OOH! LOOK! BANANAS!
Well, here it is!
-A phallocentric look at Owen and Diane's relationship, and, hopefully, my 'A' for this semester:
"The Restrictions of a Love Story: Laura Mulvey’s Psychoanalysis in Torchwood’s ‘Out of Time”
OR
The thing about love stories, especially those forged in a society of patriarchal hegemony, is that the fate of the people in love is always restricted by the phallocentric ideologies that surround their relationship. The thing about the BBC’s Torchwood is that it tends to avoid or marginalize those phallocentric ideologies, seeing as it is a science fiction drama about a secret government organization that monitors a rift in time and space running through Cardiff, Wales. Psychoanalysis is about as alien to Torchwood as the extraterrestrial beings it deals with, and relationships- hegemonic or otherwise, are undermined when there is unpredictable, backfiring Martian technology to defuse or giant, apocalypse-bringing aliens to catch. However, when the excitement is over and the aliens are bagged, Torchwood, at its core, is very human. Chronicling the diverse lives of the five members of the alien-fighting team from week to week, Torchwood inevitably cannot help but dwell on the aspects of humanity that supplement the show.
Doctor Owen Harper- Torchwood’s resident medic and one of the show’s main characters- has the defining traits of insensitivity, cynicism, scorn, and narcissism: all prime examples of Torchwood’s humanity at its worst. Due to a rocky past full of put-downs, failed relationships, and a rejection by his mother (she disowned and evicted him at age 16) Owen’s development of character has not progressed past grade-A jerk, and more importantly his romantic disappointments have shattered his patience with women and transformed him into a swaggering womanizer. All life experiences considered, Owen is left with an incurable case of social ineptitude and a lot to pity. One-night-stands and misogynistic dialogue are routine for Owen, until the episode "Out of Time"- when the rift in time opens and spits out something that is not Torchwood’s standard space junk. Diane Holmes- a stunning, headstrong airplane pilot straight out of 1953- is delivered into the brave new world of the 21st century, and perhaps even more strangely, invited to adapt under the watchful care of one Doctor Owen Harper.
Giving another meaning to “the odd couple”, the free-spirited, intellectual, sharp-tongued Diane clashes with Owen in every sense of the word. Trying to spread her wings in a place she should not even exist, Diane struggles with confinement (her pilot’s license, obviously, has expired years in her past), an altered ideology (2007 is radically different than 1953), and the man who has so incongruously assigned her to his care. For the chauvinistic Owen, who is quite accustomed to the temporally-displaced, Diane is at first an object to be looked at- exotic and beautiful, and of course lost and helpless and in need of a man. Diane, coming from what Owen thinks to be a sexually-repressed time period (the 1950s), has a thing or two to teach Owen in regards to sex, chivalry, and his womanizing ways. The more time the couple spend in a headlock, the more Diane finds she can teach Owen, the more vulnerable Owen finds himself, and by the middle of the episode, predictably, he falls absolutely in love with her- something that has never before happened in his liaisons. Owen's life pre-Diane was meaningless and frivolous; and the theme of the episode ultimately becomes "redemption via a woman". At the episode’s tumultuous finale, Diane leaves Owen. Prioritizing adventure over Owen’s devotion to her, Diane breaks Owen’s heart, flying off in her plane in hopes that the rift will reopen and send her someplace new, and crippling Owen romantically all over again.
Owen’s transformation in relation to Diane- operating in a traditional exhibitionist role: a woman initially presented as and expected to be an object to be looked at- speaks volumes in terms of social commentary, especially when critiqued under the lens of psychoanalytic feminist Laura Mulvey. In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, and her book, Fetishism and Curiosity, Mulvey invokes her career as a film director and theorist, targeting the male-dominated mainstream cinema of the early 20th century (Diane’s time period) and assessing its objectifying, hegemonically-predisposed positioning of the female figure. Under the conjectures of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Owen, then, can serve as both a stand-in for film form, structured by the unconscious of patriarchal society, and evidently, as a member of that society, enforcing Mulvey’s status quo by his overly-exemplifying phallocentric behavior. Diane, in turn, represents “the look”: the image of woman in film (or rather, in Owen’s eyes), and is a bearer of guilt, first as a ‘love interest’- in Lacanian terms, one who possesses the “desire to make good the lack that the (Owen’s) phallus signifies, and then as a catalyst, “the sexually mature woman as a non-mother”, which inevitably presents a danger to the male in question. Mulvey says that “the paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world”. Taken literally, Diane’s arrival hailed meaning to Owen’s previously hollow love life.
In theory, Diane possesses an independent power because of her catalytic nature, and proves true Mulvey’s supposition that women stand (in the patriarchal culture) as a signifier for the male other (Owen). Diane, however important, is still tied to her place as a bearer of meaning, and at the end of “Out of Time”, does what she can to surpass this position by leaving Owen, rendering her frustration experienced under the phallocentric order to some degree, and symbolizing her hindered existence in relation to castration. Though she departs in her plane, it is never actually clarified whether or not she succeeded in slipping back through the rift. Diane attempted to escape the phallocentric order of her place in Owen’s life, but never fully transcended it, as Mulvey typifies in her essay.
To reevaluate, Owen’s life experiences have shaped him to become the perfect model for unchallenged, mainstream film. His sexual quips, licentious behavior, and raring libido further encoded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order. As a substitute for Mulvey’s Hollywood, Owen subconsciously and simultaneously restricts himself to “a formal mise en scene”, reflecting the dominant, ideological concepts of a womanizer, of a man, and of the society he lives in. Diane is in his sights- cast as the leading lady, so to speak, interwoven as erotic pleasure and a plot device, yet staying fast to her place as the central woman figure. If Diane is to make any advancements as Owen’s equal, Mulvey says “the satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the high point of film history hitherto must be attacked”. As long as Owen- representing a member of his society- continues to view Diane lustfully or desires to look at her, Diane will remain the unknowing and unwilling victim of Owen’s scopophilia (pleasure in looking), and furthermore, Owen- representing film- will continue to subject Diane to a controlling and curious gaze. As an example, during a particularly poignant scene in the episode, Owen buys Diane a presumably expensive and undeniably gorgeous crimson gown. Although Diane appreciates the gesture, it is chauvinistic nonetheless, as Diane will get no intrinsic pleasure from wearing the gown, other than to impress Owen, and Owen bought the dress specifically so he could see Diane wear it. Although Owen’s gaze on Diane is not Mulvey’s definition of voyeuristic, it still evokes pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight, is still of precedence, is unremitting, and most importantly, is that of a man. Because Diane “performs within the narrative”- obliges to wear the gown and drives the plot because of it- the gazes of Owen as a spectator and of Owen as an objectifying film “are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude”.
However, Owen‘s fixation on Diane is not his only source of satisfaction. Mulvey says, “The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect.” Owen (as a character and as typical male member of society) is extremely self-aware, fashion-conscious, attention-seeking, and looking to impress; literally: narcissistic. Owen must work to lure his various female partners to bed, and finds a there is a pleasure in being looked at, as well as a certain set of societal conventions that must be adhered to in order for his primping to be successful. As another example from the episode, Diane trespasses into Owen’s bathroom vanity, comically asking him, “Who do all those beauty products belong to?” Owen explains that men have made a jump in their morning routines since the 1950s, and that most men value their appearance as much as women are traditionally expected to. Mulvey notes that “narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen”. Because Owen here is symbolizing both a member of a culture that is set on looking presentable, as well as the embodiment of that culture, it is understandable that Owen would be conscious of style. Taking it further, Owen- representing mainstream film- would unavoidably be required to dress accordingly so he could both reflect and coincide with the active power of Diane’s alluring “look”.
Because Owen and Diane eventually reach a comfortable position with one another, their respective roles interact, in an ‘onscreen’ relationship and in Mulvey’s psychoanalytic sense. Mulvey states, “…curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the person in the world”. Head-over-heels, Owen focuses on every characteristic of Diane, physical and otherwise, much like a narrative film presents a woman with a backstory and opportunities for monologues, and incorporates technique (close-ups of the most appealing body parts, mood lighting, a concentration on the face during affecting bits of dialogue) to accentuate her attractiveness and appeal. Owen adores Diane because of her individualism and resoluteness just as strongly as he enjoys her physical beauty. Much of “Out of Time” is visually sensual, offering equal screen time that emphasizes the attributes of both characters. Owen‘s narcissism/self-consciousness and Diane’s “look” are “…both are formative structures, mechanisms without intrinsic meaning. In themselves they have no signification, unless attached to an idealization.” Because Owen and Diane bond so powerfully, they automatically acknowledge and value each other’s presence. The idealization of the 21st century love story- arguably a relationship of more equity than typical of Mulvey’s writing- moves Mulvey’s perception of narrative film closer to “the alternative” cinema she necessitates in order for women to make progress in the patriarchal film world.
Exclusive to the themes in the episode, Mulvey defines her alternative as “the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without simply rejecting it, transcending outworn or repressive forms, and daring to break with normal, pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire”. Diane, ripped out of the past, enters 2007 with the hope than men have evolved from their pigheadedness (which, idealistically is the driving factor for the hegemony in film during her and Mulvey’s respective times). Though it is a “thrill” to observe that men have made leaps and bounds in terms of the sexism that Diane is used to, she still winds up with Owen- the womanizer- aware of his century’s achievements without having fully rejected the repressive forms that shape who he is as a male. This is still to the benefit of Diane, however, who helps to craft Owen’s new “language of desire” by debunking and utilizing aspects of the past and present to advance their relationship. Diane, is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal, narrative film (Owen‘s life), yet her presence “tends to work against the development of a storyline, to freeze the flow of the action”. The closer Owen and Diane become, and the more Owen becomes smitten with her, the more he mentally traps himself in the patriarchal conventions that Mulvey is so adamant are indispensable.
Owen confesses to Diane, “All I see is you, all I can think about is what you're wearing, what you're thinking…And it's like, I don’t know, when I'm not with you I'm out of focus. How have you done this to me? I'm scared.” His voyeuristic tendencies prevail, they cannot function as equals. Mulvey cites director Budd Boetticher- famous in Diane’s time- as saying, “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather, what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does.” Although Diane transformed Owen for the better, causing him to rethink the conventions that bound him, she is unfortunately still restricted by what she represents: castration and the ruin something of her caliber will ultimately bring upon Owen, disregarding the fact that Diane had no cruel intentions and performed only to fine-tune Owen’s language of desire. Diane leaves Owen the morning after he acknowledges his transformation and musters the courage to say he loves her. Mulvey states, “..the dichotomy between surface and secret, artifice and truth, is paradoxical. The artificial surface of feminine beauty may disguise an inside that can only be revealed to unveil the danger of the femme fatale.” Since the 21st century is still tied to the same phallocentric hegemony that prevailed in Diane and Mulvey’s times, Owen and Diane’s love story is at best only a feeble attempt reach the alternative.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends Eds. Richer, David H. . Boston/New York: , 2007. 1172-1180.
Mulvey, Laura. Fetishism and Curiosity. London: BFI Publishing, 1996.
CAUTION: Is moar boring than you think.