Inspiration Case Study #4: The Case of How We Are Housed in Class Conscious TV and Cinema

[published on the Facebook Thunkity Thunk: Open Ideas forum on February 10, 2020]

Is “Parasite” (2019) part of a lineage of films/tv shows/books that depicts the above/below metaphorical framework of the rich/poor dynamic? Consider also:

- “Downton Abby” (2010 - present)
- “Upstairs Downstairs” (1971 - 1975; 2010 - 2012)
- “Mansion on a Hill” (1982)
- “Metropolis” (1927)
- “The Castle” (1926)

Except for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (which most resembles “Parasite,” in terms of depicting enslaved underground members of the working class), all of these center around a particular, memorable house. A house is an easy, common symbol — in fact, a multitude of meanings can be projected into it. My own dreams often take place again and again in particular houses, either real ones from earlier parts of my life or consistent made-up ones. Some say everything in our dreams is a part of us; in that case, the “container” of the dream’s action is ripe to be interpreted as the totality of the dreamer’s identity.

In Sophie Fiennes’s amazing documentary “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,” the Slavonian philosopher Slavoj Zizek incisively describes the three floors of the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) as corresponding to Sigmund Freud’s three layers of the psyche: The ground floor (where Norman Bates acts normal) is the Ego; the first floor, as the European Zizek puts it, or rather the floor above (where Norman Bate’s mom seems to live, calling out to him parental remarks) is the Superego; and the basement, to which he carries her mummified body, as it seems to call out freakier and freakier things, is the Id.

What if, instead of (just) looking at the lineage described at the top here in the obvious light of the deficiencies of Capitalism (something the Marxist Zizek would be fine with), we also imposed the “Psycho” house interpretation over them? What if it’s both at once?

Historically, hasn’t the upper class caricatured the lower class as being driven by base urges, of being animalistic — in other words, of being the Id of Society? And hasn’t the middle class traditionally been the source of conscience, mediating the friction between the other two? But where, in fact, is the middle class depicted in my list above? Those works all seem to be about the dynamic between just two extremes of the economic spectrum...

I assert that the third part of the triangle, the superego, the highest floor in a sense, is occupied by us: the viewer/the reader/the audience. It is left to us — as we exit these artful entertainment experiences — to go out into the world and funnel everything into an ethical framework.

What seems unattainable (the Castle, the Mansion on a Hill, the Upstairs of the Rich Family’s Home), this is a red herring. Because — as the La Boca design firm’s cartoon-style poster for “Parasite” shows us — it’s an MC Escher-like Möbius Strip interplay anyway. As in a dream, we already *are* all parts of that house. That recognition, that totality, is the higher Superego view.