Seeing, Sensing, Saying: Holding Patterns in the Homesman (2014)

Seeing, Sensing, Saying: Holding Patterns in The Homesman (2014) Scott Krzych Intertexts, Volume 21, Issues 1-2, Spring-Fall 2017, pp. 67-88 (Article) Published by University of Nebraska Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/itx.2017.0003 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/721366 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Seeing, Sensing, Saying Holding Patt erns in The Homesman (2014) sCOTT KRZYCH As we well know, early psychoanalytic fi lm theorists sought to draw attention to the deceptive quality of cinematic narratives and their corre- sponding images. Authors from Jean- Louis Baudry to Christian Metz to Laura Mulvey, among many others, relied on a range of psychoanalytic concepts, fi rst, to identify how the cinematic screen seduces viewers with fantasmatic lures, and, second, to conceive alternative paths that might rescue viewers from the lies projected before them. More recently, how- ever, Lacanian thinkers have off ered a revised— and signifi cantly more complex— account of cinematic spectatorship and its relation to fantasy. As Todd McGowan has argued, for instance, deception does not always inhibit the truth but rather may function as the very fi ctive means by which truth, as such, becomes accessible to speaking beings in the fi rst place. “When we lie,” McGowan writes, “we create a distinction between how we appear to others and how we appear to ourselves, and we thereby establish an interior space of freedom from the demands of the external world. In this way, lying functions as an assertion of one’s subjectivity.”1 In the essay that follows, I similarly contend that fantasy may provide the means for a subject’s access to freedom and that cinematic style can off er precise formulations to illustrate and enact this curious feature of subjectivity. More specifi cally, and rather than taking for granted the function of fantasy— as if the experience of self- deception is a given or a capacity possessed by any and all subjects— I want to consider how the very capacity for fantasy may emerge through the creative exchanges 68 intertexts 21.1–2 · spring–fall 2017 Fig. 1. that occasionally occur between subjects and thereby provide the posi- tive means for intersubjective care. Before going further, let me draw from a relatively recognizable cinematic example to off er a point of clarifi cation in advance. In an iconic shot from Unforgiven (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992), William Munny (Eastwood) sits behind Delilah (Annah Th omson) and lies to her (Figure 1). She has just off ered him a “free one”; that is, she has volunteered her body to him at no charge as an advance on the bounty she and her fellow prostitutes have off ered to avenge her assault at the hands of a drunken cowboy earlier in the fi lm. Munny declines, but he realizes immediately that his refusal comes at an emotional cost for Delilah, who suspects he is repulsed by the conspicuous scars on her face in the aft ermath of the assault. Positioned in a manner not unlike an analytic setting, Munny off ers an explanation: “I can’t on account of my wife . She’s watching over my young ones.” Th e story he tells has its intended eff ect: Delilah is relieved to learn his abstinence is not a rejection of her but an act of loyalty to his wife. At the same time, the cinematic audience realizes that Munny’s ges- ture of matrimonial commitment is metaphorical; his wife died several years ago, and his reference to her “watching over” his children carries a generically religious connotation of the dead looking down on the living from heaven. To be sure, Munny’s lie works in the service of intersubjective care— it makes Delilah feel better— but it likewise maintains the Krzych: Seeing, Sensing, Saying 69 Fig. 2. deceiver in a privileged place of authority. In other words, Delilah recov- ers emotionally from the perceived rejection but only because her ego receives validation from an outside source. Unforgiven, like several other contemporary fi lms directed by Eastwood, positions the white mascu- line hero as the only character with the strength to hold the emotional excesses of the characters around them.2 Here, even though the lie is off ered with the intent to mend the woman’s wounds, and perhaps even does so immediately, it also maintains the status quo of the intersubjective hierarchy, preserving the established power dynamic; the character positioned in the place of the analyst remains the (only) one able to appropriate the creative power of the signifi er. In other words, fantasy, as it is deployed here, preserves the status quo, maintains a safe distance between subjects, and thereby lacks the more radical potential of a deception that calls attention to the inherently fantasmatic qualities of all communication (as suggested by McGowan). In another contemporary Western fi lm, one that concerns me for the remainder of this essay, Th e Homesman (Dir. Tommy Lee Jones, 2014), an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout, we fi nd a diff erent and more properly Lacanian account of the construction of fantasy, particularly fantasy as something shared, and even constituted, between subjects. More specifi cally, throughout Th e Homesman we fi nd that a capacity for fantasy emerges from a transference relation between its primary characters, that is, from intimate exchanges between people 70 intertexts 21.1–2 · spring–fall 2017 productive of eventual psychic change. As we will see, the staging of fantasy in the fi lm, rather than preserving the status quo and maintaining existing social relations, instead introduces just enough ambiguity into the characters’ image of self and world to promote the possibility for something new to emerge in response. Fantasy, Mise- en- scène, and Missing Affects Th e confl ict of Th e Homesman centers on the mental breakdowns of three women living through impossibly harsh circumstances in the Ne- braska territory. Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank), who lives and works her farm by herself (Figure 2), volunteers to transport the women via horse- drawn wagon across barren landscape to a church in Iowa where the women can receive appropriate care. Th ough Mary Bee is resolute in her commitment to these women and their survival, she is also clear- ly taxed by the diffi culty of the journey, by the horrors she encounters along the way, and by her struggle to fi nd a companion with whom she can share her burdens. In the fi lm’s opening moments, we fi nd Mary Bee farming a dry plot of land. Her life is a struggle, but she is surviving well enough on her own. She does not need a husband; nevertheless, she wants a husband, but not because she maintains a romantic ideal or commitment to the institution of marriage as such. Rather, in her eminent pragmatism, she recognizes the material benefi ts such a partnership could bring— a shared work- load, combined resources, possible off spring, and so on. In the fi rst of what will be two failed marriage proposals made by Mary Bee throughout the narrative, she interrupts a meal she has prepared for her younger neighbor, Bob Giffi n (Evan Jones), with an abrupt, rhetorical question: “Why not marry?” As she goes on to explain, she can think of no reasons against their marriage as she sees it: “Land, animals, implements, lives— the whole ball of wax. We could use my capital and knowhow to improve your claim and mine. And if the union produces children, then so much the better. Looked at from any angle, it works” (emphasis added). As it turns out, though, there is at least one other angle from which to judge the speculative picture Mary Bee attempts to paint. Bob refuses her off er, Krzych: Seeing, Sensing, Saying 71 Fig. 3. explaining his intention to “go back East” in search of a more suitable, or desirable, wife. Mary Bee fails to align Bob’s vision of his future with hers. Impor- tantly, this failure marks a divergence on the characters’ part concerning their aff ective connection to the domestic mise- en- scène. Prior to her proposal of marriage, Mary Bee cooks for Bob an elaborate meal of fried chicken and peach pie; she ends the meal with entertainment, “playing” the piano and singing for her companion (who nods off to sleep during the performance). Lacking an actual piano, Mary Bee fi ngers an embroi- dered cloth mat she has laid on a table to simulate where a piano might eventually be placed (Figure 3). Nevertheless, the evening’s simulation of domestic tranquility, like the absent piano, will continue to lack its most important object— the husband for whom Mary Bee constructs the con- jugal mise- en- scène in the fi rst place. Her image of the future, though appropriately described and eff ectively simulated, nevertheless fails in its intended goal. Bob cannot picture himself in the scene she has arranged for him. On its face, this early scene from Th e Homesman provides a helpful illustration of fantasy, particularly as the concept has been developed and applied in psychoanalytic fi lm criticism. In Elizabeth Cowie’s early and infl uential account, fantasy should not be understood simply as wish- fulfi llment by which a subject imagines the solution to a problem. 72 intertexts 21.1–2 · spring–fall 2017 Instead, fantasy concerns a certain (re)staging of a problem in a manner that imaginatively reconstructs the world surrounding the subject while also leaving the subject relatively intact.

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