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U75108 UNDERSTANDING CULTURE (2019-20)
Assignment 2: Essay
Name Lavinia Ricciardelli Student Number 19029259
Key Concepts Psychoanalysis: Oppressed instincts,
dreams, neurosis, the human psyche
From
Week
Cultural Artefact, Activity or Event “Annie Hall” directed by Woody Allen (1977)
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Assessment Criteria: Essay
Grade Research Writing Skills Comprehension Application
A+ (75-
At least 5 academic texts utilised Excellent writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Outstanding knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Original application of ideas and concepts to culture A (70- 74%) At least 5 academic texts utilised Excellent writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Excellent knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Excellent application of ideas and concepts to culture B+ (65- 69%) At least 4 academic texts utilised Very good writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Very good knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Very good application of ideas and concepts to culture B (60- 64%) At least 4 academic texts utilised Very good writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Very good knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Very good application of ideas and concepts to culture C+ (55- 59%) At least 3 academic texts utilised Good writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Good knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Good application of ideas and concepts to culture C (50- 54%) At least 3 academic texts utilised Good writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Good knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Good application of ideas and concepts to culture D+ (45- 49%) At least 2 academic texts utilised Fair writing style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and referencing Fair knowledge and understanding of ideas and concepts Fair application of ideas and concepts to culture D (40- 44%) At least 1 academic text utilised Fair writing style, grammar, Fair knowledge and understanding Fair application of ideas and
tries to understand the author’s latent meanings and the unconscious desires that he
tried to express in this movie. “ Annie Hall ” can be considered author-centred as
Woody Allen through it shared with us his deepest fears, desires and fantasies,
making it possible for us to consider this movie as strictly linked to Freud’s theories
and perspective of life. Through the scenes we will find mentions of sexual instincts
and desires, we will find the fear of death and the impossibility to fully express
ourselves in social contexts because we have to repress and hide everything that is
not considered socially accepted, and all these themes make Allen a Freud’s
follower.
Woody Allen is an actor, film director and comedian endowed with humour and
deeply influenced by psychoanalysis, he appeared in many of his films and they are
often inspired by his personal life. He is known for projecting his unconscious in his
films, for creating characters that have the same fears as he has, for recognizing his
weaknesses and being perfectly able to describe them in his films. He represents the
impact of psychoanalysis on American cinema, mainly because he has undergone
psychoanalytic treatment for 36 years (Cheniaux and Landeira-Fernandez
2013;101), he devoted his life to the study of Freud and his movies show his
psychoanalytic journey. When watching one of Allen’s movies, what actually makes
the audience laugh while being at the same time philosophically committed to some
ideas of psychoanalysis, is the fact that Allen makes his protagonists weak, he
reveals their fears and sorrows to us, making them humans, and making the
neurosis the root of comedy. In his book “ Jokes and their relation to the
unconscious ” (1905), Freud claimed that our humor is moved by the same
mechanism of expression of dreams: they both reveals something unknown, hidden,
allowing us to get to know parts of the individual such as sexuality, aggressiveness
and other instincts that are normally repressed. The liberation of this psychic energy
that was previously hidden is what makes us laugh (Freud 1905:116). This theory is
used by Allen in his movies, especially when considering Annie Hall (1977), when
the film director presents us the main character, Alvy Singer: a comedian in his
forties who lives in New York and got divorced several times, he is jewish, openly
neurotic and he has been seeing a psychoanalyst for fifteen years without result. At
the beginning of the film, Alvy expressed his pessimistic view on life, claiming that it
can only be horrible (Cheniaux and Landeira-Fernandez 2013;101). Over the years,
Allen elaborated this unique character of this insecure, fragile man, an intellectual
obsessed with death and diseases, frustrated with a thousand hidden complexes
and not able to keep a relationship with a woman, and all these characteristics make
Allen’s comedy unique.
The film starts with Alvy examining the reasons why the relationship with Annie has
failed; the protagonist talks directly to the audience, as if the viewers were his
psychoanalyst. As he wonders why they didn’t work out as a couple, he goes back to
his childhood, trying to understand the origin of his problems. Just like Freud, Woody
Allen recognizes the importance of childhood as a formation period that can
influence our whole life. Freud’s theories about infantile sexuality can be applied to
the opening scene of the movie, when Alvy remembers his childhood as unhappy, he
had a strict religious upbringing and a rigorous education from his cold, insensitive
mother and his teachers. Alvy was precocious enough to kiss a girl in his elementary
classroom, and everyone told him it was not normal to have sexual instincts at such
a young age. From a Freudian perspective, we could say that Alvy skipped the
phase of the latency period, during which the child’s precocious sexual instincts
should decrease in order to be able to regulate and control sexual instincts during
our adolescence (Badcock 1992;11).
1019 words
Bibliography:
Annie Hall (1977) [film] directed by Woody Allen, dir. USA: Joffe
Productions and Sony Pictures Entertainment
Badcock, Christopher. (1992). Essential Freud: An Introduction to
Classical Psychoanalysis (Second Ed.). 10.13140/RG.2.1.3874.3129.
Cheniaux, E. and Landeira-Fernandez, J. (2013) “Understanding
Mental Disorders through Woody Allen's Films,” 35(1), pp. 101–
Freud, S. (1990) The Interpretation of Dreams. Oxford University
Press (Oxford world's classics)
Freud, S (1905) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. New
York: Norton - The Standard Edition
Storey, J. (2018) Cultural theory and popular culture : an introduction.
Eighth edn. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
