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The Angel with a Filthy Soul and the Underpinnings of Fascism In the first scene of Home Alone, the viewer is presented with a society in decay: a house echoes with the chaos of an untamed mob with the only apparent authority figure, a police officer, standing alone unable to exert control or garner attention. The crowd is utterly leaderless, and liberal society has yet to provide a suitable individual capable of directing the mass. It is no mistake that the police officer is later revealed to be an imposter, a common criminal, as the director Chris Columbus is making the heavy handed assertion that the liberal status quo is corrupted to its very core. In fact the truly insidious nature of Columbus' message is revealed, through a careful study of the film's symbolic hero's journey of Matthijs Krul's character within the lens of Theodor Adorno's Freudian interpretation, to be nothing more than sophisticated fascist propaganda. While the protagonist's fiercely individualistic spirit might seem to imply a purely liberal tendency at first, it only serves as a bridge to radicalize a liberal American audience into sympathizing with a fascist figurehead. Adorno writes that: quote:"One of the basic devices of personalized fascist propaganda is the concept of the ‘great little man’, a person who suggests both omnipotence and the idea that he is just one of the folks, a plain, red-blooded American, untainted by material or spiritual wealth." quote:“the members of contemporary masses are at least prima facie individuals, the children of a liberal, competitive and individualistic society, and conditioned to maintain themselves as independent, self-sustaining units; they are continuously admonished to be ‘rugged’ and warned against surrender.” The hero’s reasonable reaction to the crass hypocrisies of the society in which he finds himself suddenly removed from manifests in deeply narcissistic acts. This is fully intentional. In order for the audience to personify M. Krul as their will, they must make a narcissistic idenfitication. Adorno writes that, “In order to allow narcissistic identification, the leader has to appear himself as absolutely narcissistic, and it is from this insight that Freud derives the portrait of the ‘primal father of the horde’ which might as well be Hitler’s.” Like Hitler, the hero of Home Alone is now consumed by thoughts of self. There is no doubt that his incessant conversations with himself serve this purpose. He is newly freed and wild in a state of nature, free from the constraints of liberal society. M. Krul’s libido runs amok in the second act of the film. Freud tells us that: quote:Even today, the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterly nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent … He need only possess the typical qualities of the individuals concerned in a particularly clearly marked and pure form, and need only give an impression of greater force and of more freedom of libido. However, Adorno qualifies this statement with the way it is used by fascist propaganda, “Even the fascist leader’s startling symptoms of inferiority, his resemblance to ham actors and asocial psychopaths, is thus anticipated in Freud’s theory.” The “startling symptoms of inferiority” take the clearest manifestation during M. Krul’s bouts of fear. Columbus clearly utilizes the symbol and illusion of the menacing furnace in the basement to represent this flaw. And ‘fear’ is certainly the main theme of flaw that he possesses. But like most fascist propaganda, it is an obstacle he eventually surmounts in order to show his omniscience. A closer examination on how he overcomes this fear is warranted as it gets at the heart of Columbus’ fascist ideal. The overburdening ‘fear’ that M. Krul experiences is one for the ‘Other’, and it is, as Adorno claims, “the essence of the ‘sheep and goat’ device employed by all fascist demagogues. Since they do not recognize any spiritual criterion in regard to who is chosen and who is rejected, they substitute a pseudo-natural criterion such as the race”. In Home Alone and Columbus’ ideology, the pseudo-natural criterion that separates the sheep from the goats is religion. This delineation is quite ingeniously designated through the use of religious symbols within the movie. The first example of this phenomenon is upon the hero’s viewing of the film “The Angel with a Filthy Soul”. The film-within-the-film portrays the violence inherent in fascist ideology but within religious and useful terms that justify the violence. He uses the ‘angelic’ film to order pizza and to momentarily scare away the two criminals hounding him. The Church also figures prominently in Home Alone as an institution that brings order and structure. When M. Krul decides to hide in the nativity scene to escape the burglars, they refuse to consider to even getting near to the Church. The implication is that they are godless, goats, the “Other”. On the other hand, the first apparent ‘goat’ of the film, Old Man Murphy, is instantly re-accepted into the fascist society the moment M. Krul sees him within the institution of the Church. The Old Man even brandishes a bloodied hand, an apparently meaningless insertion into the film until you consider the character within the confines of a Jesus-like figure presenting a stigmata. Freud quite rightly believes that: quote:“Therefore, so religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it. Fundamentally, indeed, every religion is in this same way a religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.” Columbus has created an intensely perverse and ingeniously subtle example of fascist propaganda. It mercilessly attacks the liberal status quo and, quite unsettling, attempts to grab the unconscious mind of its target demographic – children – through the use of fascist symbols and metaphors. But by using the teachings of Freud and Adorno, this sophomoric effort by Columbus to warp the minds of our kids into fascist demagogues can be explained and ultimately defused.
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Jan 19, 2011 10:16
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:08 |
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