Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

seething excitations” and adds that “the ego seeks to bring the influence of the external
world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to substitute the reality
principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id” (Freud 1965:73).
The radioactive material contained in the box of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, and
which Veda (Maxine Cooper) has dubbed “the great whatsit”, describes perfectly this
Freudian notion of the ego overlapping the id in an attempt to cleanse the “reality
principle” (a concept which describes how the ego functions) and re-establish the balance.
In fact, “the nether world” of the film becomes a totally destroyed place, reduced to
radioactive ashes at the end.
The unconscious territory of the noir male protagonists is often put to the test, when
they find that there is no turning back in their lives after having encountered a femme
fatale, almost as though she symbolises the materialisation to consciousness of lethal
weaknesses (the ignoring of the “reality principle”) and often to their counterparts’
destruction (if not physical, then at least in terms of the depths of the psyche). In this
nether region, “the dark, inaccessible part of our personality,” the id “knows no judgement
of value: no good and evil, no morality.” Again, the (male) ego, partly composed of the id,
is responsive to all sorts of (dangerous) stimuli from this noir external world (frequently
populated by a femme fatale), in which it is hard for him to recognise that the primitive
unconscious also knows no negotiations and no “idea of time” (Freud 1965:73-6).
There is a key passage in an article by Laurence Miller on Aldrich’s Kiss Me
Deadly which I believe is worth quoting at length on the issue of Freudian symbols:
In support of his interpretation, [Robert] Lang believed the switchblade knife that
Paul Richards attacks Hammer with and the cigarettes that Hammer smokes are
important Freudian symbols. The knife is part of a “disguised homosexual fantasy,
a sadomasochistic scene in which Hammer is out cruising for a homosexual
encounter – expressed here in violent form by the knife (…) that can be extended
and retracted.” The cigarette occupies the “privileged status” as “phallic signifier,”
which is accounted for by “Hammer’s compulsion to assert his masculine self.”
Further, “One cannot give or receive a kiss when one has a cigarette in one’s
mouth. This is one of the reasons why Hammer smokes. The implications of a kiss
are too deadly for him, and that is why in the film his kisses ‘lie.’” And, “in
moments of doubt, when Hammer must concede to Pat’s legal / moral authority,
Hammer reaches into Pat’s breast pocket for a cigarette – a phallic substitute for
surrender, in a context of affection / identification that cannot be expressed in any
other way” (Miller 1989:69).
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