The Obscene in Hal Foster's "The Return of the Real"

What most interested me from this week’s readings was a small section on page 149 of Hal Foster’s “The Return of the Real.” Here, Foster equates a “turn to the grotesque” with an anxiety of the maternal body: “Here, as often in horror movies and bedtime stories alike, horror means, first and foremost, horror of maternity, of the maternal body made strange, even repulsive, in repression.” This extremely Freudian way of viewing horror films (and bedtime stories?) requires a metaphorical killing of the mother, which, according to Freud, is supposed to occur during the Oedipal stage of child development, which is when the child is around three or four years old. It is therefore significant to note that, when acquiring pleasure from the obscene, one’s mind must unconsciously go back to this killing of the mother. But why is this killing of the maternal figure so common, and why does it seem to ultimately lead to pleasure? While in psychoanalysis this is attributed to castration anxiety, I believe that, in the case of Sherman’s Untitled #153, the pleasure that the audience derives from viewing the artist as a corpse can be explained by the safety that such an image ultimately produces. After all, viewing this huge portrait of a corpse simply reminds the viewer that he does not yet have to face Death. While the viewer is able to choose to place himself in the position of the corpse in the portrait, he is assured that he will be able to eventually place himself out of that very same position – a sense of safety that leads to pleasure.

Similarly, the mental horror that is associated with Kristeva’s state of nonbeing finds an outlet in images such as Untitled #153. Since our state of being (or lack thereof) before we were born and after we are dead is something that is absolutely unrepresentable, the human being is unable to logically place himself in this imaginary position. This is why seeing the corpse in this portrait is so pleasurable; we see the dead person, we realize she no longer exists, and yet we are safely displaced from such a state. It is interesting that this state of nonbeing is, according to Foster, “suggested by some disaster scenes, suffused as they are with signifiers of menstrual blood and sexual discharge, vomit and shit, decay and death. Such images evoke the body turned inside out, the subject literally abjected, thrown out.” The only way to imagine this unthinkable position is to a) imagine somebody else in that position (which is why horror movies are so popular) and to b) think of that position as the polar opposite of our natural state of being.

This is why I ultimately disagree with Foster’s belief that the object-gaze of the obscene is “presented as if there were no scene to stage it, no frame of representation to contain it, no screen.” In fact, I believe the exact opposite – the obscene is intentionally presented as being completely behind some form of screen – whether that is the movie screen, the photograph, etc. As the viewer watches the obscene film or examines the obscene photograph, he is consciously aware that the horrid images depicted will not jump out and hurt him. If the obscene were actually presented as lacking any form of screen, I believe there would be great anxiety derived from it rather than great pleasure; to think of oneself in a helpless position dealing with the horrific or the obscene would be nothing but traumatic.