Metaphor in The Fisher King: Chapter 3 part 6 of
THE BIG PICTURE: A POST-JUNGIAN MAP OF GLOBAL CINEMA
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
The Fisher King (1991)
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It’s really about a search for the Holy Grail in the twentieth century in New York–a metaphorical search. –Terry Gilliam |
Note the theological cliché “someone…watching” needs to be reconciled with the quite different ambiance of “magical.” In collaboration with the eminent physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung developed the stage-seven idea that phenomena interpreted as divine predestination or “magical solutions” were “synchronicities”–not mere coincidences but patterns resulting from the interconnections of the universe. These interconnections include (but are not restricted to) the human need for meaning, which guides them to seek such links. The Fisher King defines evil as egotistical separation from the rest of the world and its cure as a recognition of these synchronicities.
Jack Lucas, an arrogant radio disk jockey, wittily insults lonely
listeners who call for comfort. Chief of these is a psychotic named Edwin. Told by
Jack that happiness will always elude him, he despairingly responds by killing himself
and seven others. Crushed with guilt, Jack abandons a career on the brink of fame
and becomes an alcoholic derelict, supported by Anne, the proprietor of a video store.
Wandering despondently in dangerous terrain, Jack survives an attack from two delinquents,
through the aid of the visionary/psychotic Parry, a homeless vigilante. He suffers
from a severe dissociative disorder (symptoms triggered to forget a trauma). Parry’s
madness comes from having witnessed his fiancée murdered by Edwin. With gratitude
for being rescued and guilt for having ruined a life, Jack tries to help Parry, first
with money, second with assistance in the courtship of a woman named Lydia, and finally
by stealing an object that Parry believes to be the Holy Grail. The film ends with
the two men happily lying naked next to each other in Central Park. The sky breaks
into fireworks, including the set piece, “The End.”
A summary such as the above cannot make much sense because its brevity inevitably
omits what gives life to the script–its elaborately extended metaphors, generated
by the cusp of Jack’s trying to decide what to do with his life. At first the analogies
are shallow, expressive of the hollowness of Jack’s values. He, for instance, once
voices his guilt with the metaphor, “If there were some way I could just pay the
fine and go home.” He wants to believe that his destroying Parry’s life equals a
traffic violation. He presents Parry with about seventy dollars, but to no effect,
since Parry simply gives it away to another lunatic. Then Jack shouts to God that
he gave Parry the money. The synchronicities, however, develop a metaphor of Jack
as Grail quester and, oddly enough, as Pinocchio.
“And Pinocchio is a true story”
Jack chortles this line sarcastically. Ironically, when overwhelmed with guilt for
Edwin’s crimes, Jack, to be redeemed, must happen upon and learn from analogies of
himself and Pinocchio. The process begins when a boy presents Jack with a wooden
Pinocchio doll. Jack responds by asking the surrounding street people, “Anybody here
named Jiminy.”
In Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), Jiminy Cricket first appears as a wanderer in
rags and patches. So, finding the cricket’s counterpart among the homeless is not
quite as far-fetched as it might otherwise appear. During prosperity, Jack behaved
as if he had lost his conscience. Now he figuratively seeks one. The novelization
announces, “He tucked it [Pinocchio] under his arm and set off in search of Jiminy
Cricket” (Fleisher, 35).
According to Disney’s Jiminy, a conscience is a “still small voice.” He is quoting 1 Kings 19:11-12, where that phrase denotes God’s whisper, which inspires the moral sense. Jack’s conscience, Parry, repeatedly describes himself as God’s servant, appointed by the fairies. In Pinocchio, the moralism-spouting Blue Fairy appears after Geppetto kneels to the star in the posture of Christian prayer. She commissions “Sir Jiminy Cricket” as a conscience, perhaps suggesting that she is an angelic power, and thus another servant of God.
A moral dichotomy structures Pinocchio: Jiminy sings of
the Biblical “straight and narrow path.” In the film, it leads not to God per
se, but to education, while “the easy road to success” is Stromboli’s theater,
an “actor’s life.” The cricket quips, “What does an actor need with a conscience
anyway.”
Analogous images pervade The Fisher King. Parry was a teacher and becomes
Jack’s conscience; Jack’s fall came from the amorality of his life as a radio entertainer
about to act in a movie and TV series. School requires the way of self-discipline;
“success” breeds every bad habit. Like Pinocchio’s, Jack’s wrongdoing is accompanied
by smoking and drinking, though, unlike the puppet’s, Jack’s smokes are not all of
tobacco. Thus, there is a certain comic relevance in his instructing the Pinocchio
doll, “Be a good boy. Say no to drugs.” Tobacco and alcohol are enough to start Pinocchio’s
transformation into a “Jackass”–probably the source of Jack’s name.
Drunk, Jack sits under a gilded statue, telling the doll (somewhat inaccurately) that Nietzsche divided people into the great, such as “Disney” or “Hitler,” and the “Bungled and Botched.” Considering himself among the latter, Jack ties the doll to his ankle, adds stones for ballast, and prepares to jump into the river. Consciously, he seeks suicide–but this overt intention does not explain his wearing the doll. Disney’s Pinocchio also weighted his leg, preparatory to a watery plunge. The puppet, however, sought not suicide but a heroic quest beneath the sea. Therein he died, lay in death, and rose resurrected a human being. Unconsciously, perhaps, Jack nurtures hope for a similar miracle.
Like Pinocchio, however, Jack must redeem himself through virtues
that come slowly. Even late in the drama, to reprove Jack for a lie, Parry makes
a gesture indicating a growing nose (another Pinocchio motif). Bravery is
hardest of all. As with Pinocchio, the danger is often fire. Set aflame in Geppetto’s
house, Pinocchio next endures Strombolli’s threat to chop him into kindling, and
finally braves a burning boat inside the whale. Two delinquents pour gasoline on
Jack to incinerate him. Then amid the homeless, he catches on fire. Finally, in scaling
the Grail castle, he begins to hallucinate the fire-breathing Red Knight.
Despite dangers, Jack survives as does the little doll, which appears in one scene
after another. It stands guard before the Red Knight fresco, lies in Parry’s arms
more than once, and ultimately rests between the two protagonists while they recline
nude. Above all, it suggests that the characters’ salvation requires their returning
from the history of their falls to the relative timelessness of remembered childhood.
Or, to change to another of the sustained metaphors in the drama–the innocence of
the Fool, Parsifal who saves the Fisher King in Grail legend. As Jiminy Cricket says,
“Make a fool of yourself, then you’ll listen to your conscience.” (Only by foolishly
disregarding the consequences of their acts can they break free from time and redo/redeem
their past, by reshaping the unconscious metaphors that encapsulate it.)
Of Fisher Kings and Queens
Even more than from Pinocchio, LaGravenese’s inspiration for The Fisher
King came from re-interpreting the following allegorization of the Grail legend
(in a book popularizing Jungian psychology): “A boy [the Fisher King] in his early
adolescence touches something of the Christ nature within himself, but he touches
it too soon, is only wounded by it, and drops it.... Many psychic wounds in a man
come because he touches his Christ nature, that is, his individuation process, prematurely,
can’t handle it, doesn’t see it through, and is wounded by this (Johnson 9).” Robert
Johnson spends most of that book (He) reducing the “individuation process”
to a movement from stages two to three. He explains that when as a boy, each man
(like the Fisher King of the Grail legend) starts to grow up too fast, he becomes
frightened of prematurely separating from the mother’s protection. Consequently,
he continues to dread maturation, even his own masculinity–and this apprehension
figuratively becomes his “wound.” Externally, he has matured; internally he is still
a frightened child.
In the article “The Search For The Holy Reel,” LaGravenese significantly rephrases He: “Johnson uses Jungian analysis to explain how a boy, at some specific turning point in his journey from innocence to adulthood.... contacts a divinity within, a Godlike reflection–an ‘I can do anything in this world’ kind of feeling. ... [T]he boy ‘touches’ God or the God within–that part of ourselves that is our direct link to the divine: our souls. But being young boys, our innocence, eagerness and naïveté leave us unable to cope with or even understand the enormity of this experience–and so the experience burns us–leaving a ‘Fisher King’ wound” (LaGravenese 124). Recall that Johnson explained that by “Christ nature” he really meant “individuation process.” LaGravenese, however, omits that and interprets “Christ nature” entirely his own way, as a feeling of infinite power.
In The Fisher King, LaGravenese’s persona Parry explains
the Fisher King’s wounding in a traditionally Christian manner: “And in this state
of ... radical amazement ... he felt for a brief moment, not like a boy, but like
God ... And so he reached into the fire to take the Grail. And the Grail vanished.
And the boy’s hands were left caught in the flames ....” Parry implies that the wound
comes from trying to be “like God” (cf. the serpent’s tempting words in Genesis).
Where Johnson offers a stage-five-or-above idea about the need to mature, LaGravenese
(or at least Parry) has received a stage-four dogma about the sin of attempting to
be God. The errant boy is wounded by the hell-like flames (as previously mentioned,
an image repeatedly applied to Jack). Johnson’s metaphor is therapeutic for those
who accept his assumption that humanity should pursue unlimited growth. LaGravenese,
however, further popularizes this already watered-down psychology, by making it simpler
and more conservative (with only distant resonances of Jung’s stage-seven notions),
but perhaps this is necessary to pace the average audience, which the film does skillfully.
The Fisher King begins with Jack as a “cult personality”–a kind of god to
his fans, and above all, to himself. His program has become, as he calls it “Sunrise
Confession time,” but lacking the humility of the traditional confessing priest with
penitents. In the opening shots, the camera obtrusively stares downward, first from
the ceiling of his radio booth, then upon a street scene, and finally in his penthouse
above the city. This looking down helps the audience to see as through his attitude.
Equally obtrusive, after his collapse, most scenes are filmed from his eye level,
even when he lies on the floor or sits. Literally and metaphorically, viewers are
forced with him to look up to the other characters.
During his original self-involvement, in a room decorated with
snapshots of himself, Jack wallows in a bubble bath. His face in a mudpack, he smiles
protractedly at his reflection in a mirror that he holds in front of his face. He
practices the line “Forgive me,” sarcastically–a joke from the movie in which he
is about to star. In contrast, when his narcissism decreases, truly seeking forgiveness,
he administers a mudpack not to himself, but to Parry.
The latter’s fall occurs at “Babbit’s,” a name that well—describes the clientele.
Thus Parry is also a Fisher King, punished for “yuppie” pride as he is likewise a
Fool–a fact that gave Gilliam difficulty in deciding who was the central character
(La Gravenese 156).
Even Jack’s woman friend Anne presents a similar pattern, again
based on a re-vision of a passage in Johnson’s book. Johnson cautiously approaches
Jung’s notion that what is presently conceived of as the devil should be acknowledged
as part of God: “Jung has made quite a bit of this and often suggests that what has
been excluded from the Christian Trinity is the dark, feminine element in life. So
it comes back to plague us as a kind of chthonic devil” (Johnson 67-68). In other
words, (1) God was incomplete without the devil and (2) God can be conceived as feminine.
These strikingly recombine in Anne’s monologue: “I think man was made out of the
devil’s image and women were created out of God.... And so the whole point of life,
I think, is for men and women to get married so the devil and God can live together
and, ya know–work it out....” Her identification of women (i.e. herself) with God
and her relegating Jack to a devilish role sounds arrogant (even though her tone
is comic). Glimpsing her grandiosity prepares the viewer for her emotional explosion
when Jack hints that he should halt his affair with her once he returns to a social
position above her. Although, assuredly, he is the more megalomaniac of the two,
she is sufficiently imperfect to aggravate the painfulness of their relationship.
Significantly, they first met at a bar called “Hellfire.”
There is at least one other Fisher Kings as well. The fabulously wealthy Carmichael,
who owns the “Holy Grail,” is, ironically, saved from suicide, by Jack’s burglary,
which triggers an alarm, bringing help. The “Grail” itself is actually an award cup
given him for his childhood service to the Church, i.e., to God. According to Johnson,
all men are Fisher Kings and the meaning of the Grail is that they should serve God
(though what a Jungian analyst means by “God” is always a question).
“The Fisher King myth has a lot of derivations”
Parry says this, reminding the audience that there is no single Grail legend, but
rather a coalescence of disparate sources–a long, ever-changing development. Unlike
Excalibur, The Fisher King makes no attempt to reduce this diversity
to simple, repetitive patterns. The very incoherence of the Grail myths provides
rich material for the movie’s comic chaos. According to the novelization, Parry is
the Fool named Percival: “Percival, also known as Parsifal. Parsifal ... Parry” (Fleisher
189). The movie’s “fairies” are cherubim and Jack is Galahad: “Hallucinations of
floating cherubim dispatched Parry upon a quest, to achieve God’s grace and healing.
But to do that he needed a Galahad” (Fleisher 189). As noted above, however, Gilliam
saw Jack and Parry as both Percival and the Fisher King simultaneously, with no Galahad
involved. Indeed, the name Parry for a professor of Arthurian studies may come from
John J. Parry, co-editor of the multivolume Arthurian Bibliography.
Interpretation of details in the movie depends on what version of the legend one
has in mind. Take, for instance, Lydia’s saying that Parry has only one name as did
Moses. Ostensibly, this associating him with a Biblical prophet simply foreshadows
her later attraction to him. There is, however, an Arthurian allusion. In Lestoire
del Saint Graal, a sinner named Moses (not to be confused with his Biblical namesake)
unworthily approaches the Grail, is punished in flames, and finally saved by Galahad.
Thus he undergoes a purgation comparable to the Fisher King and Parry.
At one point, Parry mutters “Et in arcadia ego.” This is not from a medieval version of the Grail myth but a modern one. In the best-seller Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the words “Et in arcadia ego” (“And I in Arcadia”) are presented as the following: a clue to the mystery of the Holy Grail; a Latin anagram for “Begone: I conceal the secrets of God”; an inscription in a series of paintings by Nicolas Pousin and Giovanni Guercino; a motto of the Plantard family; and an allusion to the possibility that Arcadia in ancient Greece was settled by a lost tribe of Israel (Baignent, Leigh, and Lincoln 35, 181, 275). The authors imply that assembled together these scraps of information somehow reveal the following: the Merovingian dynasty of Medieval France descended from a child of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalen. They allege that virtually all subsequent history has conspired to conceal this secret. To those like Parry (and eventually Jack) who accept such mysterious interconnections throughout the universe, the superficial consistencies of logic seem less useful in choosing a life direction than metaphors. One of these is the underlying theme of all therapeutic tropes: the imaginary can become real, as here a cheap trophy heals like the Holy Grail. Not just the puppet to boy of Pinocchio and the ham to hero of The Fisher King, but such movies as Dave (1993), Leap of Faith (1992), and The Music Man (1962) make this their central suggestion, that a willingness to take responsibility can transform the fraudulent to the authentic, because the structure of life is as fluid as a dream.
Continue to THE BIG PICTURE Chapter 3 Part 7
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