The Russian Epic and Epic Suffering

Allen's chronic compulsion to treat everyone, in all relationships, according to how their actions affect him or how they perceive him (Annie Hall, Manhattan) has significant relevance to Fyodor Dostoevsky's character Raskolnikov or Radya in the existentialism-driven epic novel Crime and Punishment written in a time of revolt, destitution among most of society's working class and the exodus of new ideas about morality, the frail existence of humanity, the authenticity of a God, and the ultimate consequences and meaning of life and values. Allen's characters are consistent in their expressive neurosis, their anxious habits, trifling with insignificant opinions, rejection of gregariousness and obsessive self-dialogue. Raskolnikov is reflected in these traits as well. Raskolnikov and Allen's characters dwell: Raskolnikov on his guilt and the strategies for escaping punishment for his murders, Allen on his fear of death.

The subject of their dwelling leads them to examine their deeply embedded fears, genuine emotions and angst. Existentialist ideas in Crime and Punishment are obvious from the stream-of-consciousness of Raskolnikov that weaves in and out of the novel. In the same way, Allen's numerous characters self-narrate quite often, and tend to direct their own thoughts to the camera as a type of personal or narcissistic validation (Annie Hall, Play it Again, Sam). Raskolnokov's grappling with morality and his questioning of the solid significance, if there is any, to his crimes similarly connects to the nihilistic philosophies about reason and religion that rushed through Moscow in the 1860s like a treacherous-Russian storm.




A nihilistic doctrine seems to be a pattern of many of Woody Allen's characters, for they are extremely pessimistic and often very cynical. Allen's lack of ease and his oppressed ability to enjoy people, such as Annie claims in Annie Hall, connects to Raskolnikov's opinion that Ideas makes the man, thus he doesn't need to socialize because it's all in vain since ideas are superior.

Allen's satire on Russian epic novels, Love and Death portrays the philosophical doctrines articulated in Dostoevsky's novel and further, is a full expression of the ideologies found in other Woody Allen films.

Greenberg Never Kitsch-es and Tells...

Clement Greenberg’s highly criticized and bold essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939) supposes that the resuscitation of high art culture and the remedy for the declining taste of high art will only be resurrected with the acceptance of the form of art known as “avant-garde.” Greenberg’s claim is that popularized art, whose broad likability from an extensive mass of individuals, derives from the ugly, adulterous allurer, otherwise known as Consumerism. Mass marketing of art in popular culture and the copious reproductions of an original, authentic art work taints a pure work and has led to the demise of what is truly art, because society has been able to view art in a way the artist did not intend.

Further, Greenberg’s inexorable abomination of “kitsch” does not end with a defeatist shrug of the shoulders. He states that the solution to reviving the age of art was in the abstract avant-garde alone: “The necessity lies in the fact that by no other means is it possible today to create art and literature of a high order…Since the avant-garde forms the only living culture we now have, the survival in the near future of culture in general is thus threatened”(Greenberg).

Commercialization of art contrasts the elements of the avant-garde because the latter concentrates on the original, untouched moment of the experience between the artist and the materials: “The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms…The excitement of their art seems to lie most of all in its pure preoccupation with the invention and arrangement of spaces, surfaces, shapes, colors, etc.,” (Greenberg). This notion also attributed to his claim that academic art (mainly from the 18-19th century) is one in the same as popular art (kitsch.)

Armed with this knowledge, works of art by Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet are significantly different. Cezanne’s piece “The Card Players” (1890-1892) displays beautifully the avant-garde’s tendency to focus on the materials’ opportune advantages and to not involve “faked sensations” (Greenberg).

Cezanne had two men sitting in for him for this painting but it is not received with an imitated air. Pointed symmetry, various shifts of color and shadow, lines and contours, considerable stages and degrees of spatial direction and texture seen in the colors and planes are technical and premeditated, yet not without consideration of what the moment is offering. Cezanne’s inspiration and subjects are not quickly and voraciously consumed by popular culture and therefore causes the viewers to analyze the art work with more than a mere glance to glean its true value.

Some Like It Hot Sample

An Example of a Freudian Pillar of Thought through Comedy

Some Like It Hot, While Some Like It NOT the Way It Appears

What is the angle, aim and purpose of comedy in the style of cheeky humor, slapstick in nature, relating to sexual deviation, disguised identities and the ironic weaving of romance between persons taking part in all of this? Billy Wilder’s film Some Like It Hot (1959) involves all of these elements and through the spectacles of Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious we may bend toward an idea about the message that the film is sending. More specifically these messages, though subliminal, make a statement to the individual unconscious’ of the audience through the comedy in this film.
The year is 1929 during Prohibition and two struggling jazz musicians Joe and Jerry witness a mobster’s hit on rival gangsters, are seen, and in need of an impeccable get away, cover and jobs, they fill the only open positions of two other jazz musicians traveling to Florida, in an ALL ladies band that is. The two disguise themselves as “Josephine” and “Daphne” and hop on the train in disguise only to be splendidly surprised to meet Marilyn Monroe, aka Sugar in the band with them. In the midst of this charade, Joe and Jerry find themselves having an insurmountable amount of fun with as many women as they could possibly imagine, though “ladies” they are. As a pair of the homeliest female musicians, the sexual deviation begins to blossom, and not only because their gender’s are camouflaged. After meeting “Sugar” “Joesphine” can’t help but fall for her, and vice versa, to a comedic twist. Further, looking directly at what the plot is unfolding , a woman is falling for a man in disguise of a woman, and this happens to “Daphne” (Jerry) as well because a wealthy suitor wants to wed him. Thus, Sugar develops feelings for a man, but whom she believes is a woman.
The design of this film’s jokes and humor surrounding the two questionable “ladies” comments and interactions with their fellow female band mates is for the purpose of revealing a “Suppose this really does occur,” and in the vocabulary of Sugar “and their ain’t no disguises?” moment within the unconscious’s of the audience. Therefore specifically, what is the Freud-induced “definite purpose” of the jokes that are supremely “tendentious?”(Freud 107)?
Jerry’s comment after first laying eyes on Sugar: “Look how she moves! Just like Jell-O on stilts. Must have some sort of built-in motor…” portrays him as slightly fascinated and mildly envious that now, in his disguise, can’t attain her. Expressing her voluptuous form akin to a humble food makes the comedy more accessible while still infiltrating the audience’s collectives mind. For instance, Freud explains that “It is a further relevant fact that smut is directed to a particular person, by whom one is sexually excited and who, on hearing it, is expected to become aware of the speaker’s excitement…” (Freud 115). His excitement is arises while in disguise, and can therefore is a surging of his suppressed desires. Sugar’s eventual love and attraction for “Josephine” is an act of sexual deviation and seeps into the minds of the audience as acceptable and perhaps has the aim, as it is “tendentious,” to question the higher rate of homophobic racism of the time.
Additionally, the gender swap and the verbal humor such as comparing staying the night in an abundantly varying pastry shop with their situation (traveling with and spending the night on an all-girl bus) are most importantly dealing with suppressed feelings of desire, envy and frustration, as the disguises cause some complication. The on-going parody of “Josephine” and “Daphne” raises the question: Would men sometimes desire to be women for a time, perhaps to get closer to other women? Would they in actuality enjoy such a masquerade? Joe realizes the sexual advantage to his unfortunate situation, though restricting it may be, because in the form of another, he wins Sugar though the ending is like any classic film and his true male identity is revealed. Their disguises could be interpreted to portray a man’s sexual frustration and desire, and how his only arrival at obtaining the women, is through a female means, rather that be acting like a woman or treating her completely different than a man would. The almost misogynistic yet fascinated comments about women’s physical forms could further be interpreted to amount to a man’s frustration and desire. Freud details the exodus of desires that rise in the mind that can be applicable in understanding the film’s humor: “To the human psyche, all renunciation is exceedingly difficult, and so we find that tendentious jokes provide a means of undoing the renunciation and retrieving what was lost (Freud 121). This affirms that the “forbidden” and twisted amour of Sugar and “Josephine” and the relatively crude descriptions of women cater to the ideas and questions traipsing around the minds of the audience of this Hollywood classic.

Works Cited:

Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. The Standard Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 1960.

Wilder, Billy. _Some Like It Hot_. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1959.

What's the Mother of the Problem?

Personally afflicted sabotage, horrendous manipulation, and self-mutilation are all thoughts can all be conjured up when thinking of the vices (are there any virtues?) of the Oedipus complex, a temple of Freudian thought and criticism, and ironically, masturbation. The connection can be made when we follow the trail of Freudian interpretation and the examples of how the Oedipus complex and the figure of the stereotypical, overbearing Jewish mother creates a cloistered, almost castrated male. Especially when noted in Philip Roth’s book, Portnoy’s Complaint, does the perverse conception about a son’s urge for his mother (and in this case of course, a Jewish son) seem quite relatable to many of Woody Allen’s restrained, repressed and frustrated characters. Frustration and release: this is the vicious cycle. And let’s just make it quite clear now that Jewish descent is not a mere coincidence.


The idea of self-hatred identifiable in Jewish men and in Alex Portnoy, the young Jewish man who has a penchant for a less admirable and male-shaming “habit,” also has significant lust/frustration over his fierce Jewish mother, as well as a loss of paternal guidance in his father. Freud would ascertain this situation as being fitting into the common effects of the Oedipus complex and perhaps simply, one of the many consequences. This “habit” perhaps just may be seen as a different form of a male being thwarted (sexually by the cooing and attachment of his mother, countered with the resignation of his father as a male leader).

Woody Allen’s film Play It Again, Sam (1972) fixes on Allan, a neurotic man whose goal is to overcome his wife’s departure from him to enter the threatening road of love again. He finds solace and guidance in this experience within the character of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (Curtiz 1943). Bogart plays his role-model. What I find interesting is that Allan finds leadership in a man who is confident with smoothness, purity, yet a ruggedness that is decidedly male. Rick Blaine, Bogart’s character tries to win back his true love Ingrid Bergman who he was separated from, but very in the weak sense that Allan tries to woo women in.



Rick completely contrasts the neurotic, timid, frustrated Jewish male and Allan himself. And through this all, Rick seems to fit into the cast of a man who is motherless, yet strong without motherly influence. The fear of defiance that Alex has over his mother funnels into the fear that Allan has over the various women he is about to date- both are set on impressing women and have been mentally castrated, therefore masturbation gives the male some action of his own to control.

The First Shot of Allen: A Taste of His Neurosis and Genius

There is a crippling effect that Woody Allen can have upon his viewers and those reading the texts of his films, that is, the theories and ideas he offers in them. At least to me. And in the same way, I believe that Woody Allen’s crippling neurosis so prevalent in his persona and self-deprecating; his defeatist characters are at the same time an advantage and not only to his comedy. Advantage, you ask? Some may think his severe self-consciousness led to his many problems. Perhaps and most likely in addition to what seems like a lack of confidence. But in what I have grown to know about this complex comedian is that he used this trait with style, used it to display and uncover our own deepest, hidden doubts and questions about the meaning of life, the finality of death, if we’re able to be loved or love and so forth. His characters played individuals with heightened criticism of themselves, systems and institutions, and further were people who were led into skepticism quicker than a dog to a dropped morsel of food. For instance, the film “Bananas” (1971) mocks the media and the consumers of it with a skeptical tone, pointing out their ability to remove all seriousness from a situation of political unrest and dictatorship with numbness stronger than an OTC.



In regards to his over-wrought characters, in his film “Annie Hall”, the romance is one of wind-changing victories and downfalls. The constant, constant questions! The constant, constant incapacity to meet another’s wants! The romance ends badly, but what we learn from the film and the presented cycle of events and humorously combative dialogue is not a specific theory on romance but an attentiveness to reaching a revelation and understanding of what this thing called life is, what this will all add up to, and if relationships can ever be something successful.