Freud Was Right/Film

• The Boondock Saints: A detective accidently says "fag man" instead of "fat man" in front of Straight Gay Agent Smecker. Smecker even comments, "Well. Freud was right."
• The Tremors series is basically all about this trope -- giant phallic-shaped monsters that burst out at people, wiggling long slimy muscular tongues that are constantly creeping towards their victims.
  • This was actually worse in preproduction, according to the featurette. At one time the graboids were supposed to extrude sticky white innards to capture people, but apparently the producers (and their giggling officemates) thought it was too blatant.
• In the Made for TV Movie Highlander: The Source, it's revealed that "There Can Be Only One" really means that only one Immortal can have a child, so all the running around cutting people's heads off really is overcompensating for their self-perceived lack of sexual potency. I wish I could say this came out of nowhere, but the movies and TV series have mentioned this occasionally.
• Alien. Even besides the alleged male rape allegories or the grotesque perversion of childbirth, according to some Film Studies scholars, it's all about a homicidal penis-headed monster chasing a strong, independent woman through the womblike tunnels of a spacecraft controlled by a computer called MU-TH-R. Clearly, Freud Was Right. And H.R. Giger was mental.
  • Gee, ya think? Just go to any website that hosts the man's artwork...
  • Incidentally, the same critiques also said that the sequel, Aliens, was about the Vietnam War and the strength of mothers defending their children.
  • A late scene in the first movie has the Alien's tail sliding up a woman's leg, to the sound of her moaning and crying in terror. Word of God in the audio commentary is this was actually intended to be perceived as the Alien raping her.
    • Which makes sense, as, being the only other female character, Lambert serves as a Foil to Ripley. Ripley is the strong female character who can stand up to domination, by males or by symbolic monsters. Lambert, on the other hand, has done nothing but scream and dither inefficently for the entire movie. Too bad about her fate, though.
  • Apparently the monster was taken from his chronic night terrors, which also inspired H.P. Lovecraft.
  • One should also mention that Giger's original design for the alien was to include a grotesquely overlarge penis: he was talked out of it. Fortunately.
  • Also, the original design for the alien egg -- from which hatches the ultimate Vagina Dentata, facehuggers -- had a single slit in the top, but it was changed because it was just. Too. Fucking. Obvious.
  • Taking the Vagina Dentata one step further -- notice anything about the facehugger's belly?
  • The pose of the alien pilot in whose ship the eggs were found is...suggestive.
  • And despite the alien's phallic-shaped head, it also posesess a vagina-like mouth.
    • How so? The mouth opened up and sent out a long inner mouth, which, as is seen near the end of the film, is normally limp, but when the alien is "aroused," leaks clear fluid, and becomes larger and stiff enough to penetrate skin and bone via flushing the veins of the mouth with the alien's blood. In other words, exactly like how an erection works (minus the whole "murder" thing). Hell, in the sequels, it could also spurt corrosive acid from this mouth.
• In Jiri Menzel's adaptation of Closely Watched Trains, the dispatcher invites women over to the station house to have sex with them on the station-master's couch. Menzel has a nice suggestive shot of the ripped oilcloth of the couch with its filling coming out that looks remarkably like an unshaved vagina.
  • There's one scene where the main character talks to a woman who's stroking a chicken.
  • Trains, of course, are phallic symbols (just imagine one going into a tunnel).
• Most of the time, the symbolism in Inception is very subtle. For example when Ariadne choses a chess pice as her personal test to see if she's still dreaming, of the 12 different pieces she picks a white bishop, the most phallic looking one. With all the skyscrapers in the movie, it might be easy to miss, but when Cobb an Mal build their dream city, the movie shows thousands of giant skyscrapers bursting from the ground.
  • And then there's the train, which is as subtle as Pyramid Head: A massive freight train suddenly comming out of nowhere at great speed, crushing everything in its path, leaving a trail of destruction behind it. And it only shows up when Cobb is alone with a woman.
• Lampshaded in StarTrek: First Contact: Data and Picard are musing about the repurposed nuclear missile that later becomes the first Warp-capable Earth vessel, and stroke it in awe -- whereupon Troi throws out, "Would you three like to be alone?"
• Ghostbusters. "I am the gatekeeper." "I am the keymaster." Yup, nothing symbolic there.
  • Boy, I for one am glad that the gatekeeper wasn't the horse, as Vinz originally thought.
  • Goo goo g'joob.
• In the ending of North by Northwest, there is a love scene aboard a train, and the very last shot shows the train entering a tunnel. Alfred Hitchcock actually once said that this was a phallic symbol.
  • Good old Alfred did this a lot. Just watch Strangers on a Train. You gotta be sneaky to get around those censorship laws!
  • And in Psycho. It's done throughout the film (Marion wears white underwear before stealing the money, black underwear afterwards), but most notably in the infamous shower scene -- the phallic-shaped knife, repeatedly stabbing Marion, the entire murder being born of the killer's sexual repression. . .
  • Note the scene in Rear Window where the photographer is spying on his neighbors. Unable to see with one camera, he replaces it with one with a telescopic (that is to say, longer) lens.
• Played for humor in Shrek; when they first see Farquaad's castle, Shrek slyly asks Donkey, "Do you think he's Compensating for Something?" Sure, Farquaad is The Napoleon, but Shrek didn't know it at that moment so it's more of a Parental Bonus than anything else.

Donkey: ... Which I think means he has a really small--(Shrek stomps on his hoof)

• A lot of critics have pointed out that an alien character's head in the animated kids' movie Space Chimps looks a lot like a boob.
• There are several IMDB posts speculating that Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace, the Fagin-type character from August Rush, was a pedophile.
• In case the X-Men movies didn't have enough issues, has anyone looked carefully at Xavier's platform in the "big round room"?
  • The design is not exclusive to the movies, it's comics canon.
• Idiocracy Lampshades this by having weaponized monster trucks blatantly phallic in design. To punctuate it, Joe's small truck has a rubber, flaccid penis attached to the hood.
• Parodied in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. During the scene at the mall, Freud himself is seen holding a corndog. As he meets young (hot) women, it rises, but when he gets shot down, it flops over in his hand.....
• Beautifully parodied in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, when Captain Barbossa in full, picture-perfect "captain of the ship" pose extends a telescope. Jack Sparrow imitates him and then shamefully slinks away when his telescope turns out to be noticeably smaller. About half an hour later the scene repeats, only this time Jack managed to come up with a telescope of almost a yard in length.
  • And again sort of, later in the movie. During Jack and Davy Jones' sword-fight, Jack's sword breaks without him notices, resulting in Davy Jones brandishing his sword at Jack, while smiling, who then tries to threaten him with his broken sword, now a quarter its original length.
• The Descent: Chicks with picks probing tight, wet tunnels.
• The Death Star trench run. And the obvious Oedipal implications.
  • But his mother is DEEAAAAAAAAAAAD.
  • "Wedge! Pull out! You're not doing any good back there!" "Negative, negative, it didn't go in!" "Luke, at that speed do you think you'll be able to pull out in time?"
  • Speaking of Star Wars, George Lucas has specifically said Vader cutting off Luke's hand is a castration scene.
• Lampshaded in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear. When the main characters start doing the horizontal lambada, they cut away to scenes of girders being raised, trains going into tunnels, hot dogs getting placed in hot dog buns, rocket launches, and eventually a Roman fountain.
  • And numerous shots of flowers blooming, then of missiles firing and fireworks exploding.
• Dr. Strangelove is full of these, including various characters names (such as... well, Strangelove), General Ripper's insecurity about the Communists and our "precious bodily fluids", Kong Riding the Bomb when they drop it culminating in a "massive atomic explosion" and the way the plane in the very first scene is being fueled.
• Kia decides to invoke this on Freddy during Freddy vs. Jason, comparing his tiny knives to Jason's great big machete. Unfortunately, she wasn't paying attention and promptly meets said machete.
• Flat out lampshaded in the film Titanic:

Molly Brown: Hey, uh, who thought of the name "Titanic"? Was it you, Bruce?
J. Bruce Ismay: Yes, actually. I wanted to convey sheer size; and size means stability, luxury and, above all, strength.
Rose De Witt Bukater: Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr Ismay? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you.

• Parodied in Spaceballs, with the lightsabers physical manifestation of the Schwartz emerging from rings... which happened to be held right about level with Dark Helmet and Lone Star's crotches...

Dark Helmet: I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.

• Avatar by James Cameron has a very offending scene. The protagonist has to tame a beast by sticking his hair-braid into the creature's own braid. The creature resists, and he is fighting to stick it in. After restraining the monster, he sticks it in. After he does it successfully, the beast is his for life. That's right -- these aliens basically rape their animals into submission.
  • Also, whoever 'tames' the giant phallic symbol Toruk is automatically respected by everyone.
    • The "taming" in question is a merging of minds through the intertwining neurons, and can't truly be considered rape.
      • Cracked.com begs to differ.
  • Considering the highly suggestive imagery with the whole "phallic symbol" stuff, it's surprising that it wasn't used in the sex-scene with the protagonist and Neytiri.
  • Apparently the sex-scene was originally longer, more suggestive, and involved the hair braids, but it was cut to ensure PG-13 rating. It's supposed to be back in the DVD release, however.
  • Stephen Colbert had a blowout with the use of braids in both the deleted sex scene and the animal taming:

It's like a person having sex...with Snoopy!

• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me literally had the line, when Austin says "paging Dr. Freud" when walks in on his time-clone "Past Austin" in bed with Felicity Shagwell. At first he's shocked, but he reaffirms he doesn't blame her as they're both quite handsome and contemplates a threesome.
• Sauron is... um... a circle on top of a phallic symbol. And it's not an eye. Oh, and all the Hobbit holes are circles, and the One Ring is a circle... What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
  • An in-depth, detailed discussion documenting Freudian subtext in The Lord of the Rings film adaptation can be found here.
• Oh, come on. What about the phallic spire on the original VHS cover of The Little Mermaid?
  • The phallus is the least of the problems in that movie. Here's a fellow example.
    • This is more a case of people seeing what they want to see combined with poor artistry; that's supposed to be the priest's knee.
  • Ariel gasping for breath once reaching the surface after being changed into a human is very orgasmic-looking.
  • Also, she was near completely naked during that part too, making it that much more awesome.
• Wendy in Peter Pan is often interpretated to have a crush on Peter and an attraction to Hook. The actor who plays Hook normally also plays her father. Yikes. Turned Up to Eleven in the 2003 film.
  • It could have been worse. In the stage play, Hook was originally meant to have been played by the actress also playing Wendy's mother. This only changed because the actor playing Mr. Darling was very popular, so Barrie got overruled.
• In Kieslowski's "Dekalog IX", Roman, who has found out a couple of days before that he would no longer be able to have sex, helps a man fuel his car. Apparently, inserting a hose in the car's petrol tank looked like something quite different. Roman, sadly, hasn't failed to notice this resemblance.
• Played with in the original Dirty Harry when Scorpio demands to know if Harry is carrying any guns. When Harry complies and shows his Magnum .44, Scorpio quips, "My, that's a big one."
  • Said line was actually an ad-lib. The director, once everybody stopped laughing, decided to keep it in
• Agent K of the Men In Black wields a huge chrome raygun, and Agent J is quite put out when he's issued with a tiny one.
  • Not to mention that the tiny gun ends up being extremely powerful. It's not the size that counts.
• In Dragnet (the 1987 movie) there is this bit:

Connie Swail: (who has just been rescued from becoming a virgin sacrifice) How come his is so much bigger than yours?
Officer Joe Friday: Miss?
Connie Swail: The gun.
Officer Joe Friday: I've never needed more.

• Critters 2 has Charlie as a bounty hunter. He'd been a nerd on Earth with little chance of having a girlfriend. He points out that he became a bounty hunter because he would go "wherever the wind will blow me." He demonstrates his lack of sex by having his shapeshifter friend take on the shape of a Playboy model.
• Does The Human Centipede count? For god's sake, people are fused together ass-to-mouth. And the villainous Mad Scientist looks like he has a massive fetish.
  • But there's nothing symbolic in it -- just an idea -- however crazed - that is played as if for real. The reason it is so un-powerful is that there are no deeper resonances.
• Lair of the White Worm moves at a rate of one obvious penis metaphor per four minutes. Then again, anyone familiar with Ken Russell might expect this from any of his films.
• Subtle and tasteful: the cello in Truly, Madly, Deeply.
• In Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly a spilled pail of milk quite clearly stands in for a spontaneous ejaculation.