Freudian Script: Silent Sex, Repressed Requests, and the Abetting Audience in Mulholland Drive

Image by Millie Dworkin.

by Millie Dworkin

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive prods the viewer with an analogous query: if no one views a performance, does the story still go on? Lynch puts on a masterclass in bringing about unheimlichkeit in Mulholland Drive, but it can be difficult to distinguish specifically what makes the film uncanny. Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny provides us the language to discuss the elements that contribute to the uncomfortable atmosphere of Mulholland Drive. Freud suggests that “we are not supposed to be looking on at the products of a madman’s imagination…and yet this knowledge does not lessen the impression of uncanniness in the least degree” (Freud, 230). The audience recognizes that what we are seeing is not real, but that does not stop it from being uncanny. Throughout Mulholland Drive, the audience chooses to sit through the uncanniness of narcissistic sexual fantasies, wish fulfillment, silence, and the discomfort of questioning reality and fantasy. Not only is the viewer experiencing the film, but they are an active participant in a conversation with David Lynch.

For this argument, we must adopt an explanation for how Diane, the washed-up actress who apparently murdered her ex-lover, relates to Betty, the starry-eyed actress who is trying to make her name in Hollywood. In “Cinematic Ideas, on David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive,” Robert Sinnerbrink presents a commonly accepted synopsis of the film: 

The greater part of Mulholland Drive seems to be an extended ‘dream/fantasy sequence’ that occupies around two-thirds of the film. In the final third we see a version of the ‘real events’ that led Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) to arrange the murder of her former lover Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring), an event culminating in Diane’s psychotic breakdown and (possible) suicide. This is the way many critics approach the film (Sinnerbrink, 2005). 

This interpretation gives us a concrete foundation for arguing that Betty, Diane’s fantastical projection of herself, has “sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind” (Freud, 235): Betty is the “double” of Diane and is the egotistical manifestation of Diane’s “repressed desires” (Freud, 245), whereas Rita, the mysterious amnesiac, is a “’double…’an energetic denial of death’” (Freud, 235) of Camilla, the real movie star. Therefore, the interpretation of the film that Sinnerbrink describes has an inherently uncanny arc, because we see “the uncanny associated with the omnipotence of thoughts, with the prompt fulfillment of wishes, … and the return of the dead” (Freud, 247). However, the argument is not whether Mulholland Drive is uncanny, but rather how uncanniness manifests itself in the film. 

A prominent instance of uncanniness in Mulholland Drive is the depiction of sex. The first sexual encounter occurs right after Betty transforms Rita into a double of herself by putting on a wig that copies Betty’s hair and mimicking the makeup to appear more like Betty. Betty says to Rita “You don’t have to wear that [wig] in the house,” and Rita replies: “Oh, I was just looking at myself,” drawing attention to the fact that Rita, who has just been made to look like Betty, is looking at ‘herself.’ This ominous quote subtly sneaks in doubt as to whether “herself” represents Rita or Betty. Film analyst Murat Akser asserts in “Memory, Identity, and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive,” “Diane forms a false narcissistic unity with Camilla … This narcissism finds its ultimate expression when Betty takes Rita to bed, looks directly at her (as if to a mirror) and says: “I am in love with you”” (Akser, 71). Diane’s narcissism is being projected into her dreams and is influencing not only her perception of Camilla, but the viewer’s as well. However, Diane is not just projecting an excess of narcissistic eroticism onto her idea of Camilla, she also “projects an unwanted aspect of her self, naiveté and easy manipulation” (Akser, 65). Although Akser speaks of projection, he refuses to acknowledge Freud’s interpretation of a projection, i.e., a double. Akser’s refusal to acknowledge Freud in a paper about psychoanalysis is at the very least an oversight, but more accurately a failure to view Mulholland Drive psychoanalytically.  

If Akser were to analyze this sex scene through a distinctly Freudian lens, he might draw the conclusion that the sexual obsessiveness with the breast correlates to Freud’s idea of the oral psychosexual stage which occurs from birth to a year and a half. Coincidentally, this is also when Freud claims that narcissism develops to preserve the ego. This narcissism presents itself with insecurity in a comparative lens where Diane’s body is seen as a sexual object to be desired, while also being shown in direct comparison to the body she envies.  This clashing of positive and negative projection simulates cognitive dissonance for the sex in this scene as the narcissistic and insecure projection collide in the fantasy. This cognitive dissonance creates an uncanny atmosphere for the viewer as they struggle to explain how this seemingly consensual and romantic sex scene feels uncomfortable and vulnerable.  

The sex itself feels strange because Rita looks at Betty for 4 minutes straight in the scene, and the only time she breaks her gaze from Betty is to look down at herself or in the mirror. Betty and Rita’s sexual arousal from this scene relies on the “fixation on a premature sexual part, the breast. As soon as Betty and Rita fall in love and have sex, they start touching each other’s breasts, enjoying the experience” (Akser, 66).  Many shots glide back and forth comparing Betty to Rita, and, in retrospect, Diane’s feelings of inferiority are infiltrating her utopian fantasy, showing to the audience it is truly a utopia: no place. The shot selection of this scene bifurcates the audience to view Betty and Rita’s breasts in direct comparison to one another, showing Diane’s sense of inferiority to Camilla and need for comparison in the fantasy. Betty professes her love to Rita twice in this sequence; given that Rita has just been remade in the image of Betty, this is the manifestation of the ego projecting narcissistic love and not an admission of love towards Rita. Instead of a sex scene, this scene is masturbatory due to “the fact that the subject identifies [her]self with someone else, …or substitutes the extraneous self for [her] own” (Freud, 234). Retrospectively, this scene is narcissistic because Diane is masturbating to the idea of herself having sex with someone who is made to look like herself. This narcissistic projection of the ego reflects the infantility of Diane which Freud suggests appears at the same time as oral fixation.  

In the second sex scene—now a memory—Diane is shot in the upper two thirds of the frame as opposed to the first sex scene where they meet in the middle of the frame. These framing techniques corroborate the sexual dynamics of their respective scenes: equality in the first, and dominance in the second. She attempts to imagine herself having sex—with someone who is, in essence, a copy she projected of herself— “to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality” (Freud, 240). In her fantasy, the vaginal sex she is imagining is denied, leaving Diane sexually frustrated. The result is again an uncanny sex scene that functions as a reminder of “all the unfulfilled…futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy” (Freud, 236). The unfulfilled vaginal sex could be interpreted as the “neurotic delusion of inferiority” (Freud, 193), which Freud suggests is “completely compatible with the existence of a self-overvaluation” (Freud, 193) and is visible through Diane’s projection of her sexuality being an object of Camilla’s desire (self-overvaluation) and Camilla’s refusal of it (delusion of inferiority). Their relationship is over and only after this realization does Diane finally masturbate in a more literal sense of the word. However, this act feels forced and hateful due to her sobbing and facial expressions. The camera shifts in and out of focus, showing that Diane is no longer able to conjure up a fantasy to masturbate towards. She is left to wallow in sadness, and it feels discomforting to the audience because the viewer realizes that her “unrestricted narcissism” (Freud, 240) “has caused the ego to project that material outward as something foreign to itself” (Freud, 236). She has become so disconnected from the fantasy she first imagined that she is mentally unable to reenter that fantasy world. However, this does not only apply to Diane: the viewer who is complicit in Diane’s fantasy is also unable to return to the fantasy. We are stuck with Diane and her narcissism as she angrily masturbates before the phone rings, reminding Diane of the night she wished to have Camilla killed.   

Having Camilla killed was a crime of passion that manifested itself as wish fulfillment. Diane was so hurt by the engagement of Camilla and Adam that she wished for her death. Diane is noticeably disconnected from the death of Camilla, not seeing Camilla’s body, but only a blue key to signify her death; she asks for Camilla’s death, and her wish seems to be granted, apparently without any second thought. Freud suggests that this immediate wish fulfillment gives us “a feeling of the uncanny; … ‘So, after all, it is true that one can kill a person by the mere wish!’” (Freud, 248). Diane’s fantasy is broken by the realization that her wishes had consequences and that her wishes were a result of her naïve delusions and her narcissistic over-valuation. She yearned for a perfect relationship with Camilla, and when it fell apart, she wished that no one else could have that kind of relationship. Diane fears the consequences of her own action and is still haunted by her decision; she perhaps fears “the old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his new life with him” (Freud, 242). The audience, who is now isolated within the twisted fantasy of Diane, also feels this fear. When Diane takes her own life, the only other participant left in this fantasy is the viewer: the only constant throughout the film.  

 Mulholland Drive forces the audience to question who is real, or in a phrase, the audience “’doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive’” (Freud, 226). In the first diner scene we see the clear shot of the breakfast on the table, and then in the successive shot we see the coffee cups turned over, suggesting that the two men were not there at all. In the alleyway with Dan, we witness with “the uncanny effect of epileptic fits” (Freud, 226). In both these sequences, we see Lynch’s ability to craft an uncanny atmosphere “in such a way that [one’s] attention is not focused directly upon [one’s] uncertainty, so that [one] may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately” (Freud, 227). It is no profound statement to posit that Mulholland Drive is uncanny, but what an average viewer might not realize is that Lynch plays on this intrinsically uncanny value to make the viewer question everything at every turn. The viewer must question the mafia plot, the ghostly cowboy, and finally Rita/Camilla and her seemingly subsequential death.  

In The Uncanny, Freud quotes German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch: ‘In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton” (Freud, 227). Although the viewer may not necessarily think that the characters in Mulholland Drive are automata, Rita’s actions do seem to possess Hoffmannian similarities: her lingering gazes, her seeming aphasia after the accident, and the scenes she is dressed up in wigs and dresses.  Rita seems to occupy a similar relation to Diane as Olympia does to Nathaniel in “The Sand Man”: “Olympia is, as it were, a dissociated complex of Nathaniel’s which confronts him as a person, and Nathaniel’s enslavement to this complex is expressed in his senseless obsessive love for Olympia” (Freud, 232). Rita appears to be a “dissociated complex” of Diane’s “overvaluation of [her] own mental processes” and her rampant narcissism manifests in Rita’s automaton-like ambiance.  However, the viewer may not linger on this uncanniness and thus it floats in the atmosphere. The moment we begin to question whether or not “il n’y a pas d’orchestre,” a trumpet diverts our attention to a different tune. When the smoke clears and the silence falls over the audience, the viewer is left to question if what we saw “is an illusion” and we are left to wallow in our own silence. 

Although the dialogue in Mulholland Drive may be one of the first instances of uncanniness a viewer might ascribe to the film, it is more the absence of dialogue, or dialogical silence, that contributes to the ominous feeling of Mulholland Drive. Throughout the first two scenes there is not a single word spoken. Music and heavy breathing are present, but silence from the characters feels louder than both. You feel the “uncanny effect of silence, … and solitude” (Freud, 246). The absence of dialogue forces the viewer to sit with the isolation and silence, which forces the viewer to focus on the physical aspects of the characters. When Irene and her companion are sitting in the car after saying goodbye to Betty, they sit in the car in silence while grinning eerily ear to ear. These early moments prime us to pay attention to “silence and solitude” later in the film. By themselves, “silence and solitude” may feel creepy, but it is only when “the frightening element[s] can be shown to be something repressed which recurs” (241), that they become uncanny. The viewer may recognize that the silence is strange, but it is only midway through the film, during the Club Silencio sequence, that the repressed fears of “silence and solitude” begin to possess unheimlichkeit. The viewer is pleading to hear the music of dialogue, but “no hay banda”; thus, the viewer listens to the tape, engrossed in their own “silence and solitude.” It is the “’compulsion to repeat”’ (Freud, 238) of the film itself that allows the repressed fear of “silence and solitude” to appear unheimlich.  

However, one would assume that filmic uncanniness remains within the confines of the film, this is not the case. E. Ann Kaplan posits in her book, Psychoanalysis & Cinema that the “critic [is] positioned vis-à-vis an author as the psychoanalyst vis-à-vis a patient” (Kaplan, 2). We therefore should think of Mullholland Drive as the speech that we as film critics must interpret to reveal the latent meanings of David Lynch’s ideas. Perhaps an easy escape is to think of the viewer as being outside the meaning of the film, somehow removed from its meaning. Fundamentally, this is impossible. Kaplan summarizes French-Marxist Louis Althusser’s position by insisting “that we are always in ideology” (Kaplan, 9). We are never able to escape the conversation as soon as Lynch developed the speech for Mulholland Drive. Lynch traps the viewer into a conversation that is now systematically inseparable from the mind of the viewer. However, it seems that Lynch is aware of this relationship by his representation of audience in Mulholland Drive. Lynch’s acknowledgement of a viewer resembles the classic Freudian psychoanalysis image where the “analysand on the couch” (Kaplan 12) is turned away from the “analyst in the chair” (Kaplan, 12): Lynch knows fundamentally that there is an interpreter of his metaphorical dreams, but there is no visual confirmation of this. This is why the image of the blue-haired audience member turning towards the camera seems so consequential: it is Lynch’s acknowledgment of the audience.  

Perhaps Lynch wanted us to engage in a psychoanalytic conversation with the film, one in which Lynch speaks to us, and we must listen. French philosopher Jacques Derrida asserts in his book, The Ear of the Other, that ears are the organ, “as Freud reminds us, the infant cannot close” (Derrida, 33) and are always susceptible to an ideological conversation to which me may not be privy to deafen. “The ear is uncanny” (Derrida, 33) and Lynch takes advantage of our “most tendered and most open organ” (Derrida, 33) by thrusting upon it an ideological discussion about the uncanny. Mulholland Drive functions as an unrelenting voice that projects into the viewer’s ear which cannot be closed. Regardless of whether a viewer chooses to interact with Mulholland Drive, the mere fact that Mulholland Drive can be interacted with solidifies Lynch’s thoughts forever. The way that the viewer is positioned in relation to the film is very similar to how the subject is positioned in the Althusserian theory of ideology. Lynch is prompting the viewer to become an active speaker in a dialogue that concerns the existence of both the film and the viewer. Mulholland Drive is the actualization of David Lynch holding up a mirror to the viewer’s ear and insisting they can listen to his thoughts. 

The reader may try to reject the idea of Mulholland Drive and its insistence of a psychoanalytic viewer, but eventually the ideas will return. The undeniable obfuscation of Mulholland Drive instills in the viewer an “compulsion to repeat” (Freud, 238) their analysis of the film. Undeniably, “there are, clearly, Freudian words and concepts…and one could also find evidence of Freud’s interest” (Derrida, 67) in Mulholland Drive. In Akser’s publication they also reference Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who “stressed the need to read Lynch in psychoanalytic terms” (Akser, 60). Therefore, the question becomes not why we should use psychoanalytic terms to read Mulholland Drive, but rather why David Lynch creates a form that insists on a psychoanalytic reading. Thus, it follows that Lynch is prompting the audience to look beyond the mirror psychoanalytically: to view themselves as part of the film, to view themselves in the analysand’s chair too. Lynch’s film, which relies so heavily on the viewer’s interpretation, must then include the viewer as a participant in the film’s universe. The viewer is no longer looking at the film from the outside; the viewer is an actively developing instigator in the film.  

Most uncanny, therefore, is the fact of the film itself. Mulholland Drive demands that an audience watch and interpret the film. The movie constantly probes the viewer to question what is seen and presumes the viewer will assert that their point of view is omnipotent, which is inherently uncanny. The filmic nature of Mulholland Drive relies on the viewer to constantly justify their own world view. If the viewer assumes their interpretation is correct, then they will constantly try to reduce the film to fit their prototype of what they believe Mulholland Drive to be. The viewer exhibits a “narcissistic overvaluation of [one’s] own mental processes” (Freud, 240). Lynch forces the viewer to acknowledge that overvaluation of thought by using the image of the androgynous person in the theater. As the images of Diane and Camilla dissipate into fog and lighting, which further dissipates to the stage, we are left with only this audience member who utters one final word: “silencio.” This final word asserts that not only has this person also been viewing Mulholland Drive the entire time, but it isolates the viewer to a single self, thus forcing the viewer to acknowledge that their own silence and isolation has been a part of this movie, too. The audience is forced to acknowledge that we were witnesses to Diane’s narcissistic fantasies and that they were only allowed to continue because we let them. At any point the viewer could have paused the movie and said, “this is all a tape recording,” but the viewer wants to “hear a trumpet” and so “we hear a band.” The viewer is roped into an illusion because we want to hear the tree in the forest fall, and so we hear it, even though no hay bosque.   

Works Cited 

Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson. 1953. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17, an Infantile Neurosis; and Other Works: (1917-1919). London: Hogarth Press. 

 Lynch, David, dir. 2021. Mulholland Drive. Film. United States: Universal Pictures. 

 Sinnerbrink, Robert. 2005. “Cinematic Ideas, on David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” Film-Philosophy 9 (4). https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2005.0034. 

 Akser, Murat. 2012. “Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” CINEJ Cinema Journal 2 (1) : 58–76. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2012.58. 

 Derrida, Jacques, Christie Mcdonald, and LévesqueClaude. 1988. The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation. Lincoln Nebr.; London: University of Nebraska Press. 

 E Ann Kaplan. 1990. Psychoanalysis [And] Cinema. New York; London: Routledge. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

by Willow Greenfield 

The relationship between ‘the stranger’ and a host society is one that has fascinated readers throughout history, recurring across a variety of genres and offering unique insights into the culture of both host and guest. These relationships are represented in both Homer’s The Odyssey and Melville’s Typee, where the protagonists, Odysseus and Tommo, are received into different societies and able to observe and judge the customs before them. Despite their similar positions as outsiders, however, their experiences are vastly different, emphasizing the divide between the simplified, fictitious world of The Odyssey and the far more ambivalent fictionalized autobiography that Melville presents. For Odysseus, the successive societies he visits largely fall into two categories: ones inhabited by ‘savages’ like the Cyclopes whom he feels free to abuse and mistreat, and God-fearing, ‘civilized’ societies like that of the Phaeacians whom he treats with respect and admiration – a highly fixed and simplistic mindset that underscores his Western, colonial prejudices. Unlike The Odyssey, however, where Odysseus’ expectations of various societies are continually confirmed by his interactions with them, Typee presents a far more nuanced and complicated portrait of a civilization that cannot be reduced to a single category. Over the course of the text, Tommo oscillates between viewing the Typees as savages that must be civilized and people living in harmony with nature who exhibit profound wisdom and humanity, forcing him to grapple with his existing prejudices and ultimately develop meaningful critiques of his own society that leave him stranded between a paradise where he cannot belong and a civilization that he knows to be deeply flawed.  

At the beginning of their time in Nukuheva, Tommo and Toby both share a largely simplistic and stereotypical view of the residents of Typee that closely parallels Odysseus’ attitude towards the ‘primitive and barbaric’ land of the Cyclops. Like many of their fellow sailors, Tommo and Toby initially manifest a very typical colonial view of the residents of Nukuheva, repeatedly describing their terror at “throwing [themselves] into the hands of [the] cruel savages” (Melville, 51) of Typee when they first decide to descend into the valley and making many judgements about the “heathenish rites and human sacrifices” (Melville, 5) they believe the natives perform despite having no real knowledge of their culture. This further manifests later through Tommo’s repeated mockery of their religious practices as “[appearing] merely to seek a sort of childish amusement” (Melville, 174), his sense of superiority over them for their laziness in religion, agriculture, and industry, and in his patronizing general attitude towards “the minds of these simple savages” (Melville, 144) even though he is unable to understand their language and true complexity. Here, Tommo’s unfounded confidence in his beliefs and lack of practical knowledge strongly parallels the attitude of Odysseus, who views the Cyclopes as a personification of the stereotypically indolent and violent ‘savage’. For Odysseus, the Cyclopes are “lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil” (Od. 9.120-121) and people he disdains for having no ships or artisans (though this portrait leaves out the fact that they diligently tend to livestock). In a characteristically colonial manner, he also repeatedly describes how their land is “clear for plowing” and “harvest, on harvest, a man could reap a healthy stand of grain” (Od .9.147-148) – as though the Cyclopes’ lack of agriculture and other forms of civilization fill him with a desire to use the land for himself, an idea paralleled by Tommo’s own fixation on the Typees’ ‘indolence’ in cultivating their own land. This apparent lack of cultivation also seems to make Odysseus feel entitled to take what he wants from the land and its inhabitants, as even though he describes having “feasted well” (Od. 9.179) the night before, he has no scruples in entering the home of his host without permission and eating his cheeses, only refraining from making away with the host’s food and livestock in order to “[see] what gifts he’d give” (Od. 9.258). Despite his complete lack of respect towards his host, however, Odysseus describes his horror when the Cyclops does not abide by Zeus’ protection of suppliants and instead retaliates against him, and even remarks how, from the very start, he felt convinced he would be received by “a savage deaf to justice, blind to law” (Od. 9. 240) even though it was he who committed the first injustice and therefore, as Tommo at one point states, “[having] discovered heathens and barbarians…by horrible cruelties [has exasperated them] into savages” (Melville, 27). Despite these parallels in their initial attitudes, however, the Typees’ abundant kindness toward Tommo eventually begins to erode his initial prejudices – a fact aided, perhaps, by the power imbalance between Odysseus and Tommo, one of whom has the manpower and ability to harm the ‘savage’ and escape, while the other is injured and isolated and therefore forced to become more open-minded. This extended time allows Tommo to begin to develop new views on the inhabitants of the valley, while Odysseus, who leaves far more quickly, never gains a better perspective – even though, for example, he claims the Cyclopes lives in isolation from one another, when in reality his host’s neighbours come and inquire about what is happening to him when he is in peril.  

As Tommo purports to spend more time in the Typee valley, his view of the inhabitants increasingly broadens and he begins to admire them for their happiness and wisdom, an attitude similar to Odysseus’ reaction to the Phaeacian civilization later in his journey. As his injury begins to heal, Tommo describes how “despite the apprehensions [he] could not dispel, the horrible character imputed to these Typees appeared to [him] wholly undeserved” (Melville, 97), and begins to view their civilization in a more generous light. In this sense, his recovery functions as a psychological symbol of his adjustment to this new way of life and even of the gradual erosion of his old, Western mindset which previously stopped him from fully appreciating the Typees and moving amongst them. In place of his previous, simplistic view of them, he begins to appreciate the bounty of wealth that they possess – ultimately coming to believe that they “[enjoy] an infinitely happier…existence… than the self-complacent European” (Melville, 124). Though he does not believe they have any of the material goods, intellectualism, or laws of his own society, they exhibit a natural virtuousness “unparalleled… in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom” (Melville, 200), and live without fear of theft (Melville, 201), almost never working hard enough to “[cause] the sweat to stand upon a single brow” (Melville, 195). In these idyllic descriptions, Tommo’s perspective shifts from paralleling Odysseus’ earlier attitude towards the Cyclopes to his later description of the Phaeacians, who receive him with similar kindness to the Typees, ensuring that “[he’ll] never lack for clothing or any other gift, the right of worn out suppliants come [their] way” (Od. 6. 211-212) and eliciting his respect and admiration through the lavish splendour of their golden palace (Od. 7. 100-109), excellent crafts and seamanship, and bountiful harvests (Od. 7. 136). Here, Odysseus’ conduct is respectful and humble, and when he is challenged to physical contests in their society he even emphasizes the fact that “he’d have to be good for nothing, senseless, yes, to challenge his host and come to grips in games” (Od. 8. 240-241) – an attitude completely opposing his earlier conduct towards the Cyclops, whom he steals from and taunts, and one which once again emphasizes the colonial nature of his conduct as a guest, acting kindly towards those whom he deems ‘civilized’ while taking cruel liberties with those he doesn’t. Both of these host societies, moreover, hold strong parallels in the sense that their idyllic happiness makes them appear as though they are still in an unsullied ‘paradise’ of sorts, with the Phaeacians being notable favourites of Zeus and Tommo describing the Typees as incredibly fortunate in their limited need to work and the bounty of the land surrounding them. Interestingly, however, as both of these civilizations come into contact with the strangers, their harmonious lifestyles are ultimately threatened with ruin; despite the Phaeacians’ long history of sailing with “no fear in the world of foundering, fatal shipwreck” (Od. 8. 630-631), in transporting Odysseus back to his home of Ithaca, they anger the God Poseidon, who crushes their ship and threatens to “pile a huge mountain round about [their] port” (Od. 13. 201). In the same manner, Tommo becomes increasingly conscious of the fact that, when outsiders are introduced among natives like the Typees, “they fold to their bosom the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys” (Melville, 26) and vice, misery, and disease are quick to follow.  

In spite of the idyllic world that Tommo encounters in the Typee valley, and which Odysseus encounters among the Phaeacians as well as on Circe and Calypso’s islands, neither of them are able to remain in these societies – highlighting the often insurmountable gap between the cultures of host and guest. As Tommo becomes increasingly familiar with the Typees, he not only gains a greater respect for their culture and customs, but also begins to reflect back on his own society without the lens of national prejudice. Comparing their society with his own, he no longer sees how even the worse traits of their society, such as their cannibalism, “so very far exceeds in barbarity” (Melville, 125) his own civilization’s immense cruelty in wars and manufacturing tools of mass destruction, which “are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the Earth” (Melville, 125). Moreover, in comparing the profound happiness of the valley’s inhabitants with the misery and lawlessness which plagues his own ‘civilized’ country, he begins to wonder whether the influence of missionaries and other Western figures is one which can only cause harm, as “no sooner are the idolaters converted into nominal christians than disease, vice and premature death make their appearance” (Melville, 195) – a notion which leads him to question whether his own people are the real savages who could learn from the islanders. Despite his manifest love for this ‘happy valley,’ however, his Western identity and knowledge of the outside world make it impossible for him to regain his innocence and fully integrate into this Edenic society – an idea symbolized by the fact that, though his injured limb improves, it cannot be fully healed until he is back among his own civilization. It is also likely due to these insurmountable differences that, in spite of all the evidence he presents to the contrary, he still expresses his belief in “[letting] the savages be civilized” (Melville, 195) through Christianity and, despite the many residents who desire him to stay, chooses to escape from this paradise when he has the chance. This conduct is profoundly similar to that of Odysseus on Calypso’s island as, though he admits that Calypso treats him well and that his wife “falls far short of [her], [her] beauty, [her] stature” (Od. 5.239-240) and even her immortality, he still “[pines], all [his] days” (Od. 5.242) to return to Penelope and his home – with both Tommo and Odysseus suffering from not suffering in their respective ‘Edens’ and craving the work and chains that they are accustomed to in their own land. Thus, just like Tommo, Odysseus leaves the Phaeacians and Calypso to return to his own home, retaining the guise of a stranger upon his return to his own society to better judge and understand his circumstances without being truly seen. This is a mask, however, that he sheds upon regaining control over his kingdom – and just as his prejudices are not challenged by the societies he encounters, his attitude towards Western civilization remains the same when he becomes the ruler of Ithaca once more. For Tommo, however, this shift in perspectives is more permanent, and in telling his story to others through the Typee narrative, he positions himself as a wanderer who is able to view and judge his own society in a far more objective fashion than he would otherwise be able to, underscoring the fact that he has become an eternal stranger even in his own society whose broadened, unique perspective and distance from his old ways cannot be fully shed.  

Overall, over the course of The Odyssey and Typee, the encounters between a stranger and host civilization highlight both the striking parallels between Tommo and Odysseus as Western figures as well as their ideological differences. In terms of ideology, for Odysseus, host societies exist within binary categories, either civilized or uncivilized, and his interactions with them continually confirm his existing colonial prejudices, demonstrating that he should pay respect to ‘civilized’ countries while taking freely from ‘savage’ ones, thus perpetuating a system of violence and misunderstanding against those whose cultures do not resemble his own. In contrast to this, however, Tommo’s experience presents cultural encounter as a destabilizing experience – one which reveals sophistication in what he at first believes to be a primitive society as well as savagery in his own supposedly enlightened culture, blurring the simplistic Western divides to be seen in The Odyssey and depicting cross-cultural interaction as an experience which leads to permanent self-questioning. Despite these divisions in their attitudes, however, powerful similarities also develop between them over the course of the texts, especially in their capacities as storytellers whose biased perspectives and self-serving motivations call into question the reliability of their tales. Odysseus, after all, is a famously skillful liar, and his retelling of his adventures is designed to make him appear justified in taking what he wants from ‘savage’ societies by exaggerating their barbarities and evils, an idea closely related to Tommo’s description of  “old south-sea rovers” (Melville, 170) who, living near different Polynesian societies and being asked about them by strangers, “lay claim to a much greater knowledge of such matters than [they] actually [possess] … and … [knowing] just the sort of information wanted, … [furnish] it to any extent” (Melville, 170). Though Tommo attempts to distance himself from these storytellers by claiming to “speak the unvarnished truth” (Melville, 2), the discrepancies in his tale as his perspective shifts and his desire to appear more knowledgeable and convincing to readers make it clear that he, too, is exaggerating things to a certain extent for the benefit his own agenda (namely, to gain recognition for himself as an adventurer while depicting Polynesian society in a new light and perhaps bringing about change in the missionary system) – ultimately underscoring the comparability of their positions as stereotypically Western outsiders whose stories are less an objective portrait of foreign societies than a reflection of their remaining biases and individual motivations.  

Works Cited

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Deluxe Classics ed., Penguin, 1996. 

Melville, Herman. Typee. 1846. Penguin, 1996. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

by Liam Skeoch

Strategic interests, both economic and geopolitical, drove the colonial mission in the South Seas, but the notion that the island-dwelling Indigenous peoples of the Pacific would benefit from ‘enlightenment’ in temporal and spiritual matters justified this mission and impassioned its proponents. In his semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical work, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Herman Melville (1819–1891) critiques this colonial mission by way of calling into question the ostensible advantages of this burgeoning ‘enlightenment.’ He does this by (mostly) framing the Typee as maintaining an idyllic society whose citizens do not require enlightenment: they are happier and, in a meaningful sense, live closer to God than their ‘civilized’ visitors. Conversely, he emphasizes the unnatural living, the impiety, and the brutality of these would-be civilizers. Lending particular strength to his religious critique, Melville draws both implicit and explicit comparisons between the Typee valley and the Garden of Eden, framing the irony of a Christian civilizing mission that in fact corrupts an Edenic society. Taken seriously, the argument articulated by Melville’s protagonist and fictive persona, Tommo, renders this Christian mission sacrilegious; and yet, given his ultimate conclusions, we might question just how seriously Tommo—or, for that matter, the author himself—takes that argument. 

Tommo describes the Typee as a naturally virtuous and orderly people: 

So pure and upright were they in all the relations of life, […] I was soon led to exclaim in amazement: “Are these the ferocious savages […] of whom I have heard such frightful tales! [sic] They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane, than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.” (Melville 203) 

He also lauds their character of fellowship and unity, reporting that they had no “difference of opinion upon any subject whatever. They all thought and acted alike” (Melville 203). Their virtue is attributed to “an inherent principle of honesty and charity towards each other, […] this universally diffused perception of what is just and noble” (Melville 201), and Tommo recounts leaving their territory with “a higher estimate of human nature than [he] had ever before entertained” (Melville 203). If it is true that the Typee are naturally good and live happily absent the “statute-book” (Melville 203) of civilization, then the colonial sentiment that they need to be ‘civilized’ is rendered highly questionable. But Melville’s argument runs deeper: he frames the colonial mission as in fact an anti-Christian endeavour through Edenic analogy. The very first Typee Tommo encounters are a couple resembling Adam and Eve: “[t]hey were a boy and girl, slender and graceful, and completely naked” (68). The valley they inhabit is verdant and abundant in tropical trees carrying bread-fruit and coconuts, not unlike Eden, where “[t]he Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Gen. 2.9 NIV); this is where God told Adam, “[y]ou are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge” (Gen. 2.16–17 NIV)—the foreshadowing of a fatal enlightenment. Within their valley, the Typee live leisurely and luxuriously, which Melville then explicitly compares to Eden: 

The penalty of the Fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee [….] I scarcely saw any piece of work performed there which caused the sweat to stand upon a single brow. As for digging and delving for a livelihood, the thing is altogether unknown. Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana, and […] the idle savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite. (Melville 195) 

Only after the ‘Fall of Man’ is Adam condemned by God to work the ground “[b]y the sweat of [his] brow” (Gen. 3.19 NIV), a labour Melville suggests the Typee are exempt from. Figuratively, and according to this framing, the Typee have yet to fall: they still live in Eden. If this is so, not only do they live happily and in harmonious order with one another, but the Typee are also living closer to God than their Christian civilizers, in a society resembling His original, intended order. By forcing the Typee to depart from this order, it seems plausible that these Christians are negating the will of the very God they purport to represent in their Pacific crusade. 

In contrast to the paradisial life of the Typee, Melville depicts the ‘civilized life’ as an unnatural, painful, and violent one. ‘Civilized man’ cannot sustain himself on the fruits of nature, bask in the warm sun, nor frolic in secluded streams—there is work to be done! His is a world of money, envy, laws, expectations, and endless toil; indeed, his society does not value Tommo’s life so much as what he can produce. Tommo’s voyage through the Pacific is itself motivated by this fundamentally transactional condition. Life aboard his whaling ship is related to be miserable and profoundly unnatural, a voyage east of Eden: “[o]h! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass—for a snuff at the fragrance of the gloomy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? […] Yes, the inside of our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile and sickly hue it is […]” (Melville 3–4): Tommo is nauseated by the artificiality of a mock Eden. And while the Typee enjoy fruit in abundance, the crew of the Dolly are deprived of all fresh provisions and subsist on salted meats and biscuits (Melville 3). All these pains are further aggravated by the captain’s inhumane and tyrannical leadership, providing insufficient rations and substandard treatment for the ill (Melville 21). Why, then, did Tommo undertake this miserable journey in the first place? Probably for the principal reason that Melville himself became a sailor: for “[m]oney! That ‘root of all evil’ ” (Melville 126). After all, money is for most such men the supreme object of their lives. But besides his endless toiling, the ‘civilized man’ is also described as capable of violence and cruelty on a scale unknown to the Marquesan native: “the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars […] [is] enough […] to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth” (Melville 125). Because he concerns himself with ambitions that carry him beyond his essential needs, this ‘civilized man’ undertakes a myriad of evil endeavours, like the colonial project itself—an endeavour “the object of which [was] to ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose end has almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal destruction!” (Melville 195). And when this mission succeeds and the Polynesians have been subjugated, they are inducted into the laborious machine and “are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows!” (Melville 196)—and thus, they too at last find themselves cast East of Eden. 

Again, Melville evokes biblical imagery to frame his argument, but how might ‘civilized man’ be understood within Melville’s Edenic analogy? In one sense, he resembles a fallen Adam. When Adam eats the fruit of knowledge, his leisurely existence is irrevocably turned laborious: “God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground” (Gen. 3.23 NIV). ‘Civilized man,’ in his endless pursuit of enlightenment, similarly relinquishes simple pleasures for endless toil. In another sense, however, ‘civilized man’ can be understood as the serpent, a corrupting influence on the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific. When he encounters these benighted Polynesians, the serpent of enlightenment introduces them to the ostensible advantages of civilized modernity: textiles and tobacco, rifles and trifles. With these tantalizing morsels, and often after flexing his artillery (like the French, whose gunships have taken the place of an earlier American expeditionary force in Nuku Hiva), he coerces the islanders to substitute their natural virtue for his own civilized vice. They are initially naïve to Tommo’s observation that “[c]ivilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve” (Melville 124), and by allowing themselves to be civilized, they “fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate” (Melville 26). Under the yoke of their new condition, they work the land by the sweat of their brows for foreign masters, now completely divorced from their Edenic contentment. So, by Melville’s framing, the civilized man is Adam, having left the Garden of Eden long ago and now returning to burn it down; but also, he is the serpent who, by coercion, seduces the islanders to share in his civilized life of ceaseless labour and bottomless discontent. If Melville’s account is accepted, how could any Christian condone the mission in the South Seas, understanding that its objectives are so perverse, and that its proponents are serpentine? Its grounding in the story of Eden makes Melville’s Typee a striking refutation from the inside of the Christian justification for colonialism. 

However, Melville’s case is not presented so cohesively within Typee as it has been here: his argument is complicated by Tommo’s vacillating sympathies for the colonial agenda. Tommo posits that the Typee require a religious resurgence: “[i]n truth, I regard the Typees as a backslidden generation. They are sunk in religious sloth, and require a spiritual revival. A long prosperity of bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts has rendered them remiss in the performance of their higher obligations” (Melville 179). It seems to follow from this sentiment that the Typee would do well to have their spirituality “revived” by Christian missionaries, who could shake them out of their decadence and remind them of the significance of their “higher obligations.” Later, he says, “[l]et the savages be civilized, but civilize them with benefits, and not with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not the heathen” (Melville 195). If Tommo accepted his ownargument, that “[c]ivilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve” (Melville 124), he would see that there is no civilization with only benefits and without evils, and thus could not advocate for this civilizing mission in any capacity. Except he does. Evidently, Melville, no less than Tommo, is irresolute. 

We might account for these inconsistencies by once more returning to Eden. Essential to the tragedy of the Fall is its irreversibility: after eating the fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve experienced an irreversible psychological change—their blissful ignorance gave way to a dreadful sensibility and self-awareness (Gen. 3.7 NIV). As punishment, God cast them from the garden, and “placed on the east side of the Garden […] cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way” (Gen. 3.24 NIV)—and man was thus forbidden to return to Eden forever. The Fall can be read allegorically with respect to ‘civilized man’ who, like Adam and Eve, underwent a kind of pyrrhic ‘enlightenment’ and became productive but restless by psychology, unable to return to the “indolent” life (Melville 196). Tommo’s is the psychology of ‘civilized man’: his voyage is motivated by money, the respect accorded to someone who works, and civilization’s other prizes. But could Tommo (and Melville himself) not settle for less, like the “indolent” Typee? Could he not leave society behind him and live a simple life on nature’s provisions? No, he could not, because civilization has made its imprint on him: he is discontented unless he is doing something, or progressing—even without satisfaction—towards some goal which he may never see realized. Tommo would remain a stranger among the Typee if he lived with them for a million years: they understand life in fundamentally different ways, and their respective visions could never be reconciled. As a result, even after having witnessed the joys of Typee life, Tommo feels alienated among them. Reflecting on his isolation and time spent birdwatching, he says: “the sight of these birds, generally the ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy. As in their dumb beauty they hovered by me […] I was almost inclined to fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and that they commiserated his fate” (Melville 216). Commiserable indeed: Tommo is a hostage spectator to a utopia into which he will never integrate. Perhaps these birds in their “dumb beauty” can be understood to symbolically represent Tommo’s idea of the blissfully ignorant Typee, among whom he will always feel an outsider. Regardless, the tensions in Melville’s argument now stand to be resolved. It seems plausible that he calls for the destruction of heathenism, in spite of his own testimony and contention against the colonial project, because he, like Tommo, belongs to the civilized condition—he, like Tommo, cannot ever embrace the uncivilized life. He has fallen out of Eden, and an angel born of his own cultural background and psychology bars his re-entry. 

Melville’s argument, notwithstanding its inconsistencies, is extremely powerful. By emphasizing that the Typee society resembles the first and most godly order, and that Christian missionaries and “rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals” (Melville 195) threaten to bring this order to ruin, he denies the colonial mission in the Pacific its Christian grounding and instead frames it as heresy. But despite the strength of his argument, there is much in Typee that lends reasonable doubt as to whether Melville is convinced of this anti-colonial position at all, made most evident when Tommo calls for the destruction of heathenism. This inconsistency is best resolved through the very same Edenic framing Melville relies on to make his case: he cannot return to Eden even as a witness to its perfection, because Eden can never be reclaimed once relinquished. Seen in this light, Melville’s ambivalence is not a contradiction but a complication, consistent with his argument, and reflecting a mind that, while open to new experiences and novel thoughts, was challenged nonetheless to disentangle itself from the clinging webs of cultural inheritance. 

Works Cited

The Bible. New International Version, Zondervan, 2011. 

Melville, Herman. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Penguin Classics, 1984.