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Necrophilia/Structuralism
Alex Merced
POPC 480
1. What is Structuralism?
Structuralism is a model of thought that is unique in its analytical and non-evaluative approach to paraphrase a quote by Terry Eagleton quoted in John Storeys book, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. (Storey pg58) This is important to my studies cause it gives me the tools to ask questions beyond aesthetics, and let’s me analyze the implications of the text in an academic manner instead of just me trying to argue my taste.
Structuralism is a method I find particularly interesting and will be applying in this text later on, but first we must explain what structuralism actually is and its many evolutions. All forms of structuralism at their roots are influenced by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure introduces the idea of the signifier and the signified in his studies of linguistics. This idea of the meaning of words and things they describe being a relationship of convention is probably one of the most important ideas that went on to evolve into the later incarnations of structuralism, the other being the syntagmatic axis of language. One last idea by Saussure is the idea of langue and parole. Langue equals the structure of a language and parole refers to actual use of the language and how without one the other does not manifest itself. Claude Levi-Strauss is the next big thinker in the world of structuralism. He applies the idea of langue and parole to a new context other than language, culture. The most important part of Levis-Strauss use of Saussure’s idea is his application of it to myths. Levis-Strauss said that myths are the parole of a culture, describing the langue of a culture. (Storey Pg.61) In what is probably the most important idea to be used in this essay, Levis-Strauss states that myths tend to follow binary oppositions such as bad/good and life/death in their articulation of a cultures langue. Many other important minds have added to what is structuralism such as Will Wright and Roland Barthes, but in the contexts of this essay we’ll be focusing on the ideas of Saussure and Levis-Strauss.
2. Necrophilia in Film
Last week I went to the film theater and saw the film The Corpse Bride, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Although, for a film marketed towards kids something kind of troubled me about the film. The plot of the film is about when a young man named Victor who's to be wed accidentally proposes to a corpse and is accidentally wed to the corpse. Now while one may assume that the actual theme of necrophilia is downplayed in the film it’s pretty up front in scenes where his living fiancée visits the priest in town to question him on the sanctity of love between man and a corpse. It even gets even more prominent towards the end of the film when the dead rise for a marriage ceremony and many of them are reunited with their loved ones left behind, many of them spouses. I initially brushed all of this off till I noticed the plot of another film seemed to have a similar theme of the living falling in love with the dead wrapped in a light-hearted family film. This film, Just Like Heaven, is a about Reese Witherspoons character who is involved in a car accident and whose ghost haunts her old apartment. A guy then moves into her old apartment and the magic begins as he can see her ghost. Later on in the film, she is found to be in a coma (flashbacks of Ghostdad anyone?).
Now, while I found this to be a new phenomenon, after asking around I found that it’s not the first time necrophilia is dealt with in a film in humorous or lighthearted tones. A few classic examples are the films “Weekend at Bernie’s” and “Clerks” which both have actual fornication with the corpses in question during the films. Although there is one key difference between these films and the ones I brought up before: both of these films where marketed to a much older crowd. So why is that nowadays it’s perfectly ok for the kids to love the dead?
3. A Structuralist Analysis of the Corpse bride
Well, now that we’re all acquainted with methods of thought and the texts I’ll be referring to, let’s apply the work of Saussure and Levis-Strauss to understand where a film like the Corpse Bride comes from. The film is sum of two very important parts, the directing of Tim Burton, and it’s basis in Russian folklore.
On one hand Tim Burton, who is known for his very dark yet innocent films, directs the film. This brings us to our very first pair of binary oppositions: innocent/guilty and light/dark, which, I believe, share a very interesting bond. The bond I’m referring to is how light is automatically associated with innocent and dark with guilty. Strauss talks about how the binary oppositions help explain life, make it logical if you will. This is where I feel Tim Burton earns his success from being able to take these binaries and take what makes them logical and shatter them. In so many of Burton’s films he features very dark yet innocent central characters such as Edward Scissorshands, Jack Skeleton, and Victor from The Corpse Bride. It’s this ability to make them Dark and Innocent that makes these characters and films so endearing. So already one can argue when Tim Burton takes upon a dark subject like necrophilia, he can add a very innocent twist, which makes it much easier to swallow. This is very apparent in the film, especially with everyone’s reactions to a lot of the events in the film, such as Emily the Corpse Bride’s very child-like demeanor and denial (or delusion) that her new marriage was an accident. So I feel that Tim Burton’s involvement is a strong part of what made the Corpse Bride’s controversial themes so accessible to the youngest of audiences.
The other half of the formula that became this film is its basis in Russian folklore. I first read about this base in folklore in a preview to the film written by Jim Slotek of Tribute.ca. (Slotek) Slotek mentions that the Corpse Bride is based on a 19th century Russian folktale about rampant anti-Semitism and how because of it Jewish brides would often get killed after their wedding ceremonies. Once again returning to Levis-Strauss application of the ideas of langue and parole to myths, Levis-Strauss said that myths are the parole to a culture’s langue. In other words, the myth of corpse bride can help explain the system of culture of 19th century Russia through binary oppositions. Now the most obvious opposition you can pick up on from the mention of anti-Semitism is the Jewish/non-Jewish opposition. So while this folktale was more of a ghost story told to keep Jewish brides wary of their fates, Tim Burton’s portrayal of the myth could be seen as more pro-Jewish since the bride returns to act revenge on her murderer. Now this difference between the original myth and its current retelling can really show the difference in the langue of 19th century Russia and present day America.
So with our Structuralist monocles we’ve analyzed the producer and a text from which the producer developed the filmic text. We still have a pair of important things to analyze to really get at this from all sides. We must analyze the text itself and the consumption of the text and hopefully at the end of this analytical journey we will be closer to understanding the Necrophilia undertones in films like The Corpse Bride and Just Like Heaven.
Now you might assume that in a film like The Corpse Bride the reoccurring themes would be something along the lines of love survives death, but this is definitely not the case. What does appear to be the theme of the film is a continual insecurity about commitment, mainly in the form of marriage. This is what is constantly Victor’s dilemma in the film, not so much that he’s in the netherworld or that he is married to a corpse. So actually looking at the film the focus isn’t on anti-Semitism, darkness, necrophilia, the film is about the pre-marriage jitters. From Victor’s initial jitters to meeting his fiancée Victoria to his shock when he learns that he is married to Emily the Corpse the film keeps finding way to keep Victor insecure until the end when he matures and gladly marries Victoria. This insecurity/security opposition persistent in the film is easily applicable to the langue of today’s America. This is a common theme in films of all types, such as “The Runaway bride” or “The Sweetest Thing”. Plus it’s apparent in today’s society when people are getting married older and older, and divorce has become more accepted in our society, people are just afraid of commitment. On top of this what commitment could be scarier than an eternal commitment to a corpse?
Although while those were the themes that ran through the text itself, it’s not quite exactly how I as the consumer consumed the text. While Structuralism focuses mainly on the underlying structures of a text, I feel it’s important to understand and analyze the reactions of the consumer. By analyzing reactions from a consumer, I feel it only helps reflect cause and effect of the underlying structures of the text. Going back to an idea by Saussure that I briefly touched upon, the Syntagmatic axis of language. To elaborate on this idea, Saussure is saying that meaning is only a sum of its signifiers. (Storey pg.60) So in a linguistic example, the phrase “I am” has a different meaning than “I am tall” does due to the addition of its parts, and what it ends up signifying. To apply this idea to reading a text, the producer and the texts are just the parts, and the consumption of this is the period at the end of phrase to signify a compounding of signifiers present in both. So what I’m saying is my decoding of the Corpse Bride is result of sum of its parts, based on the idea of syntagmatic axis of language, which I am now applying to culture. Now that we establish that, what did I think of the film?
I mentioned before that I thought the film had strong Necrophiliac undertones. Given this is what I got from the film, what does this say about me, what does this say about society? When I picked up on these undertones, I felt it was something to inappropriate for a young crowd. There were many things in the film that could have been seen as inappropriate such as murder, or the lack of autonomy from forced marriage but these ideas didn’t strike the same chord with me. It could be argued that such things are apparently not as taboo in our culture as Necrophilia, which I think is a conclusion most people would agree with. So going back to binary oppositions, one could say the binary opposition being violated here is the opposition of life/death. This opposition could explain all sorts of fears and taboos such as our fears of death, the fear we get from ghost stories, or the taboo of necrophilia. Akop Nazaretyan put this pretty interestingly in an article for the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. (Nazaretyan) Akop talks about how the death returning is the most ancient of irrational fears, and the fear of the dead returning for revenge still is feared in today’s society. This fear manifests itself in many manners, but in the end it’s part of the fabric of our culture, so when someone violates this fear of death of course it’s going to turn some heads. This film does break this binary wall, with its revenge by the dead being portrayed as a good thing. This could arguably be what made “Ghost” such an interesting film, a film that also had bizarre lesbian and necrophiliac undertones, but again that film was targeted to a much older audience. So despite everything that is going on in the film I focus on the parts of the film that most severely challenge the binary oppositions with which I was socialized.
So we’ve torn this move apart from all angles. We’ve applied the ideas of Saussure and Levis-Strauss to four very important parts of a text. The Pre-Consumption of the text, which includes the producer and former works of the producer, this also includes any outside texts from which the producer might have derived material. By analyzing the producer and the derived texts you can understand the structure of old cultures and understand the implications put in the text by the producer. Then we analyzed the aspects of consumption, which are the text and the audience reaction. Analyzing the texts helps understand what life the text took on its own, and the audience reaction tells about current cultures and societies by studying the signifier (the text) and the signified (what the text signifies i.e. “Mans Best friend” signifies a ”Dog”) and what it said about a culture’s structure. So we’ve done all this and while The Corpse Bride proved to be an interesting and complex film, can we tell why films like The Corpse Bride and Just Like Heaven are being marketed towards younger children? While I am able to determine why I would feel these films might be inappropriate for kids I don’t feel the Structuralist point of view gives me the adequate information for the marketing of a film, and without getting a kids reaction to run a model of syntagmatic axis on language I can’t really determine what it is that kids get from the film and what that could say about today’s children. What I have been able to get at is the binary opposition that makes our structure of culture by analyzing the film, which is a invaluable tool in going the next step with ethnographic research to further explore the implications of this film.
Works Cited
Story, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An introduction.
Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Nazaretyan, Akop P. "Fear of the Dead as a Factor in Social Self-
Organization." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour Vol. 35
Issue 2 (Jun2005): p155-169.
Slotek, Jim. "Preview: Tim Burtons Corpse Bride – A Life and Death
Situation." Tribute.ca. Uknown. Tribute.ca. Wednesday, August 24,
2005 1:33:23 PM
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