to protect Keith (and possibly himself) before rolling the credits. Keith’s latent content is unclear, like a subject’s would be in reality: there’s no way to trace the exact source of his neurotic malfunction. Trapped in a life of endless awful social interactions, Keith may very well not be needed by anyone, but at least in solitude, there is no one around to remind him that this is the dominating force in his life.
Sources
- Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, Basic Books.
- Freud, Sigmeund and Breuer, Josef. Studies on Hysteria, Basic Books.
- Bronstein, Ronald. Frownland (2007), Factory 25.
- Chaiken, Michael. “Au Hasard Frankenstein: An Oral History of Frownland,” Criterion Collection.
- Bronstein, Ronald and Carney, Ray. Letters 79, #9, people.bu.edu/rcarney