Arrested Development and Philosophy (5 page)

Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnanaces are today calmly accepted—though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it. Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh, or even just (just!) raping or murdering another human being? Would anyone’s failure to give full rational justification for his or her revulsion at these practices make that revulsion ethically suspect? Not at all. On the contrary, we are suspicious of those who think that they can rationalize away our horror, say, by trying to explain the enormity of incest with arguments only about the genetic risks of inbreeding.
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According to Kass, there is wisdom in repugnance. The fact that we find something deeply repugnant, gross, or yucky might be reason for us to pause, to consider the enormity of our action, and to recognize its moral wrongness. This isn’t a formal argument, akin to the Argument from Naturalism. It is, however, a reason that George Michael and Maeby might think twice.

Let’s think about the yuck factor and the wisdom of repugnance. Do they offer the moral guidance George Michael isn’t getting? Probably not. But there is a more significant philosophical problem here. It has to do with the
kind
of normative evaluation that we undertake when we say that an action is morally wrong. Normative ethics is the study of what is morally right or wrong, good or bad. But there are many types of normative evaluations—evaluations of rightness and wrongness, goodness or badness—that aren’t moral evaluations.

What George Sr. did in swindling shareholders wasn’t just
morally
wrong—it was
legally
wrong. Legal evaluations are a different type of normative evaluation than moral evaluations. Remember, according to George Michael, marrying your cousin was “almost made legal . . . we had the signatures.” Tobias’s cutoffs are waaaay too short, which is wrong—but this isn’t a
moral
evaluation. It’s an
aesthetic
evaluation. Aesthetics is the philosophical study of art and the nature of beauty. When we are grossed out by Tobias’s short shorts, we are making an aesthetic normative judgment.

Which brings us back to the yuck factor and the wisdom of repugnance. How are we to know that the yuckiness that we feel when confronted with an act of incest is a clue to a
moral
normative evaluation, rather than an
aesthetic
normative evaluation? Maybe it’s a clue to yet another type of normative evaluation. This isn’t a dismissal of the yuck factor or a denial that we find incest repugnant. But it is a call to question why we in fact believe the yuck factor indicates immorality. The sight of someone picking his nose is disturbing. So is Rudy Giuliani in a dress. Are we willing to say that
being
Paris Hilton is immoral or that picking your nose is immoral?

George Michael never seems to get a straight answer about anything. Philosophical arguments about whether he should hook up with Maeby—even if she is his cousin—aren’t forthcoming, either. It may have been morally wrong for George Michael to hook up with Maeby when he thought she was his cousin, but the Argument from Naturalism, the yuck factor, and the wisdom of repugnance haven’t cleared anything up. It’s enough to make you want to go out and invest in the Cornballer after all.

NOTE

1.
Leon R. Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” reprinted in Bioethics: Principles, Issues, and Cases, ed. Lewis Vaughn, Oxford University Press (New York), 2010, p. 430.

Chapter 3

FREUDIAN ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Tim Jung

Analysts and Therapists for the Bluths

The Bluths need psychoanalysis. Everything from Lucille’s criticism to Maeby’s compulsive lying is indicative of deeper psychological issues. Even the two “good” members of the family, Michael and George Michael, experience difficulty keeping it together when it comes to their family’s often ridiculous or dangerous antics. But in spite of these serious character flaws, the Bluths still have a certain charm.

Why are the Bluths the way they are? What causes them to be so
irrational
? Why can’t Tobias see that the title on his business cards (“Analrapist”) is
something more
than a combination of analyst and therapist? Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) would claim that Tobias has
unconscious
ideas and urges that are making themselves known.

Use Your Allusion: Freud

The passions represent the irrational side of us that’s beyond our control, and, in turn, that pushes or drives us to act or think in ways that we had not intended. Consider the episode “Meat the Veals,” in which Ann’s mother, that “sweet piece of Veal,” is so overcome with passion that she demands that Michael take her to his secular world so that she may please him “secularly.”

Although Freud claimed to avoid philosophy,
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the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) clearly influenced Freud’s views about the irrational side of human nature. Earlier philosophers like David Hume (1711–1776) placed an important emphasis on the passions and human thought. But Freud took it to a new level, dedicating his life to studying the irrational side of human nature through what he called
psychoanalysis
, the study of the
unconscious
.

Perhaps an Attic Shall I Seek—The Unconscious

Freud had two theories of how the mind was constructed. Freud’s original idea, the topography, consisted of the
unconscious
, the
preconscious
, and the
conscious
levels of the mind. The
conscious
is that which is readily available to us—what we are aware of. The
unconscious
, therefore, is the part of us that we are
not
aware of. Ideas or urges that are unconscious may cause symptoms or erratic behaviors. Consider George Sr., in the episode “Sad Sack,” hiding in the attic and howling like a wolf.

Tobias:
Jesus, it’s the wolf! That is the wolf! The wolf is upstairs!

Michael:
Think it’s just my son’s
Peter and the Wolf
record.

For Michael, there’s no question about what is actually going on in the attic. Tobias, however, is unaware of what is happening and misinterprets George Sr.’s howling. This is like an unconscious urge or thought coming to the fore of the conscious—the urge or thought is lost in translation. The attic, for Tobias, is the unconscious—for Tobias is completely unaware of the actual source of the howling.

Michael’s response to Tobias exemplifies Freud’s idea of
repression
. Michael, in his creative excuses (“Peter and the Wolf” or “the house is settling”) are just like the
forces of repression
that oppose and resist unconscious ideas. These unconscious ideas are repressed because, for some reason, they are too traumatic or troublesome to become conscious. George Sr. hiding in the attic is certainly a troublesome idea, as he should be in prison—and so, as the purpose or essence of repression is to keep something from becoming known, Michael keeps his family unaware of George Sr.’s whereabouts.
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The
preconscious
is the accessible middle ground between the entirely accessible conscious level of the mind and the completely blocked-off unconscious level of the mind. It is much easier for preconscious thoughts to enter into consciousness than it is for the unconscious to enter into consciousness. The preconscious includes memories that we are not conscious of at the moment but that we can retrieve at any time. So if Lucille did not have too much to drink at last year’s Motherboy celebration, the events of that day would be preconscious for her. Preconscious ideas and thoughts may also contain words that are residues from a failed repression. Therefore, the content of the preconscious is not fully repressed, while unconscious ideas and thoughts are completely unknown and repressed.
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The
preconscious
could be explained, again, through George Sr.’s presence in the attic. Except this time let’s take George Sr.’s presence in the attic as being known only by George Michael in the episode “Good Grief!”

Michael:
Well, I meant it. So no more secret trips up to the attic, right?

Narrator:
George Michael didn’t want to betray his grandfather, but it appeared that his father already knew the truth.

George Michael:
I have Pop-Pop in the attic.

Michael:
What? The mere fact that you call making love “Pop-Pop” tells me you’re not ready.

The idea of hiding George Sr. in the attic was
latent
, or held back from consciousness in the realm of the preconscious. It only becomes fully conscious when Michael realizes that George Michael was
not
calling sex with Ann “Pop-Pop.” He was actually referring to George Sr. This middle ground of Michael being told and yet not knowing that George Sr. was hiding in the attic is precisely where ideas of the preconscious lie. Ideas in the preconscious are neither fully known nor fully unknown, but they may eventually become known.

Freud’s Company Model

Freud’s second model, while influenced by the topographical model, is more familiar to casual readers of Freud. This second model was the
structural
model
, which involved the
id,
the
ego
, and the
super-ego
. Freud uses the German words “Es,” “Ich,” and “Über-Ich,” but English translations use their Latin equivalents—
id
/
Es
means “it,”
ego
/
Ich
means “I,” and
super-ego
/
Über-Ich
means “Super I” or “Over I.” The
id
dwells only in the realm of the unconscious, while the
ego
and
super-ego
are located both in the preconscious and the unconscious
.

The id, located in the realm of the unconscious, is the “oldest” part of our mental agencies. It contains the instincts, or the
needs
that require satisfaction and that are the cause of
all
activity.
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Because of the external world, not all instincts or
needs
can be met or fulfilled the way the id would prefer them to be. The ego functions as a diplomat between the external world and the id, deciding when, where, and if these satisfactions should be met.

Michael provides a good model for what the ego does if we think of the Bluth Company as an individual. When the company stock is unfrozen in “Whistler’s Mother,” every family member begins clamoring for fulfillment of their individual “needs.” Gob needs a yacht, Lindsay needs a club membership, and Tobias needs (is?) the Queen Mary. Michael, playing the role of the ego, tries to regulate the needs of his family, who are playing the role of the id, by delaying the satisfaction of those needs.

And then there’s the super-ego. The super-ego is just another burden for the ego. Freud explains that the super-ego is developed by the parents, who offer love and threaten punishments, which are “signs to the child as a loss of love.”
5
George Michael’s relationship to his father is a good example of what the super-ego (Michael) demands of the ego (George Michael). The demands of the super-ego limit the satisfaction of the ego. Take, for example, the exchange between George Michael and Michael in the episode “Motherboy XXX,” where George Michael wishes to go to the Christian camp “The Promise Land” with Ann.

Michael:
It–It’s not about school, pal. It’s more about family. Your Uncle Buster’s been very depressed lately, and you haven’t visited him. Family first. Or did they not teach you that at the Promise Land?

George Michael:
I don’t know. You won’t let me go.

The
ego
is pulled in every direction, and must juggle demands from the
super-ego
, the
id
, and the external world. Freud explains, “An action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super-ego, and of reality—that is to say, if it is able to reconcile their demands with one another.”
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Prove It: Baiting the Unconscious

Freud believed that
parapraxes,
or everyday errors, betray unconscious impulses. We all fall victim to
parapraxes
such as slips of the tongue, slips of the pen, bungled actions, and misreadings. You don’t have to be crazy to have a
parapraxis
or two every once in a while, but they are exceedingly common in the Bluth family.
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As Tobias, the
queen
of
parapraxes
, says, “I suppose that we all do expose our inner desires, don’t we?”

There aren’t enough pages in this book to catalog all of Tobias’s homoerotic actions and statements. So let’s focus on Tobias’s gaff in the pilot episode: mistaking a group of flamboyantly dressed men for pirates. Freud would say that this was no coincidence—Tobias had unconsciously intended to spend time with homosexuals, though perhaps not necessarily to protest the local yacht club’s discriminatory policies.

In
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
, Freud tells the story of a man who, in wanting a day to himself, had to nevertheless pay a visit to someone that he would otherwise prefer not to see. After begrudgingly boarding the train to his destination, the man inadvertently transfers to the wrong train, and goes back to his home, where he would rather spend his time.
8

Freud would no doubt say that Tobias has repressed homosexual urges (“No, I’m not gay, Lindsay . . . how many times . . . must we have this . . . ”). Tobias, thinking he is dressing as a pirate when he is actually dressing in Lindsay’s clothing, is one thing. Joining a group of homosexuals for a protest is another. Tobias, like the man who transferred to the wrong train, is satisfying an
unconscious
urge. Freud believes that when it comes to making errors, there are very few coincidences. We pretty much have to agree with him in the case of Tobias, who says questionable things like, “Oh, I can just taste those meaty leading man parts in my mouth!” so frequently that Michael even suggests that Tobias tape record an entire day’s worth of dialogue, thinking that he “might be surprised by some of [his] phrasing!”

Shémale and Misreadings

Freud maintains that many misreadings are caused by the reader’s expectation of what’s coming next. Consider Freud’s example of a man who had read Homer so much that he always read “Agamemnon” instead of the German word for “supposed,”
angenommen
. This is precisely the reason why we read “Shemale” (SHE-Male) instead of “Shémale” (Shuh-MAL-ay) on Lindsay’s T-shirt, and why we, the audience, experience a
parapraxis
of our own.

The T-shirt, a gift from Maeby, is read as “Shemale” (SHE-Male) by the viewers and by Maeby because of Lindsay’s voice. Lindsay’s voice was gravelly and manly throughout this episode (“Sad Sack”) due to a night of excited drunken screaming at a single’s bar. Regardless, Steve Holt (!) finds Lindsay attractive. Maeby, fearful of losing her crush to her mother, lies to Steve Holt (!), telling him that her mother is actually a man who thinks that he can pass as a woman. Believing the shirt to be a heartfelt gift, Lindsay is oblivious to the joke being played on her.

Michael, Marta,
Ann
Other Freudian Slips

A slip of the tongue—a Freudian slip—occurs when a person intends to say one thing but says something else that
sounds or seems
similar to the original intended word. Recall the exchange between Michael and Marta in the episode “Marta Complex.”

Marta:
So you’re saying there’s no one that you’re even interested in?

Michael:
There was somebody for a little while, but it was too much of a brother . . . bother.

“Brother” and “bother” sound similar and betray an embarrassing thought or desire. Michael, of course, was in love with Marta, but couldn’t do anything about it without ignoring his mantra that “family comes first.” But the slips didn’t stop there. After the chants of “Speech! Speech! Speech!” (for no one in particular) at a family party, Michael gives in. He closes with an even more telling slip, “To Gob and Marta. To love and happiness.
I love you all, Marta
.”

In addition, Michael is always forgetting Ann’s name (Her?). On one occasion, Michael calls Ann “Egg”—another example of a Freudian slip. What inspires this slip? Ann’s eating habits. George Michael tells us all about it.

George Michael:
Oh, it’s so cute. She sometimes takes a little pack of mayonnaise, and she’ll squirt it in her mouth all over, and then she’ll take an egg and kind of . . . Mmmm! She calls it a “mayonegg.” [
concerned pause
] Are you okay?

Michael:
I don’t feel so good.

Michael was decidedly not okay. Later in that same episode, “The One Where They Build a House,” Michael inadvertently replaces Ann’s name with “Egg” when George Michael asks about buying the diamond cream that Lindsay mentioned earlier in the episode (“A million ∗∗∗∗ing diamonds!”).

Michael:
George Michael, I’m sure that Egg is a very nice person. I just don’t want you spending all your money getting her all glittered up for Easter.