Concerning why psychoanalysis is an interesting match with science fiction film i came across an exposition concerning Freud’s position regarding why dreams were valued highly. Freud’s position is explained thus:
‘A dream is an escape-hatch or safety-valve through which repressed desires, fears, or memories seek an outlet into the conscious mind. The emotion in question is censored by the conscious mind and so had to enter the dream in disguise, like a person barred from a club who gets in by dressing up as somebody else’ (1.)
Science Fiction replaces the dream, Andre Bazin noted that films are much like dreams, in the sense that they can, as all fiction can, become a safety valve through which the tensions are bled through and organised into symbols, ideas and actions. Repressed desires and tensions are played out and resolved through the narrative of invading aliens and machines. I will further augment this position with a look at Them (1954) and other sci-fi films in the future.
(1.) Peter Barry, Beginning Theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, (1995), p. 99.
The Motley View 