The Balancing Acts of Mary Poppins and Mulan

In her chapter on sexuation, Karen Coats explains that  “a person has a masculine or a feminine structure according to how he or she is situated with respect to the Name of the Father” (99). Lacanian theory suggests that we are sexed by society not through biological determinants, but rather through a third term, the Name of the Father. This third term, according to Lacan, separates the Symbolic and the Imaginary worlds of a child in their psychological development, which “effectively bars the mother’s desire, inaugurating a chain of substitutions that come to signify and replace the mother’s desire” (20). Essentially, the Name of the Father, which is Law, separates the child from the imagined, but non-existent relationship with the mother, which lies within the Imaginary, and propels them into the Symbolic order, or society.

This perceived separation creates a hole of desire within the child that they wish to fill. According to Lacan, both sexes experience this separation, however men, because the Symbolic is a masculine structure (100), men cannot escape from the loss and subsequent hole created by the separation of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. A woman, on the other hand, can see this lack and “can fill the hole if she wants to, that is, she can act as if the problem of incompleteness can be solved. But-and this is the important distinction – she doesn’t have to” (100). Because of this, women are more capable of balancing between the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

To demonstrate this balancing act, Coats uses the example of Mary Poppins, the loveable, extraordinary, word-jumbling nanny of the Banks children. Poppins acts as foil for George Banks, the father of the children she nannies, challenging his role within the Symbolic, as a man who adheres and subscribes to the Law of the Father. As she rejects masculine structure, she must also, to an extent, reject the feminine role within that masculine structure. Mr. Bank’s wife and his children, act as his symptom, as do past nannies of the Banks children, but Poppins, because she is aware of the fact that the Symbolic “performs what it purports to describe,” she can choose to obey or not to obey the Law of the Father (107). By both challenging and using the Symbolic to her advantage, she is able to change the lives of the Banks family.

Disney has the propensity to support the image of women like Mary Poppins, who transcend gender roles, but also tends to support the Symbolic order. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, for instance, must change herself for Prince Eric and ascribe to the role of lover, wife and symptom. However, Disney’s interpretation of the legend of Mulan, a story of a woman, set in the 6^th century, who joins the all-male Chinese army, supports the Lacanian theory that “the feminine position…has closer affinities with the Real than with the Symbolic” (101). Although the Mulan does support and strengthen the Law of the Father in some cases, it rejects it in others. In the beginning of the film, Mulan’s father is called to war and, although he is old and disabled, he dutifully accepts his masculine responsibility.

However, Mulan speaks up and disagrees with this law, disgracing her father in the eyes of society, but rejecting that society all the same. In secret, Mulan steals her father’s armor and his summon to war, cuts off her hair and dresses like a man, and joins the army. In doing so, she walks the line between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, not only emotionally, but physically. Much like Poppins, Mulan also uses the Symbolic to her advantage. Knowing that she would not be accepted as a woman, she dresses and attempts to act like a man, convincing her comrades that she is equal to them. She is successful at this, however, because she uses, unbeknownst to them, her knowledge of the feminine structure within the male structure. Eventually, she is able to save her father, her fellow soldiers and even China by rejecting her role as the symptom and creating a new role for herself within, but separate from the Symbolic.

 

Becoming a Real Boy

“A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)”, the 2001 film directed by Steven Spielberg, follows the life of a boy, but certainly no “nor-male” boy. The boy, named David, is a mecha, a super advanced robot that is actually capable of not only emulating, but experiencing emotions and acting on original thoughts. Created by Cybertronics of New Jersey, David is an even more advanced type of mecha, who is able to actually feel love for whomever owns him. He is constructed to look, act, speak and love as a child does, enacting the same imprinting mechanisms that a human child does with its parents, particularly its mother. David especially imprints on Monica, his “mother,” who grows attached to him as well, until her actual son, who was sick, is able to return home and take up his role as a human son.

The story goes on for much longer than this, but first, I would like to address children as a whole. Children are some of the most familiar individuals in the world. Despite cultural differences, they follow developmental characteristics that are universal. Instinctively, the average adult will be protective and caring towards any child they come across, which is essentially ingrained within our psyches. In the most primal sense, we want the next generation, our offspring, to survive.

However, how is one supposed to react to David? He is essentially a child in all of the ways that are familiar to us, and yet he is not. Because he is not made up of the organic matter that we are made of, he cannot be human, no matter how convincing he is. He is not entirely flawless in his child-like state, either. He cannot eat, he does not blink, and he cannot dream when he is “sleeping.” He is the epitome of Freud’s theory of the uncanny, in a sense. He is everything that is familiar and homely, yet he is, concealed from perception, very much unfamiliar and unhomely. Of course, in realizing this, David’s nature is disconcerting and even frightening. He is even more frightening because he plays with our emotions, our care-giving desires. He sparks within us the desire to treat him as something he’s not, manipulating our hearts, even as we know in our minds that he is not what is familiar.

Lacanian theory can also be applied to “A.I.”, although the stages that Lacan applies to child development are skewed due to the fact that David is no ordinary child. After David’s “brother,” Martin, returns home, the two experience a sort of sibling rivalry in which Martin, who has fully been assimilated into the Symbolic, exemplifies. He is a son who has conformed to the Law of the Father. Because of this, he does not understand the queerness of David and is cruel to him, attempting to sabotage him in order to regain his position as the true son. In doing so, David’s defensive “programming” is triggered, and puts the life of Martin at risk. After this event, Henry, Monica’s husband, wishes to destroy David, but she sets off to save him.

In a pivotal scene (0:00-4:30), which I have embedded below, Monica drives David to the woods to leave him there, in order to save him from “death,” but also to separate herself from the unconditional, clinging love that David exhibits. As they drive to the woods, they pass the sign and entrance for Cybetronics of New Jersey, which represents the Father, the Symbolic realm. The creator of David is a graspable, socially real thing, and Monica stops the car, almost as if she wishes to return him, but she instead thinks better of it, realizing that he will be destroyed. She forces her reason, which lies within the Symbolic, out. Instead, she employs her fantasy that David is real, and deserving of life, reverting her mind into the realm of the Imaginary.

As Monica tries to leave David in the woods, he begs and pleads with her not to leave him there, but she, despite the tears she is also shedding, and the pain it causes her, is determined to eject David from her social reality, almost as if she is forcing him into the third term, forcing him to form a new Symbolic order outside of herself, his “mother.” When she and David first developed a bond, she read to him the story of Pinocchio, which convinced him that it was possible for him, despite the fact that he is a mecha, to become a “real boy.” As he begs, he says, “No, mommy, please no. If Pinocchio became a real boy, and I became a real boy, can I come home?” She then responds to him with, “Stories are not real!” However, as Karen Coats would say, stories inform children, shape children into what society expects of them. In this sense, David is frighteningly more real than expected. He is actually capable of taking a piece of society, even though fantastical, and applying it to himself, attempting to fulfill the example that language provides for him.

David, however, is left by Monica, and for the remainder of the film, his one true desire is to return home to her. He is aware of the hole that is missing and wants only to fill that hole with the perceived, yet literally non-existent mother of the Imaginary realm. In his quest, he both adheres to the Symbolic realm, but also diverts from it. He is far more capable of living between the Imaginary and Symbolic because he is not “nor-male.” Eventually, through a ridiculously long succession of events, he is able to have a final, peaceful, blissful day with Monica (who is not actually Monica, but a mecha who holds the memories and physical and emotional characteristics of her), in which he acts out with her all of his desires. In all his life, he does not enter into the realm of the Real, as his desires are not unconscious. He does not even have an unconscious. After all, he cannot dream. However, at the end of the film, he quite literally does. He becomes a “real boy” after Monica finally tells him that she has always loved him. His deepest desire is met and he is no longer stuck in the Imaginary, but instead of moving back into the Symbolic from which he was born, he “for the first time in his life…went to that place where dreams are born.” In entering the Real, he becomes real.

Obnoxious and Pantless

The commercial titled “So Obnoxious” by Kotex advertises a new line of tampons and pads simply called “U.” The title “U” is clearly directed at younger generations who would connect that it refers to text slang for “you.” Already, we see Kotex’s target audience. The commercial starts with a shot of a woman striding towards the camera. She wears all white as white curtains billow in an unseen wind all around her. This commercial attempts to be up front about common advertising devices aimed at women. Instead of spewing off “scientifically proven” facts about absorbency, the woman says, “Hi, I’m a believably attractive 18 to 24 yr old female. You can relate to me because I’m racially ambiguous and I’m in a tampon commercial because market research shows that girls like you love girls like me.” She is exactly as she describes herself, referring to cultural identity, age and likeability all in one go. Instead of saying anything useful about the tampons at all, explaining why, perhaps, the tampons would be good for just me (as the title of the product implies), she continues to convince the viewer that she’s simply likeable. Her voice is commanding, but somehow friendly at the same time saying, “Buy the same tampons I use because I’m wearing white pants. And I have good hair. And you wish you could be me.” Her last statement is obviously meant to be sarcastic and joking, but is it? Although the commercial seems revealing and culturally aware, playing on the fact that its audience is by now conscious of marketing ploys, it still uses the same imagery, music and characters as a run-of-the-mill, female-directed commercial would. The plethora of white evokes purity and “no-leaks.” She brings attention to her perfect, desirable hair, making the audience aware of the irrelevance of its inclusion, but distracting them nonetheless. In a way, the ad employs reverse-psychology, convincing women that the product is new, exciting and different, just like “U” should be, because it’s commercial is in its honesty. In reality, the commercial and the tampons it touts are the same as ever. They just have prettier packaging. So, as the ad itself asks, “why are tampon ads so obnoxious?” Just watch it over a few times and you’ll have your answer.

The second commercial, titled “Men Without Pants,” is just as likeable and just as disillusioning as the first. Like the first, there is no clear explanation of what the commercial is about until the end and it is equally silly and engaging. This time, however, the commercial is directed at men. The commercial starts with a man standing off to the left side of the shot. He wears no pants and an ugly sweater as he stands in a generic wheat field, with a cloudless sky as the backdrop. The first thing said is, “I wear no pants,” which is essentially the only thing said in the entire commercial until the end. The statement becomes a catchy harmonizing jingle as different shots feature different men, all hinting at diversity, but unification through gender. Finally, the separate men come together in a striding, confident group of pantsless men, all marching up a hill, as if they are conquering it. Although this silly demonstration might seem to counter masculine imagery, it actually strengthens it through the final statement, “Calling all men. It’s time to wear the pants.” The statement invokes a traditional stereotype that women wear skirts, men wear pants, and if the men aren’t wearing pants, obviously, they’re whipped. Clearly, if the men aren’t wearing any pants, the woman must be. To counter this, men must join together in a heroic march across fields to reclaim their masculinity. Not really, of course, that’d just be silly, the commercial implies, but figuratively. The final statement, is set against an image of a dark, strong brick wall behind the bold, worn-looking words “Wear the Pants,” all imagery directed at what men are taught to value: strength, toughness, and boldness. A faceless man with his arms crossed wears those coveted pants, demonstrating power and confidence. Amazingly, the commercial says nothing about Dockers or the quality of the pants, which we barely even see, but none of that needs to be said. It is simply implied: if you want to reclaim your masculinity, you must wear Dockers, and revert to traditional stereotypes of gender, of course.