Film: "Malice" (1993)

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in the 1993 film "Malice", although everything appears to be normal, the audience soon finds that not far beneath the superficially polite exterior of all the main characters there exists an unconscious and barely controlled subsurface of jealousy, anxiety, sexual insecurity and narcissistic greed, all common plot elements of the generic suspense thriller. The author points out that the thriller genre deals quite blatantly, with what Freud referred to as the resurgence of the repressed id, over and against the demands of society in the form of the externally imposed superego. The paper relates that, when the ego of repressed characters such as Andy, becomes threatened by loss of control, especially in the sexual sphere, it utilizes what Freud called defense mechanisms in an increasingly desperate effort to protect itself from the ever-increasing demands of the id.

From the Paper:

'The two main male characters do not escape censure in the film, however. About midway in the film, Dr. Hill is described by another character as possessing a "God complex," which is not a psychoanalytic term in itself but which, in this context, implies someone possessed with an exceedingly strong form of narcissism, an individual trapped to some extent in an infantile phase of development and thus subject of his own libidinal impulses. In the film, this complex is narratively depicted as being not only self-destructive, but destructive of the other characters around Dr. Hill."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Creed, Barbara. "Film and Psychoanalysis." In Hill, John and Gibson, Pamela Church, eds. Film Studies: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 2000.
• Harmon, William and Holman, Hugh. A Handbook to Literature. 4th Ed. Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall 2006.

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