What Is Symptomatic Criticism?

When we make sense of a film, according to David Bordwell,1 we can speak of four possible types of
meanings:

1. A referential meaning: we construct the film's world, i.e. its story--its diegesis (the temporal and
spatial coordinates created by the film's fiction). In constructing this world, the spectator draws not only
on a knowledge of filmic and extrafilmic conventions, but also on conceptions of causality, space, and
time, and on concrete pieces of information (e.g., cultural literacy: what the New York harbor looks like in
an establishing shot or the knowledge that Chicago is the “windy city”).

2. An explicit meaning: we assign a conceptual meaning or point (in other words: “a message”) to the
story we construct--abstract meanings, for instance. One assumes that the film “intentionally” wants to
lead us in some direction, that the film speaks directly. “There's no place like home” (The Wizard of Oz)
is, one might say, a statement that summarizes and essentializes the meaning of the film.

Referential and explicit meaning make up “literal” (intended and conscious) meanings; we assume here
that the film knows what it is doing. These two sorts of meanings take place at the level of
comprehension.

3. An implicit meaning (i.e. symbolic/covert meaning). Here we are concerned with how a film speaks
indirectly. The word “rosebud” in Citizen Kane not only lends itself to a straightforward (i.e., explicit)
meaning (rosebud to be sure is Kane's sleigh, but the sleigh itself has a symbolical meaning that is not
obvious or self-understood); the phrase is open to interpretation. In fact the meaning of “rosebud”
catalyzes an elaborate investigation by a journalist which structures the film’s narrative as a whole.

If we take a film like Psycho, we could say that

--its referential meaning consists of its story and diegesis (the trip of Marion Crane from Phoenix to
Fairvale and the horrendous things that happen there).
--We might take its explicit meaning to be the idea that madness can overcome sanity.
--We might then go on to argue (especially if we rely on the film's closing sequence) that the implicit
meaning of the film is that sanity and madness cannot be easily distinguished.

Units of implicit meaning are commonly called themes, though they can also are referred to as problems,
issues, and questions. Implicit meanings at times contradict explicit meanings--in a process of irony, for
instance. An example: the psychiatrist’s final speech in Psycho explicitly draws a line between sanity and
madness; the film that we have just seen, however, implicitly denies such a distinction.

In constructing meanings of types 1-3, we assume the film “knows” more or less what it is doing.

4. There are also repressed or symptomatic meanings that the work divulges involuntarily. Such
meanings are assumed to be at odds with referential, explicit, and implicit ones.
Explicit meaning = a transparent garment,
Implicit meaning = a semiopaque veil,
Symptomatic meaning = a disguise.
Taken as individual expression, symptomatic meaning may be treated as the consequence of the artist’s
obsessions (e.g., Psycho might be seen as a worked-over version of a fantasy of Hitchcock's). Taken as
part of a social dynamic, it may be traced to economic, political, or ideological processes (e.g., Psycho
enacts a pathological male fear of female sexuality).
1
David Bordwell, Making Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989).

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An example:
It is a summer day. A father looks out at the family lawn and says to his teen-aged son: “The grass is so
tall I can hardly see the cat walking through it.” The son takes this sentence to mean: “Mow the lawn.”
Which is to say: his interpretation assumes an implicit meaning. In a similar way, the interpreter of a film
may take referential or explicit meanings as only the point of departure for inferences about implicit
meanings. In constructing those meanings, the critic makes them manifest. That is, he or she explains the
film, just as the son might turn to his pal and say: “I get it. Dad wants me to mow the lawn.”

It is a summer day. A father looks out at the family lawn and says to his teen-aged son: “The grass is so
tall I can hardly see the cat walking through it.” The son slopes off to mow the lawn--but the exchange
has been witnessed by a team of live-in social scientists and they interpret the father's remark in various
ways.
--One sociologist sees it as typical of an American household's rituals of power and negotiation.
--Another observer, a cultural anthropologist, construes the remark as revealing a characteristic
bourgeois concern for appearances and a pride in private property.
--Yet another, a psychoanalyst, insists that the father envies the son’s youth and apparent sexual
prowess and that the feline image constitutes a fantasy that unwittingly symbolizes
(a) the father’s identification with a predator;
(b) his desire for liberation from his stifling life;
(c) his fears of castration (the cat in question having been neutered);
(d) all of the above.

If the father were confronted with these observations, he would deny them vehemently. This would
hardly stop the social scientists. They would reply that the true meanings were involuntary, concealed by
a referential meaning (a report on the height of the grass) and an implicit meaning (the order to mow the
lawn). These social scientists, in other words, have constructed a set of symptomatic meanings and these
cannot be denied by the father's protests. These meanings lie beyond his control. (Most speakers do not
readily want to own up to repressed meaning.)

A schematic summary:

1. Referential meaning: we construct a coherent world and the coordinates for an ongoing story. In
doing so, we draw on our knowledge of film conventions and cultural references; we also rely on basic
notions of time, space, and causality. When we see The Wizard of Oz, we speak of Oz and Kansas as
aspects of referential meaning: Oz comes from the film which is derived from L. Frank Baum’s novel (it is
intratextual); Kansas from outside the film (it is extratextual).

2. Explicit meaning: to the world and the story, we attach a conceptual meaning, a point, a message. The
message of The Wizard of Oz might be said to be: “There's no place like home.” Or one might argue that
the more essential message of the film lies in the phrase “Somewhere over the rainbow.”

3. Implicit meaning: these are covert or symbolic meanings. At this level the film does not just speak
directly; it also has less apparent or hidden meanings that one must tease out. One might argue that The
Wizard of Oz is an allegory about Roosevelt’s New Deal.

4. Symptomatic meaning: with implicit meaning we assume that the film and the filmmaker know what
they are doing and saying, that behind all of what we see lie certain intended meanings. Symptomatic
meaning runs counter to intentions and conscious designs; it amounts to meanings that, though not
obvious or apparent, still exist, even if they are concealed. Such meanings are at odds with referential,
explicit, or implicit meanings--they are repressed.

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Example from Salmon Rushdie’s monograph on The Wizard of Oz; this film is above all about the
inadequacy of adults, even of good adults. It demonstrates how the weakness of grown-ups forces
children to take control of their own destinies, and so, ironically, to raise themselves.

What is symptomatic criticism?

-It is a kind of analysis which always remains suspicious, which assumes that appearances are deceiving
and meanings elusive. What we see is not necessarily what we get. Apparently innocent surfaces yield to
more complex and, quite often, disturbing meanings.
-It asks: What is being concealed? What meanings lurk behind seemingly straightforward surfaces? What
is a film doing behind its own back and despite its best intentions and conscious designs? The
symptomatic reader approaches films as dramas of repression or concealment.
-It assumes that one can understand a film better than its creators and producers. The symptomatic critic
can see through the fireworks and special effects, and what s/he beholds when the smoke has cleared
are the film’s deeper meanings.
-It seeks unconscious meaning, knowing well that deeper meanings have been carefully and
systematically concealed by a process of resourceful repression. Artistic intentions, for instance, are seen
as being contradicted by a counter-will and contradictory impulse--either within the author’s own
unconscious or in the ideology of the society from which the film issues.

By and large symptomatic interpretation in film studies has preferred to show how repressed material
has social sources and consequences. The simple level of comprehension may reveal an entirely
straightforward film and controlled meaning; symptomatic interpretation uncovers marks of repression
and the disturbing intrusion of meanings which the work seeks to conceal. The symptomatic reader
functions like a psychoanalyst: s/he sees through the film's symptom to its repressed meaning. One
might also say that the symptomatic reader operates like a detective who wants to discern what is really
going on behind a film’s elusive appearances.