Reported by SF
“The Wedding Crashers” (2005, available on DVDs)—a complex farce built on a foundation of underlying psychological themes—was the subject of a discussion during the October meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Study of Film Group.
The three thematic lines developed in the film climaxed in a wedding scene reminiscent of the ending of “The Graduate” (1967) in which, first, the protagonists were punished by public scrutiny, but ultimately did not change their skewed course of behavior. The protagonists repeatedly (1) ignored their own and other people’s emotional feelings, first during divorce negotiations and then by “crashing” sacred, emotionally-laden events, such as marriages, and funerals; (2) progressively placed themselves in increasingly dangerous situations; and, (3) seduced young women—and were untimely seduced themselves by young women (in one final case, attracted by the perverse character of her love-making).
Members of the film group found themselves modestly upset by what they saw on the screen and not responding to most of the sight-gags and humorously contrived situations despite the popularity of the film when it was released—it grossed over $220 million. This anomaly may be accounted for by the slowness with which the superego develops as people age. The film was obviously designed for much younger audiences.
Within the framework of his dynamic theory, Freud pointed out that there is a displacement of affects which arises in the superego during the joke-telling and joke-appreciation processes. The ego is altered by the hypercathecting of the superego so that the affective energy derived from the moral outrage generated by the situations at hand becomes discharged by the ego in a flurry of intellectual activity. Id-superego conflicts become intermittently resolved so that in a playful way there is a defensive discharge in the form of climax-like laughter. In this older audience, the film evidently engendered in the individual viewers more indignation, contempt and anger, and less playfulness, than among younger viewers. Freud felt that the pleasure derived from humor results from the sparing of the ego’s available affective energy as the superego’s affects are displaced and then discharged.
Explicit sexual scenes early in the film helped to activate sexual and aggressive id derivatives, which were heightened by the seductions of women significantly younger than the protagonists, as well as the intrusion into the portrayed solemn rituals. The awakening of feelings connected with underlying early separation-individuation experiences and those recently experienced during adolescence and new, early-adult attachments probably heightened the pleasurable experience for younger audiences.
That there was a infantile-like-defiant anti-establishment character to the film probably added to its appeal to young audiences. By the time the film concluded, the daughters of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury had become wedding crashers.