A Reading of Being Human from a Psychoanalytical Perspective (First Year Essay)

Since Being Human is back on our TV screens in the UK I thought there probably wouldn't be a better time to share this essay I produced about the show in my first year at university, for a module titled Popular Culture. The essay is a reading of Being Human done from a psychoanalytical perspective.

It achieved a B+ mark (I think the lecturer was being a bit kind personally) and could be useful as a guide to anyone assigned the task of analysing a piece of Popular Culture (should you somehow stumble upon my blog). As always DO NOT plagiarise the work thinking you could get an easy pass for a first year module that "doesn't really matter because the grades don't go towards anything", you WILL be caught.

There will be plenty of grammatical errors. I were just learnding to spoke proper at the time. Also, I have just spent way too long writing a post for the morning, it's bloody late right now, I've given up, and it is probably time I hit the hay.

Enjoy... or don't if you prefer.

In this essay I will attempt to apply psychoanalysis to the television show Being Human, I will attempt to dissect the meanings behind the actions of the main characters within the show by giving examples of symbolism within the text. I will do this by treating the text as being that of the authors dream, and in doing so the analysis will be centred on the writer and director having chosen the symbolism unconsciously as a way of allowing their own hidden desires originating unconsciously from the id to be expressed in the text that they have produced. This is known as an ‘author-centred’ approach (Storey). I will analyse the meaning behind Mitchell’s thirst for blood and how this can be seen as being a sexual desire rather than a need to feed to sustain their own life, added to this analysis I will produce an argument for George’s subplot within the story as being one that reflects the Oedipus complex and how he must overcome the ‘father’ of Mitchell in order to gain his love.

To be able to produce a piece of psychoanalysis on Being Human I chose to read a variety of books and articles illustrating the key concepts and how psychoanalysis has been used to interpret texts of a similar nature. I used two books to gain a deeper knowledge of Freud’s concept on psychoanalysis; the first book I used was An Introduction to the History of Psychology. This book gave me a brief overview of Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and allowed me to apply it to the text that I was going to analyse. The second book, Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film written Lauretis, offered me an understanding of Freudian analysis in film. Chapter one of this book offers an oversight of Freud’s concept of drives which, by making reference to popular films, allows the reader to engage in the process of applying a Freudian analysis to a cinematic text (Lauretis). By concentrating on the concept of drives the reader is given the opportunity to understand what Freud was theorising in a greater detail when he spoke about the relationship between the ego and the drives within humans. For further reading, more specifically examples of authors analysing texts I chose two articles from the Journal of Popular Culture.

The first essay I chose was Spiderman In Love: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, this articles analysis of Spiderman reveals the film to be centred around the way that Peter Parker has to overcome his enemies, being presented as hyper masculine (Kaplan). In doing so the author believes that Peter Parker is working through the Oedipal complex. This is illustrated by Kaplan in the way that the villains throughout the film interact with Peter's life, “the screen is filled with male villains who live in close proximity, invade Parker's home, and claim blood ties” (Kaplan; 310). Kaplan also writes that the love story between Mary Jane and Spiderman is one that reflects the Oedipus complex, where Peter often finds himself looking into Mary Jane’s home due to their close proximity and sees her father acting violently towards her. Peter then assumes the role of the child in this home, wishing to take on the role of the father and gain the affection of Mary Jane, who could be likened to playing the role of the mother. Parker is said to assume the role of the passive innocent child being part of the relationship in the home between MJ and her father (Kaplan).

The article by Schopp, Cruising the Alternatives: Homoeroticism and the Contemporary Vampire offers an explanation behind the sexual desires that vampires appear to derive from drinking blood. The article’s primary focus is upon the way that vampires can be viewed as homosexual, or at least sexually deviant, “For the fans, vampire entertainment provides an opportunity for sexual deviation” (Schopp; 233). The article points to the fact that often novels depict vampires as being homosexual in their desire to drink blood from males, it explains that in Dracula the first person to be seduced and penetrated by Dracula is a male, named Jonathon Harker. Schopp, by citing Stoker, offers this up to be a homosexual act by stating that in the novel when Dracula’s daughter’s attempt to feed from Harkers body Dracula scowls at them, exclaiming “How dare you touch him, any of you?... this man belongs to me” (Stoker cited in Schopp; 235). Homoeroticism is focused upon in this article, as Schopp explains, due to the way in which the “vampire has been so embraced by the Gay/Lesbian community” (Schopp; 235), but this does not rule out the possibility for the act of feeding, and therefore, gaining sexual gratification for the vampire being heterosexual. This is echoed in the article when talking about a number of recent novels based on vampires. The article states that vampires may not necessarily adhere to the human desire to ascribe themselves a rigid sexuality based around attraction to a particular sex and therefore can have a fluid definition of their own sexuality. Schopp writes that “these novels usually convey the notion that sexuality, expressed through any act other than feeding, exists solely in the human realm” (Schopp; 237-38).

Both these articles I read have helped me in analysing the cultural text of Being Human, they reflect that of two characters subplots played out across the first series. In the television show, Being Human, one of the main characters is a vampire named Mitchell, his character’s plot centres around his attempts to suppress his desire to feed on blood. Blood in this context, and more specifically the feeding on blood from a living person, can be seen as a sexual act because it is a fluid transmission from one person to another and that represents semen within the context of text. Within the storyline Mitchell is often seen getting the ‘aroused’ whilst having sex and biting the neck of his sexual partners, both human and vampire, perhaps signalling the ejaculation phase of the encounter. This can be linked to the pleasure an infant gets from the parent feeding the child. After the child has stopped relying on its mother for sustenance it derives pleasure from oral stimulation “no longer serving the purpose of survival and having only the aim for pleasure, it is a purely sexual satisfaction” (Lauretis; 28). This analysis of the act of biting as being purely sexual is given further backing by the acknowledgement in Being Human that vampires do not need to drink blood to be able to survive. Mitchell is often seen eating human food for sustenance and goes for long periods of time without ‘feeding’ on anyone. This is seen within the text as being a craving for blood, and can be likened to the id dominating the vampire with the need for sexual gratification. In most texts with vampires as either protagonists or antagonists, and likewise within Being Human, the process of biting a victims neck gains further credence to being a sexual act because as this is the way that vampires ‘recruit’ new members into their ‘family’. This act of drinking blood acts as a symbolic transmission of semen, when writing about the film ‘The Hunger’, Lauretis states that “As is well known in vampire mythology, feeding is also the means to reproduction, as those on whom the vampire feeds may themselves become vampires” (Lauretis; 27). Vampires also feature in the analysis I am now going to offer for George’s motivations in the text of Being Human.

In Being Human George is afflicted with what he describes as a curse, that of being a werewolf. Although the love between him and Mitchell is represented plutonically, a reading of their unconscious romance is very similar to that of an Oedipal complex. The role that Mitchell assumes within the narrative is similar to him being George’s mother. He helps him survive and cares for him in his first couple of years as a werewolf. When he first met Mitchell, whilst working as a waiter in a cafe in London, he was attacked by vampires due to their dislike of Lykens, Mitchell arrived and stopped the attack and despite being a vampire took a liking to George, essentially becoming his ‘mother figure’. This compassion I believe is the basis behind George’s unyielding affection for Mitchell, one which Mitchell shares but is often torn between his compassion and love for George and the bond with his vampire ‘family’ and his 'father'. Mitchell’s ‘father’ in this text is Herrick a vampire who recruited Mitchell in the First World War. George is an innocent man, both genuine and kind towards other people, he does not embrace his affliction unlike the other ‘Supernatural’s’. He is somewhat similar to the child in the Oedipal complex attempting to repress any thought of the inner beasts desires for fear of castration, he blinds himself to the curse, attempting to deny that it’s desires are a part of him. This fear Hergenhahn states is where a child develops castration anxiety, through a fear that the father will cut off his penis if he allows his desires, or aggression towards the father to be seen by him (Hergenhahn; 535). George knows how cruel and manipulative Herrick can be towards Mitchell, coercing him into doing things that Mitchell’s new found morality tells him is wrong, and sees Herrick as the bad ‘father’ and an obstacle to their relationship. As a result of his lack of morals and his willingness to harm others Herrick can be seen in the same way as the villains in the Spiderman analysis, as possessing hyper-masculinity, and as such viewed negatively, where “masculine force embodies an egotism that ignores all social ties, compassion and morality for the sake of its own brutal desires” (Kaplan; 294). Towards the end of the first season George learns of a plot by the vampires to infiltrate all powerful areas within society, and that Mitchell is taking part in this plot, and seeks to save Mitchell from it. My analysis of this leads me to believe that this is similar to when a child realises that the father has a relationship with the mother that he is excluded from and a result of this seeks to take action to change the situation (Weiniger cited in Kaplan; 301). George throughout represses the beasts desire to be like the cruel, murderous ‘father’ figure, but eventually in the final episode, when faced with the possibility of losing Mitchell to Herrick he overcomes this and kills the ‘father’ to gain Mitchell’s love. George therefore symbolically becomes the ‘father’ himself by identifying with Herrick’s willingness to kill, thus removing the barrier in his and Mitchell's relationship and fulfilling his Oedipal desires.

The purpose of this essay was to analyse the television series Being Human within a psychoanalytical framework by evaluating the meaning hidden within the text behind two characters story arcs over the course of the first season. In doing so I believe that Mitchell’s lust for blood, and that generally of the vampires within the text, is one of a sexual desire, manifesting itself in the id being allowed to satisfy itself in a violent manner. Perhaps as a result of vampires in this text being less constrained by the normative sexuality that humanity conforms to. The biting of the neck and subsequent fluid transmission resulting from this could be viewed as simply oral stimulation, or as a metaphor within the text alluding to seminal fluid being transmitted during sexual intercourse. With George I believe that his sub plot in Being Human was based around his unfulfilled desire to be closer to Mitchell, a man whom he respects greatly for what he has done for him, and how he looks after George like a mother figure as a protector from the vampires, who respect Mitchell greatly due to the story’s told about his dark past. I believe the result of this plot was George’s Oedipal desires being realised after the defeat of the threatening ‘father’ figure that stood in the way of his relationship with Mitchell. Through George’s actions at the end of the narrative he resolved the issues surrounding his complex and won Mitchell’s full attention, as a child desires of every mother during his formative years from a psychoanalytical perspective.

Lauretis, T. De. (2008) Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hergenhahn, B.R. (2008) An Introduction To The History Of Psychology, California: Wadsworth.

Schopp, A. (1997) ‘Cruising the Alternatives: Homoeroticism and the Contemporary Vampire’, The Journal Of Popular Culture, 30, 4, 231-243.

Kaplan, R. L. (2011) ‘Spider-Man in Love: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation’, The Journal Of Popular Culture, 44, 2, 291-313.

Storey, J. (2009) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Harlow: Pearson