In Heaven…
Although Eraserhead by David Lynch, is a horrific tale of coming to terms with fatherhood, and loneliness with themes of: family, premarital sex, wedlock, infidelity, abortion, child birth, and murder; Erasehead has chauvinistic undertones, values the blue collar worker, and the oneiric landscapes inside Henry’s apartment mystifies and capture the viewer’s attention that pulls them into the narrative as well as focuses on the imagery. Lynch’s interpretation of the oneiric experience is almost that of lucidity, since the main character (Henry) has his eyes wide open when he sleeps while Mary X (Henry’s girlfriend) sleeps with her eyes closed. Henry is in search with a spiritual meaning and purpose to (and for) his life while living in a post apocalyptic universe known as Philadelphia. The hero’s journey begins with the spiritual, like that of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail (A very twisted version, but spiritual none-the-less). The desire for spirituality is vividly expressed by Henry’s escape to the woman in the radiator; during his daydreams. David Lynch’s uses Film as an instrument to capture his world of surrealistic expression.
In Eraserhead, Lynch’s portrayal of Mary X is that of a weak, timid, seductive, controlling, baby producing trapper; that ruins Henry Spencer’s life. He is a blue collar worker for a printing company, and he was on vacation. A vacation that was cut short when Henry found out that his girlfriend Mary X had an abnormal premature mutation. A mutation named Junior. Henry had to get married and help rear the little mutated child. Mary, afraid of her mother as well as motherhood, looks down and crosses her arms when she is around her mother. Mary, when confronted with becoming a mother, leaves in desperation back to her parents, and leaving Henry and the child to fend for themselves. A contradiction to Mary’s values occurs; even though, she wants to get away and seems to be happy living with Henry, she returns to the place that she wants to escape from. Her actions paint a picture of immaturity as well as the contradiction.
When the audience is introduced to Mary; she sits anxiously looking out of her post apocalyptic home in an industrial area of Philadelphia. The house is in a desolate part of the industrial town, and Mary sits on the window sill spying out the window. Henry pulls a note out of his pocket while Mary stares out into the darkness from the window. Mary X tells Henry that he is late and Henry retorts “I made it, didn’t I?” Mary introduces Henry to her mother and the mother begins to ask him questions about what type of work he does and what is he doing at the moment while Mary who is very timid at that moment; begins to have an epileptic seizure.
In Eraserhead, Lynch manipulates time and space. In the beginning of the film, a black planet with a man sitting by a broken glass window mans the levers which suck up a fetal looking object from Henry’s mind and into a pool on the planet while lying down with his eyes open. Henry (the main character of the film) wears a suit with a pocket protector filled with pens walks through an Industrial part of Philadelphia holding a paper bag filled with groceries. Henry checks his mail box for any correspondence; notices nothing, and walks to his room. An attractive woman across from Henry tells him that a girl named Mary had called, and that Mary needed too get a hold of him. Henry thanks her, and enters his apartment. Henry places his groceries on top of a sideboard, and turns on some music on his record player. Taking off his socks and placing them on the radiator, he stares at the floor looking at the textured shag under the radiator. In the following passage by the French Surrealist Group discusses how the subconscious mind perceives the contradictions of reality and how it manipulates to rationalize the meaning in the world of the absurd:“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past, and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions” (Second Manifesto of Surrealism, pp. 123-4). This is true; especially, in Eraserhead. David Lynch manipulates the phobia of fatherhood with black humor. For example, in Eraserhead, there is a scene where the mutated premature child is crying; Henry inserts a thermometer into the child’s mouth (Seeming to be normal), turns around, and the child is covered in boils while Henry replies, “I guess you are sick?” The infant became ill after Henry inserts the thermometer. So, Henry sets up a humidifier and an ice pack over the child. Henry invites his female neighbor into his apartment while the baby is there. She asks him where his wife is and then she asks him if it would be alright to stay the night. She does and they have sex in front of the baby. In the center of the bed they are immersed in milk where they fornicate. These scenes are absurd and can only be rationalized and reasoned in a world that is oneiric. For example, when Henry wakes up to Mary sprouting out fetuses, and Henry while shocked kept pulling out fetuses from between her legs. Henry began to throw the fetuses against the walls, and the fetuses’ head would splatter, or when the Father is introduced and he lets them all know that dinner is ready, and if Henry would do the honors of carving the chicken. Mr. X hands Henry the knife and fork and Henry holds the knife and fork over the chicken; the chicken’s wings and legs begin to move while ooze seeps out between its thighs and Mrs. X begins to salivate and have an orgasm at the table. Mrs. X runs to the kitchen. Henry is ambushed by Mrs. X and is interrogated if he had premarital sex with her daughter. She also begins to kiss Henry on the neck. Henry tells her that, that information is none of her business, but she spits back that Mary just had a premature baby and as soon as they get married they can pick up the child. Henry is shocked and dumfounded. They pick up the child and Henry feels like a complete family, but arriving into his apartment he stares off into the radiator and he sees a stage before snapping out of his daydream, due to the baby’s cries. At night a storm wakes up the baby and he begins to cry, and Mary cannot sleep and she leaves to her mothers. Henry stares at the radiator once more after Mary leaves and the stage returns. An alien like woman with really big cheeks dances on the stage doing a shuffle while fetuses are falling onto the stage. The woman in the radiator then steps on a fetus and does the same to the right of her. When Henry wakes up from his dream Mary begins convulsing in her sleep; only to find Mary giving birth to more of the same mutations.
During the splattering of the premature fetal mutants, the audience is wrenching in disgust and is overwhelmed with sympathy and empathy with Henry. The audience is experiencing synaesthesia; due to the immersion of the narrative. Lynch’s shocking imagery of Henry killing his son with a pair of scissors; throws the audience into the very face of fear. The film expresses an extreme fear of becoming and being a parent through this metaphorical oneiric landscape. In the following passage, Balazs discusses how the imagery is processed through psyche: “We have learnt to integrate single disjointed pictures into a coherent scene, without even becoming conscious of the complicated psychological processes involved. We have also acquired the ability to interpret picture metaphors and picture symbols that convey situations and emotions indirectly” (Balazs, 1952 edition, p. 30-35). The imagery in the scene is very extreme, but the message is very clear. Even though, Henry murders his children; he will find salvation in Heaven. In Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Bunuel, the opening scene is very extreme and shocking; a woman sits in a barber’s chair only to get her eye sliced open by a straight razor. Bunuel also juxtaposes the images of the eye being sliced with clouds moving through the moon to symbolize the slice. Brunnius explains how film is the perfect medium and how the camera is the perfect instrument to capture the world of dreams, in the following passage: “Contrary to theatre, film, like thought, like the dream, chooses some gestures, defers or enlarges them, eliminates others, travels many hours, centuries, kilometers in a few seconds, speeds up, slows down, stops, goes backwards . It is impossible to imagine a truer mirror of mental performance.” (Brunnius, ‘Crossing the Bridge’, q.v.). Brunnius’s quote captures the elements of cinema can be used as an instrument to manipulate and evoke the subconscious mind. Just like Man Ray would use different techniques to entertain himself while watching a boring film. In the following passage by Paul Hammond, he discusses what Man Ray’s techniques were: “Man Ray used to transform any film that bored him by blinking rapidly, making a grill with his fingers, covering his eyes with a semi-transparent cloth, even wearing a pair of prism spectacles he had made himself’ (Hammond, pg. 10). Man Ray’s techniques are very interesting, and using his theories to increase the interest of the spectator; can be a useful tool when creating a surreal film/art. Lynch uses a similar technique when he cuts his film. Instead of showing the audience a simple cut, a wipe, or a black screen; Lynch uses milk traveling back to the edges of the frame or doors open to introduce the following scene.
The audience is immersed in the narrative as well as the dark aesthetic qualities of his post apocalyptic universe. The woman in the radiator is Henry’s guardian Angel, and after slaughtering the conscious ego of the audience; everyone experiences salvation as well as closure, and the characters (Henry and the woman in the radiator) are bathed in white light as if their sins have been wiped clean because in heaven, everything is fine.
Works Cited
Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976.
Bunuel, Luis. “Cinema, Instrument Poetry,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.
Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.
Goudal, Jean. “Surrealism and Cinema,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.
Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.
The French Surrealist Group. “Manifesto of the Surrealist’s Concerning L’Age d’Or,”
The Shadow and Its Shadow. Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.
Hammond, Paul. “Off at a Tangent,” The Shadow and Its Shadow.
Ed. Paul Hammond. London: British Film Institute, 1978.
Eraserhead. Dir. David K. Lynch. Perf. Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, and Jeanne
Bates. Absurda. 1977.
Hoffman, Alison. Eisenstein BB and Day Six: Power Point. Beach Board
Accessed on 17 Nov. 2008.
