The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. By: D'Arcy, Chantal, Literature
Film Quarterly, 00904260, 1999, Vol. 27, Issue 2
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THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER
Contents
N
otes
Works Cited
Peter Greenaway's
In spite of a deceptively simple title that conjures up all the charm of a folk tale,
The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover is, to say the least, a complex film
so divergent in its various implications as to defy the possibility of any single
explanation. However, it is precisely the multiplicity of possible interpretations
that gives Peter Greenaway's 1989 production its uniquely effective "ambiguous
identity." At times, the ambiguity is so baffling and some of the scenes so brutal
that the spectator is tempted to cry off. Nevertheless, the ambiguous nature of
the film also gives it its tremendous strength and, for this reason, it can be
evaluated in different terms. The premise for this essay, therefore, is that The
Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, despite its studied crudity, presents not
one, but various layers of meaning. First, there is a story of love and intrigue
which makes up the "legitimate" plot. Beneath this surface narrative lies a world
in which masculinity and femininity are shown to be at odds; and lastly, under the
cover of these two chronicles lies an allegorical, and profoundly disturbing,
representation of contemporary British politics.
Before turning to the more obscure or puzzling issues, a logical point of
departure is the story itself. In her review of the film, Jeanne Silverthorne
indicates how the use of constant static camera plans produces the effect of a
stage play, a fact that accounts for the production resembling a kind of Jacobean
drama (24). Peter Greenaway himself described the film as "a violent and erotic
love-story set in the kitchen and dining room of a smart restaurant" (French 277).
The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover opens with a gruelling scene in
which a defenseless man is being beaten up and utterly humiliated by a group of
ruffians in some dismal, derelict, inner-city area. By following the leader of the
gang into a nearby locale, the camera then introduces the spectator into the
space where most of the action will, from then on, be confined. The vociferous
and violent Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) is about to have dinner in the
restaurant Le Hollandais, which he owns in partnership with the French cook,
Mr. Boarst (Richard Bohringer). Henceforth, the bulk of the plot is organized
around several consecutive dinner parties, all taking place at the restaurant.
Night after night, the table is presided over by Mr. Spica and his wife Georgina
(Helen Mirren). The cause-and-effect chain of action is provided by Georgina and
Michael's romance, secretly aided and abetted by the cook. Suspense slowly
builds up as Georgina's absences from the table become too obvious and regular
to be ignored, and culminates when Mr. Spica discovers he is being deceived by
his wife. Mr. Boarst's prompt action enables the couple to hide in the cold store
and then escape in a truck full of rotting meat. They take refuge in Michael's book
store, a haven which Georgina decides to leave momentarily in order to visit Pup
at the hospital. What Georgina does not know, however, is that for all the boy's
courageous silence under torture, information as to her whereabouts was
supplied in the books he carried with him. She therefore returns to find the
bookshop wrecked and her lover brutally murdered. The final scenes show
Georgina imploring Mr. Boarst for yet another favour and ultimately convincing
him to cook her lover. The film ends with yet another special meal, this time in
Mr. Spica's honour--the delicacy for the occasion being the very man whom Mr.
Spica had sworn to kill--and eat.
As stated before, even though the basic story in the film has the apparently fixed
and fundamental structure of a Jacobean revenge tragedy, there is in some
sense no original, no real or right text. In other words, by means of these same
images, Peter Greenaway can be said to present a world in which the meaning
lies outside or beyond the surface narrative. From this perspective therefore, the
characters of Mr. Spica and Georgina can be viewed as emblems, or atemporal
tokens of the relation between the sexes.
The film opens, in the words of Ann Rosalind Jones, with Man (Albert Spica)
loudly claiming his centrality: "I am the unified, self-controlled centre of the
universe. The rest of the world, which I define as Other, has meaning only in
relation to me, as man/father, possessor of the phallus" (Showalter 362). This
mode of thinking has been attacked by Helene Cixous who contended that Man
has segmented reality by coupling concepts and terms in pairs of polar
opposites, one of which, she claimed, is always privileged over the other. In La
Jeune Nee, Cixous asserted that all these opposites find their inspiration in the
fundamental dichotomous pair man/woman, in which man is invariably defined as
the Self and woman as his Other (Duchen 91-96; Moi104-5). Cixous's viewpoint
seems to adequately reflect the initial position of the main characters in Peter
Greenaway's film. The very nature of Man can be said to reverberate sonorously
in the name of the protagonist itself since "Mr. Spica" comes very close to
"speaker"--the one who utters.( n1) Mr. Spica is thus portrayed as the Self and
Georgina as no more than his Other. Furthermore, from a Marxist-feminist
stance, Georgina's position is depicted as one of utter subjugation for if, as
reflected in the teaching of Engel's Origin, women's station in capitalism is
determined by the intersection between their experience as workers and their
mission in the family (199), then Georgina is doubly "non-productive": She does
not work and we soon learn that she is unable to have children. Consequently,
she is no more than a commodity and, like the restaurant, simply a part of her
husband's property.
However, although Georgina is presented from the outset as a submissive wife
and shadow-like character, the spectator soon distinguishes her from Spica's
group of friends. She remains "marginal" in the sense that her smartness, gravity
and general savoir faire immediately set her apart from her entourage. She sits at
table, vaguely correcting her husband's French but generally remote and
indifferent to the vulgar talk and ghastly table manners around her. However
quiet and aloof from her immediate surroundings, Georgina is nevertheless
watchful. She catches the eye of another of the regular customers, Michael (Alan
Howard), who sits silently reading at his table. It is through her illicit (in the eyes
of the Self or patriarchy) sexual affair that Georgina becomes a character of
stature. She is still the Other, but rather than reflecting the oppressiveness of this
position, it seems that the film actually embraces the condition of Otherness
through its female protagonist. By manipulating the viewers' identification, the film
thus places the audience into a deconstructive position. As explained by
Rosemarie Tong: "The deconstructist approach takes a critical attitude towards...
social injustices as well as the structures upon which they are based, the
language in which they are thought and the systems in which they are
safeguarded" (219). Such a stance enables the audience to stand back and view
critically the norms, values and practices that patriarchy (Mr. Spica) imposes on
everyone. It is therefore from a position of Otherness that the audience is made
to identify with Georgina, and from the "periphery" that spectators register
Georgina's paralysis when her husband charges into the ladies' lavatory; that
they undergo the insults and physical abuse from Mr. Spica and suffer
Georgina's horror at finding the bloody and lifeless body of her lover.
As Georgina and Michael hide away in the ladies' bathroom they need no words
to communicate during their first moments of sexual euphoria or when nearly
caught by Mr. Spica. This, in itself, can be viewed as an important detail.
According to Jacques Lacan's interpretation of the psychosexual drama,
femininity is squelched or silenced in the Symbolic Order because the only words
available are masculine words and consequently, women cannot express their
subjectivity. Using Freud's and Lacan's framework, Kristeva draws a contrast
between the two different modalities: the "Semiotic" and the "Symbolic." Even
though Kristeva's notion of the "feminine" clearly belongs to the semiotic, at no
time does she conceive of this disposition as relating exclusively to biological
women. In her opinion, femininity is to be found in a man just as it is in a woman.
For this reason, Michael and Georgina's mutual attraction can be interpreted as
the natural binding together of their semiotic potential. If, as stated by Kristeva,
the power or the subversive nature of the semiotic lies in its fragmented,
occasional and provisional presences within the Symbolic, then the couple's
fleeting encounters represent a daring challenge to the Symbolic Order installed
(and emblemized) by Mr. Spica. On the other hand, the Symbolic is founded on a
repression of the Semiotic, of the sexually unidentified pre-Oedipal, still at one
with the maternal body. This maternal space is supplied in the film by the
"privacy" of the ladies's lavatory, a female space par excellence highlighted by
the brilliant whiteness and purety of the place as opposed to the sombre and
crimson atmosphere of the restaurant. In this female sanctuary, Georgina and
Michael homogenize through touch, feeling and sexual communication in silence.
It is only when forced into the kitchen larder, the antechamber of the Symbolicthat sexual intercourse and verbal communication take place between them. The
change of scene can therefore be understood as an omen or sure sign of coming
trouble. Georgina is worried that the utterance of words has broken the
magnetism between them, that her lover will "lose interest" or that their special
relationship will somehow be effected.
In Kristeva's opinion, the constant interplay of the semiotic and symbolic implies
that woman as such can never exist; she is always in the making, a subject-inprocess. The very fact that woman cannot actually be, in or under patriarchy,
allies her with other groups excluded from the dominant: homosexuals, the aged,
people suffering from AIDS, or any other social, racial and ethnic minorities.
Clearly, from Mr. Spica's authoritative stance, Georgina (as a woman) and
Michael (categorized as a Jew) are marginal--outsiders or "misfits" to be
subdued, crushed and tramped on. Mr. Spica's reaction and revenge against the
couple exemplifies precisely what patriarchy does in real life: It locks men and
women into roles, attributes and duties with reference to pre-ordained, preconstructed ideals of masculinity and femininity. This type of identification
automatically determines the position of the individual within the Symbolic as
acceptable/central or objectionable/marginal. Georgina's crime is to have
stepped out of her imposed function as obedient and submissive wife (to a tyrant)
and Michael's crime is to be different, and by meddling with Mr. Spica's property,
to have defied Spica's loudly proclaimed manhood. In their different ways, both
peripheral characters have therefore destabilized the up till then unquestioned
omnipotence of the centre--Mr. Spica.
Although Georgina and Michael's plight vis-a-vis Mr. Spica does motivate a
certain degree of identification with their position as hunted preys, it is also true
that the camera-work in the film seems to concentrate more on accentuating the
artificiality and theatricality of the narrative than on displaying the characters'
subjective point of view. In other words, the numerous static camera scenes and
the long, studied slowness of many panning shots, with their heavy insistence on
spatial configurations rather than on character temporality, seem bent on
recreating the effect of a stage play and, by extension, on bringing about an
impression of distance in spectators. Freedom from the compulsion to plunge
into full identification with the characters is what permits the spectator not to
recoil at the magnitude of Georgina's final revenge and, thus, to view her
coercion of Mr. Spica to chew and swallow part of her lover with a certain
emotional distance. However, even if looked upon as the enactment of some
theatrical set-up, Georgina's calculated vengeance can nevertheless be said to
lay bare an abomination or monstrosity--a horror or "abject and unspeakable
fascistic terror" which, according to Kristeva, underlies all culture (Oliver 102).
In her opinion, social order is constructed on and around certain agencies of
regulation such as religion, morality, politics or language whose authority rests on
the repression of horror. However, this horror can never be totally smothered and
consequently is invariably lurking behind the command and control of these
social institutions (Oliver 102). Kristeva claims that one way of articulating this
horror is through what she calls the "language of abjection"--the perverted
language, style and content of the work of writers who, captivated by the abject,
imagine its logic and project themselves into it in an attempt to bring it "to the
surface." In Powers of Horror, Kristeva introduces the notion of abjection in the
following way: "There looms within abjection one of those violent, dark revolts of
being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant
outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the
thinkable" ( 3).( n2) The abject is something repulsive that both attracts and
repels: "It holds you there in spite of your disgust. It fascinates. Rotten flesh can
be abject, defilement or pollution that requires exclusion or even, taboo. Crime
can be abject, transgression of the law that requires exclusion or even death"
(Oliver 55-6). In this work, Kristeva presents the anti-Semitic writings of Celine as
an example of abject literature and praises the author for the cathartic nature of
the negative and murderous impulses he expresses, "for," as she says, "giving
us a warning while we thirst for sleep and jouissance" (180). If, as suggested by
Kristeva, abject language or literature can be therapeutic for the reader then it
could be argued that The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (and more
particularly the last scenes in the film) is an "abject narrative" that, in the same
manner, seeks to expunge these negative drives by exposing and confronting us
with the traces of our own, constantly denied, psychic violence.
With this in mind, Georgina's protagonism in the final scenes cannot simply be
taken at face value. More than a personal revenge for the death of her lover,
Georgina's act seems to emblemize the revolutionary powers of horror--a horror,
as stated before, that is unremittingly repressed both in individuals and in society
but that invariably skirts complete ostracism.
On the other hand, and leaving Kristeva's theory aside, Georgina's revenge also
intimates how, by a kind of "feminine circularity," despotic rule is finally compelled
to "bite its own tail": if Michael was made to eat his books, Albert is now forced to
eat his own words. In having to ingest the cooked flesh of the man he swore to
kill and eat, the Self, "Mr. Speaker," is therefore metaphorically silenced. It is in
the sacramental atmosphere of this "last supper," which clearly intimates a
ritualistic mass and communion that Georgina's shouted "cannibal" aligns with
the silent "revolution" on the bloody pages she pulled out of Michael's mouth.
Hence, as the tables are finally turned against the oppressor this cryptic
enactment of the Christian rite of transubstantiation also serves to warn viewers
that Revolution, in this case the violent change or replacement of one form of rule
for another, will inevitably come from those sectors in society that have been
curbed, crushed and put down by the dominant culture.
In this sense, the ending of the film very much recalls Danah Zohar's and Ian
Marshall's theory as put forward in The Quantum Society. The authors explain
how difference is today a common feature amongst people living together, and a
particularly notable one in Great Britain where a new kind of "multiculturalism" is
manifest. The fact of viewing the "Other" as a menace also characterizes the
links between Britain and the European Community and explains the heated
debates concerning the supposed threat to British values and traditions caused
by excessive emphasis on different, or foreign, customs and conventions. The
point is that on the personal, social or international scale, whenever reaction to
"the Other" entails threat, conflict or intolerance, the result is invariably one of
violence and confrontation (Zohar and Marshall 218-24).
Furthermore, the emphasis in the film on violence, decadence and depravity
seems to have as one of its main purposes the presentation of the restaurant as
an underworld of shadows harbouring refugees in flight from respectable society.
It is in this modern wasteland--where the young, the old, the poor, woman and
any contemptible "Other" form an army of aliens--that the well-worn phrase "(Not)
One of Us" acquires chilling relevance (Young).( n3) The exclusivity denoted in
the phrase helps identify Mr. Spica and comrades as reactionary spectres of Mrs
Thatcher and the hard-edged cronies she placed with her in office inside the
Conservative Party. Peter Greenaway himself stated that the film was a bitter
and angry reaction against the Thatcher government and its morally repressive
leanings (Van Wert 48). It therefore seems plausible to consider the theme of
them and us as referring to a concrete political situation in addition to the already
mentioned
divorce
between
acceptable/central
and
ojectionable/marginal
elements in society.
However, it is by activating factual resonances in history that Mr. Spica becomes
emblematic of a political stance. Here, the prominence given in the film to Frans
Hals's painting "Banquet of the Officers of the Civic Guard of St. George at
Haarlem" (1616) is fully justified.( n4) This group portrait, rated as Hals's best
(Encyclopaedia Britannica 865; Morales 347), can be said to comprise both the
objective and subjective targets of the film. Firstly, the banquet scene depicted in
Hals's painting not only echoes the arrangement of the characters around the
restaurant table but also the film plot itself, structured as stated before, around
various consecutive dinner parties. Secondly, Hals's painting represents
members of a committee or governing board who, like other prominent men in
Dutch
political
affairs,
"commemorated"
their
persons
and
deeds
by
commissioning a group portrait to be hung on the walls of the board rooms and
meeting places of their companies. In the same manner, the film can be said to
"immortalize" Mr. Spica and his associates in their usual meeting place--the
restaurant. The correlation between the painting on the wall and the film is further
underlined by the evident modern "reworking" of the black clothes and red bands
worn by the company of men. Thirdly, and most importantly, the Dutch backcloth
provided
by
Hals's
painting
indirectly
links
Holland's
prominent
early
seventeenth-century anti-statism and reliance on individual enterprise (clearly
reflected in the proliferation of civic groups as opposed to the absolutist
monarchies of France, England and Spain)( n5) to Margaret Thatcher's
aggressive, neo-liberal advocacy of concepts such as self-interest, competitive
individualism and anti-statism. It is only through an acquaintance with the other
term of this comparison that the spectator can fully appreciate to what extent Mr.
Spica's dinner parties represent, in fact, a grotesque caricature of the
seventeenth-century "ideal," embodied in the honourable and meritorious group
of bourgeois Dutchmen in which no member is more conspicuous than any other.
Albert Spica, a pretentious brute and aspiring gourmet, belches and spits out
food, causes havoc among the restaurant customers and staff and obscenely
talks about rear ends, excrement and dirt.( n6) For him, sex is dirty, books are
meaningless and the only realities are power and money. If the restaurant is
taken as a shrine of avid consumerism then, in political terms, Albert could either
embody Mrs. Thatcher herself, especially considering that both the prime
minister's friends and enemies considered her as just like a man (Campbell
233),( n7) or he could be a stand-in for all creel employers or the upper classes
who live off the work of others, or he could simply represent the dark side of the
underclass. What is clear is that this Cockney brute is attuned to the world of
avarice and crass materialism that many see as the Thatcher legacy.
A deliberate mockery of human "progress" can be detected if the different rooms
in this insular, hyper-stylized world are visualized as different stages in history
(an eighteenth-century kitchen, fin-de-siecle dining-room and late twentiethcentury bathroom, all giving on to a modern carpark). Greenaway even goes as
far as to colour-code these spaces as a means, it seems, of altering the
ambience from scene to scene. However, the artifice that most potently evokes
the full dimensions of the economic recession affecting Britain under Thatcher is
probably the uncanny, eerie atmosphere of the film. It is against such a
background of inner-city degeneration, violence and crime that the threat of
fascism (epitomized by Mr. Spica and his cronies) becomes a real peril. Fascism
and economic recession together are what render transparent many otherwise
opaque or hidden connections, which make up some of the key themes on the
agenda of the radical right. Thus, through the ostensibly fabled character of Mr.
Spica, many of the resonant themes of organic Toryism--the need for social
discipline and authority in the face of a conspiracy by the enemies of the state,
the onset of social anarchy, the enemy "within"--are indirectly articulated before
the spectator. The fact that the decadent, upper-class customers are utterly
indifferent to Mr. Spica's tumult and disruption in the restaurant also suggests the
extent to which a sector of society passively colluded with Thatcher's famously
insensitive politics. It is with this in mind that the film's depiction of the pointedly
silent "lover" (Michael does not utter a word until half-way through the film)
becomes politically suggestive. This otherwise enigmatic character could be said
to represent the academic element in British society, individuals who arm
themselves with knowledge and know all too well the lessons history has to
offer.( n8) For this reason, Michael's interest in the French Revolution is doubly
relevant in the story. On the one hand, and from the character's point of view, the
allusion to this bloody historical event invokes Edmund Burke's sombre
Reflections on the French Revolution in which the author warned his readers that
such an inadmissible rebellion would founder in a welter of anarchy and violence
(Macpherson 63-8). On the other hand, and at a more impressionistic level, the
theme of the Revolution also brings to mind the dominating viewpoint at the time,
crystalized by the The Social Contract, in which Jean-Jacques Rousseau
developed the idea that king and rulers govern states owing to a contract with
their subjects. If the rulers do not fulfill the contract, it was the right and the duty
of the people to oppose or depose them. "So long as a People is constrained to
obey and does, in fact, obey--it does well, so soon as it can shake off its yoke,
and succeeds in doing so, it does better" (Rousseau 240). Thus, a kind of
commemoration of the French Revolution (the film was issued in 1989 when the
200th anniversary of the event was celebrated) is used to code the political
content of the film: lip-service is paid to a range of values easily identifiable with
those proclaimed so often by Thatcher--her loudly claimed concern with
individual liberty and active participation of the people in the destiny of the
country while, in practice, both the Revolution and Thatcherism epitomize the
consolidation of the centralized modern state (even a kind of dictatorship( n9)) as
the sole repository of national interest. Hence, if Mr. Spica is portrayed as a bully,
the pattern of Mrs. Thatcher's behaviour and her priorities in policies leave no
doubt as to why the main character in the film is labelled "Thief": during the
eighties, wage councils offering some protection to the poor disappeared,
maternity rights were curtailed, child care became almost non-existent, tax
incentives were only directed at those at the top of the income tree while the dole
slowly dwindled. Even legislation governing equality had to be forced on Britain
by the European Court (Roberts 15). Could this last point be shrewdly insinuated
in the film by means of Mr. Boarst? Clearly, the cook is the only individual who
refuses to buckle under to Spica's every whim, a fact that calls to mind Giscard
D'Estaing's and Mitterand's condescending attitude toward Mrs. Thatcher and
their coolness when faced with her shockingly undiplomatic trantrums during
European summits (D'Estaing 4; Thompson 60). Mr. Boarst not only demands
sovereignty in the kitchen, a space that could evoke both the foreigness of
Europe and the enforced partnership of Britain with the European Common
Market, but he also succours the wife and her lover who, as stated before, can
be viewed as emblematizing downtrodden elements in British society. It is
therefore by breaking down traditions, lifestyles and historical events of three
different countries and then putting them back together to make something
entirely new that Greenaway implants some discernible political innuendoes into
the story. As noted by William F. Van Wert, what is English in The Cook, The
Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is both the Jacobean revenge tragedy and
Margaret Thatcher's England; what is Dutch in the film is both the preponderance
of portraits painters as well as the name of the restaurant and what is French in
the film is both the refinement of cuisine and the French Revolution (48).
All in all, it is plain that in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover there is
no one narrative, no one stable point of view, no easy reading of the film. Even
though the basic plot--part gangster movie, part revenge tragedy--is fairly
straightforward, more substance can be given to the otherwise painfully
vulnerable Georgina and self-effacing Michael if the characters are seen as
representative of the abject coming into collision with the stubborn tyranny of the
Symbolic. On the other hand, Greenaways's bold use of art, art history and
historical facts adds another, this time political, dimension to the film. From this
perspective, the clear references to seventeenth-century bourgeois Holland can
be understood as questioning the Thatcherite mix of economic liberalism and
moral authoritarianism while the covert and ironic homage paid to the French
Revolution actually pushes the logic of Thatcher's ideology to its limits in subtly
underlining how the promised opening of a new era for Britain resulted in the
alienation of everyone except the few pertaining to the "One of Us" clan. It is this
constant dallying with the past that renders The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and
Her Lover a profoundly allegorical work, a work that challenges traditional images
and ideas in an attempt, it seems, to "shock" those members of the audience
lulled into conformity with their lot under Thatcherite politics. Consequently, the
story in the film can be said to constitute either an external attack on modern
procedures and moral values or simultaneously, a spontaneous, intentional and
internally generated reaction to Thatcherism and all it stood for.
Notes
(n1) In Artforum, Jeanne Silverthorne brings up an interesting point in her column
on The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (28, 1989-90, 22-24). She sees
in the scrambled letters of the restaurant, initially (dis)arranged to read "Aspic
and Boarst," a play on "speak-a" (Spica) becoming a-speak (aspic) with all the
connotations this reference to meat jelly brings to mind. Although admittedly, this
subtle connection can be seen as discreetly "announcing" the final scene in the
film, it seems that, more than enigmatic symbols, what impresses itself clearly on
spectators at this early stage in the story is the deliberate and sonorous analogy
between the name of the protagonist and the character--who not only speaks-but who ROARS throughout the film.
(n2) This feeling of nausea or disgust is traceable to the infant's pre-Oedipal
experiences with its own body and that of its mother (excrement, blood, mucous).
Abjection makes its appearance in the struggle to separate from the maternal
body. The child tries to separate but feels that separation is impossible. The
mother is made abject in order to facilitate the separation from her. At this point
the mother is not-yet-object and the child is not-yet-subject (Kelly Oliver, 1993:
56).
(n3) "One of Us" was a designation applied by Margaret Thatcher herself to the
politicans and other advisers on whom she felt she could rely. It was during her
three terms as prime minister that the opposite: "Not One of Us" became
common currency--as did the expression "wets"--as a means of referring to those
members of the party who had serious reservations about some of the policies
Margaret Thatcher and her "inner" cabinet were pursuing. Ironically, the phrase
"Not One of Us" was clearly in the air, as applied to her own person, when the
prime minister was "deposed" by her own party in November 1990.
(n4) In his review of the film, William F. Van Wert notices many other allusions to
well-known tableaux. He mentions: Masaccio's "The Expulsion of Adam and Eve"
(the naked lovers in the maggot-infested food van); Andrea Del Castagno's "The
Last Supper" [1436] (the long supper table with Fitch and company); Antonello
Da Messina's "St Jerome in His Study" [1460] (the book depository scene);
Andrea Mantegna's "Dead Christ" (1500) and Rembrandt's "The Anatomy
Lesson of Dr. Deyman" (the view of the dead Michael from the feet up); Van
Eyck's "Adam and Eve" (one tableau of the lovers); Rembrandt's "The Syndics of
the Draper's Guild" (for one of Spica's suppers, where three of his men are
standing behind the table); Vermeer's "The Cook" [1617] (for one of the kitchen
tableaux) (Film Quarterly, 1990-91: 47).
(n5) At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the British State was based on
the power of the monarch controlled by a Parliament. Unlike Britain, Holland
developed during the same period a liberal-federal system, free of royal rule, as a
means of preserving regional autonomies. The United Provinces, a result of the
1609 Armistice, was a small, but very densely populated, territory with no cultural
or political homogeneity. The strength of this small confederation of provinces
resided in its political self-determination and in the economic activity of its
powerful town merchants and traders. These middle-class townsmen formed a
variety of cooperatives and it was their political and economic prosperity that
demonstrated that (contrary to the officially held theories in nations such as
France, Spain, Britain) economic expansion did not necessarily depend on strong
central government. It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that
Holland's lack of professional armed forces at the service of a powerful
centralized government proved the country's undoing, especially when the
country was harassed by increased pressure from the exterior while undergoing
an economic deadlock (Van Dulmen, 1982: 176-78; Clark, 1966: 93, 129-30).
(n6) As suggested by Sean French in his review of the film, it seems that
Greenaway's aim in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover was to
portray the whole of life in terms of consumption and excretion (277). If Mr. Spica
is viewed as a big overgrown child whose development has been somehow
arrested at the oral and anal stages, then the characterization of this very carnal
bully quite neatly fits Freud's description of pathological cases deriving from
fixation on "pregenital" organizations of infantile libidinal life (1977:109-112; 116118; 207-215; 295-300). The first of these stages is, according to Freud, the oral
or cannibalistic one when sexual activity is not yet disconnected from the
ingestion of food. This "phase" is reflected in the very setting of the film--the
restaurant--and in the fact that food and eating are constant themes in the story.
The subject is bluntly viewed in its totality (ingestion, digestion and defecation)
for, while artful food elaboration and pseudo-gourmet consumption take place in
the restaurant, their opposites are also present in the form of rotting raw meat in
vans and in the covert allusions to excretion through the recurring lavatory
scenes. A second pregenital, auto-erotic phase in infantile development is the
sadistic-anal organization. All the instinct components of this phase are present
in the big, narcissistic Mr. Spica: The character exhibits a total lack of shame, an
evident inclination towards or curiosity about lavatories (a perversion of the
spontaneous infantile inquisitiveness as regards the processes of micturition and
defecation) and a very marked (and amply illustrated in the film) active instinct for
cruelty. It is the preponderance of these infantile manisfestations that is most
symptomatic of perversion and disturbance in the adult character of Mr. Spica.
Consequently, the very carnal and often physically brutal acts committed by Mr.
Spica reveal to what extent he is a regressive character--all his perversions
deriving from a fixation at the anal stage. The first scenes already show Mr.
Spica sadistically smearing excrement all over a man. This anal fixation is also
played out when Mr. Spica follows Georgina into the ladies's room, attacks a
gentleman at the urinal or tells Michael to go and "stand in the corner like a
naughty little boy." Even Georgina acknowledges to her dead lover that her
husband was "not really interested in sex," being much more prone to sodomistic
games.
(n7) Beatrix Campbell, referring to Margaret Thatcher, says that "uniquely among
politicians, in the public mind she (Margaret Thatcher) belongs to one sex but
could be either" (1987: 233). This veiled criticism was later converted into a
fullblown condemnation by Yvonne Roberts when she declared: "She (Margaret
Thatcher) created a monstrous new mythology about the female gender: that
only the ruthless, the insensitive and the despotic can lead and survive"
(Observer, Sunday, 25th November, 1990, 15)
(n8) The compound of silence and covert defiance on the part of Michael is
reminiscent of a similar posture adopted by Oxford University dons throughout
the eighties to rebuff Mrs. Thatcher and all she stood for. It concerned the yearly
custom at Oxford University of conferring honorary degrees to eminent
personalities. As prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was logically on the list and,
as an Oxford graduate, could have been thought automatically eligible. However,
year after year, and as a kind of silent revolution, the dons voted to withhold the
honour from the prime minister. Mrs. Thatcher's way of talking about the amply
tenured university staff and the many cuts she imposed on universities proved in
their eyes that she had no deep sympathy with universities. Likewise, the
educational policy she was activating (universities had to show a profit and show
evidence of their cost-effectiveness) was interpreted as an open challenge to
many of the traditions which academics thought inviolable. For this reason, as
Hugo Young remarked: "... it would be inappropriate for Oxford to accord such a
wrecker its highest token of approval. By withholding it, Oxford was acting for the
entire academic world" (1991: 403).
(n9) In the spring of 1789, events in France seemed to offer a prospect of
national regeneration that caught the imagination of the whole of Europe.
However, after the execution of the King, the new-born Republic soon faced a
widespread counter-revolutionary movement, economic troubles and sans-
culotte discontent. The emergency measures of the Republican leaders
amounted in effect to a dictatorial regime and inaugured a period which JeanPaul Marat termed "the despotism of liberty" (Wright, 1990:66)--that is, the
attempt to save the Revolution by ruthless force and Terror.
A certain historic symmetry may be appreciated by comparing these events to
Margaret Thatcher's career. In 1979, the country was startled out of its cosy
lethargy by the appearance of a woman in high politics. The figure of Margaret
Thatcher made even politics seem exciting, and her earnest pledge to launch the
recovery of Britain was received with glee by ample sectors in society. However,
if Mrs. Thatcher came to power as "the head of a peasants' revolt against the
Establishment of her party" (Raphael, 1990: 13), the pattern of leadership she set
from the start soon developed into a kind of dictatorship as Number Ten slowly
but surely became a kind of fortress--the sole sanctuary of the true creed.
Likewise, outside the governmental machine, the supposed opening of a new era
for the British economy resulted in inflation, unemployment, new taxes and
Britain remaining a second rate economy.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
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By Chantal D''Arcy, University of Zaragoza Spain