Phrack and Phreud

I posted this on Tumblr a long time ago; reposting here for posterity.
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When I first binged 2 ½ seasons of MFMM, I was really interested in the tension between conventional and flipped gender roles, and how that combination makes for something that feels, on the one hand, daring and unconventional, and on the other hand, romantic and comfortably familiar.  [I wrote about it here.] As the series moved toward resolving, or at least advancing, the Phryne/Jack relationship, maintaining that balance was one of the biggest challenges. I think overall, they did a good job, but with some missteps. The biggest, as far as I’m concerned, is doing the Daddy Fisher story arc alongside the development of the Phrack.  It was impossible to at least consider the implication that Phryne’s ability/desire to enter a serious romantic relationship was contingent upon the resolution of her issues with her father.  If there was any doubt as to whether this was reading too much into the situation, or whether this was intentional on the part of the writers, that doubt was erased at the end of Death at the Grand, in the waltz scene, when Phryne explicitly invokes her parents’ troubled relationship as Jack woos her in a dance.

[Well this got really long. I’ll put the rest under a link for dashboard neatness.]

 As so often happens with Strong Female Characters, Phryne is something of a contradiction: a bold, unconventional creature shaped by grand, sweeping, historic forces like war, poverty, and class – and also a vulnerable, damaged creature shaped by intimate, domestic, familial forces like family tragedy and her parents’ troubled relationship. The Baron story line straddles both, with its implications about money, class, and war, as well as family relationships – and it all comes to a head in the finale. The problem I have with this particular arc is that, at some point, it veers hard right into some seriously dodgy psychological territory. By associating Phryne’s relationship to her father with her relationship to Jack, there’s this whole batty psychoanalytic Freudian/Jungian subtext, especially given the time period. I know this will sound to many like some far-out theory, but it’s really in your face, in the story. For example, as many have pointed out, the big Jack-Phryne kiss takes place right in front of Phryne’s father – as Phryne is literally about to RETURN HER FATHER TO HER MOTHER. Sheesh.

It’s like they were using the chapter on the Electra Complex in the Neo-Freudian Pocket Handbook to Female Sexuality [no, that’s not a real thing, I made it up to make a point] to write this whole arc. From an admittedly random website on the topic: “According to Freud, girls, realizing that they have no penis, develop Penis Envy for the power that the penis provides. Seeing that their fathers have one but their mothers do not, girls turn their sexual attentions away from the mother and towards the father, competing with the mother for his affection….It is also believed that an inability to resolve these issues could result in a woman who sets out to dominate men, with their actions dependent on their self-esteem levels. Those with high self-esteem will assume unusually seductive roles, while those with lower self-esteem become overly submissive to men.”  Is this how I want to see Phryne – as someone who is assertive and sexually aggressive because of an unresolved Electra complex and penis envy? HELL NO. Yet the Baron story arc requires me to go there, because frankly, it’s more or less spelled out that way. Phryne, an established strong, sexually assertive female, goes all to pieces when Daddy shows up; refers repeatedly to her parents’ unhealthy relationship as a problem in her own life; is painted as being more like her father than she’d care to admit; must resolve her issues with her father in part because of her obligations to her mother from afar; resents what she perceives as her mother’s weakness; cautions Jack about “waltzing” with a thinly veiled allusion to her multiple sexual partners, then to her mother’s loss of “all reason” when “waltzed – hell, the fandom calls her father BARON COCKBLOCK.

 As further evidence that the writers are not only veering into daddy-issue territory, but actually do have Freud on the brain, I offer the appearance of Death and Hysteria in this season and the way it deals with psychoanalysis of the period. The episode certainly seems very progressive in its handling of female sexuality in a repressive society. But on a theoretical level, you have to wonder if the doctor is anything other than a true Freudian. Freud postulated that the clitoral orgasm was an immature, masculine phase, and the vaginal orgasm [the existence of which was and remains unsupported by clinical evidence] was the superior kind.  The Percussor is a therapeutic device designed to help sexually frustrated women, but, as the doctor says, it proved to be of limited use – “symptomatic relief, at best.” Clearly, the good doctor believes that a clitoral orgasm doesn’t suffice to address underlying issues. In fact, on rewatching, I note that Mac actually mentions Freud in the discussion in the morgue, when Jack says the Chinese brothel “made a lasting impression.” Mac replies,“Mr. Freud would be terribly interested in that.” To be fair, one forgets today that Freud’s willingness to deal with female sexuality as a valid issue in mental health was highly enlightened for the time. But at any rate, my point is, Freud and psychoanalysis are intentional themes this season, not accidental ones. That’s my argument and I’m stickin’ to it.

So I don’t doubt for a moment that the writers, so aware of all these issues, are framing Phryne herself by them – a kind of psychological period authenticity, I suppose. And even if they’re just toying with me, and this is all a kind of winking, highbrow game of Spot the Historical Context for English majors and other hyper-analytic types like me, it’s not what I want for the character or the series. So big points off from me for the way the Baron’s arc boxes Phryne into an old-fashioned, un-feminist sexuality. I was truly surprised and disappointed that they went that route. I suspect it was just a misguided attempt to be cleverly highbrow behind all the fun and games – and mind you, I loved all the fun and games. Which brings me to my next point.

 Fortunately, we, the audience, get to decide what really matters to us. In the end, Phryne will never just submit to being a Freudian type. She’s a character so powerful, she beats back her own subtext. Penis envy? She’ll get a dildo and move on. As a character, she is way too big and bold to collapse under the weight of one questionable story line. She, like we, would flip Freud the bird in a heartbeat. And Jack? You know that, rather than pulling Phryne into the narrow, conventional world in which he’s been trapped until meeting her, he’s going to break loose and grab the brass ring she’s holding out to him. The one saving grace of the Baron’s story line is that, at its end, it’s not Phryne following Jack. It’s Jack following Phryne. That twist lets us kiss the Baron goodbye and welcome back the Phryne we want. 

Which brings me back to one final point about tension between traditional and nontraditional gender roles.

 On the one hand, the endless, slow-burn sexual tension between Phryne and Jack is built on the notion that Jack has to make the first move. Clearly, Phryne is waiting for him – uncharacteristically so. Whatever the reasons – his recent divorce, mixed signals from her, their working relationship, his need to accept her unconventional lifestyle, etc. – Jack is cast in the traditional masculine role of initiator. And what a traditional masculine figure he is. He’s masculine perfection. He just nails everything our culture sets up as irresistible virile manhood: classic manly attire, deep voice, taciturn manner, athleticism, chivalry. He’s a machine designed to make women swoon – and we do.  When he goes to kiss Phryne, even that is viscerally masculine: he pulls her to him, he holds her face.  [Nathan Page seems to have been born to play this role, because when he does those things, they’re just pitch perfect. It’s so sexy it hurts.]

 In a conventional love story, that would be the happily-ever-after moment. That the woman wants this – and ONLY this – would have been a foregone conclusion. But when Phryne tells Jack to come after her – flip. Just as he takes the initiative and makes the move, she comes back with a competing need. [Let’s leave out the inconvenient fact that this competing need is her father. I’m just blowing that a big, wet raspberry.]  Her agency is not undermined by romance. She is the inviter, not the invited. And we all know that Jack knows that, and he’s okay with it. Which is, after all, the gorgeous fantasy here. Classically handsome, smokin’ sexy man is just fine playing on the level playing field.

 Are there troubling aspects to this fantasy? Yeah. Some of the very things that make the uber-masculine male so appealing  in fiction are things that, in real life, would make him insufferable. And the fact that, had Phryne been the initiator, the whole thing would have been less swoon-inducing, is also something I’d rather not dwell on. On the other hand, seeing Jack as the one left behind, watching Phryne fly off into the sunset – that’s a pretty sweet role reversal. So in the end, I’m going to consider Jack Robinson an only slightly guilty pleasure, and I’ll leave it to the psychoanalysts to consider why guilt makes the pleasure that much sweeter.