Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Dr. Giggles

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the third of my critiques.
Thankfully, this film wasn't so awful after all.

This Analysis Contains Spoilers

Film: Dr. Giggles (1992)
Subtextual analysis: Classic Psychoanalytic Theory (no Lacan)

Ostensibly a gory, above-average slasher, Dr. Giggles is an investigation into the potential for repressed psychosexual trauma to destroy individuals, families, and even whole towns.

The first frame of the film is a quote from medical pioneer Hippocrates, indicating that extreme treatments are required for extreme illnesses. Indeed, in this film we shall be witness to extreme treatment, in the form of the battle against the titular doctor, against extreme trauma.

The film begins with the doctor escaping from a mental institution, where he had been held--held out of sight, out of mind. This is the first manifestations of the repressed trauma's potential for destroying order. The doctor slices his way to freedom and heads to his home town.

We are next introduced to our heroine, Girl, and her boyfriend, Boyfriend. Girl is somewhat stand-offish around Boyfriend. A group of libidinous teens appear, inviting Girl and Boyfriend to a creepy old house (the site of trauma, as creepy old houses must always be in art). Girl is then shown with her family doctor, who reveals to us the cause of her troubles: it's her heart--a valve has gone wonky and she must avoid stress.

The motif of the heart is important in the richly woven web Manny Coto weaves in Dr. Giggles. For the next scene is of Dr. Giggles, in the basement of an old, dilapidated house (the "creepy old house," naturally). The basement is always symbolic of the subconscious. This is the place of repression. The doctor begins beating the wall with a mallet, revealing a secret area--the depths of the subconscious, the place of secret things hidden from the conscious mind. It is also the home of the Id.

Indeed, in this office, the doctor looks at an old photo of his father, and we are given a flashback. The traumatic past is being bubbled forth. The long-suppressed memories are kicking. It is revealed the doctor is the son of a doctor, a doctor, we're eventually told, who went mad when his wife's heart also went wonky. He began killing patients to save his wife with a heart transplant--the trauma for the town. The son helped. The town then killed the father--the trauma for the doctor.

At this same time, Girl and Dad have a chat revealing the trauma in Girl's life. It seems Mom died from a routine surgery. Girl is afraid of surgery and has a heart problem. Dad, however, has already found a woman, Stepmom, with whom Girl has passive aggressive sparring.

Now we discover how three psychosexual traumas are linked. The town's trauma, Girl's trauma, and Doc's trauma. The heart represents the place of trauma, hidden as it is within the chest. Girl is afraid of surgery, so as not to bring forth her secret love for her father--her heart. Her superego forbids it, just as for the sake of her heart she is forbidden from drinking alcohol, coffee, having sex with Boyfriend, or doing anything strenuous--lest she discover she loves her father.

The teens meet, as arranged, at the creepy old house, Traumasite, we shall call it. Two teens are locked in Traumasite and dispatched. A nosey dog-walker is dispatched. So is another teen couple. Each murder has a medical motif, indicative of the medical source of all three traumas.

All the while, a rookie cop and and old cop have no idea what is going on. In truth, the old cop has an idea, but refuses to accept it. He is the symbolic defensive mechanism of the town's trauma repression. He reacts violently the more he is pressed. The rookie, like an analyst, needing to know, pushes forth and discovers the trauma: the Doctor is alive--shown effectively in flashback cutting his way, as a child, from his dead mother's abdominal cavity, where he had been hidden.

Indeed, this last image is hamfisted. The doctor, called Giggles because of his childlike giggles, is fixated in the oral stage (many of Doc's kills involving inserting phallic objects into orifices, peering through holes--mouths). He giggles and takes what he wants, because the child has an underdeveloped ego and superego; it is pure id, appetitive. There is nothing sexual in the doctor's motivations, then.

Learning of the heart problem of Girl, Doc becomes obsessed with her, due to her similarity to the trauma. Doc specifically states his purpose is to cure the town, because it is sick. Indeed, Doc's presence is both symptom and cure for the sick town and the sick girl. He wants to cure the girl's broken heart. However, the doctor is the trauma.

Doc finally captures Girl, after killing Old Cop. Now that Old Cop is dead, the defense mechanism is removed. It is now possible to get to the trauma and destroy it. However, it is trying to destroy itself. Trauma pulls towards Thanatos, rather than Eros.

The Doc takes Girl down into the basement, into the secret room--in fact, it is not a secret room, but a secret hospital. This is pure expressionism; it is so implausible, it must be taken as purely expression of the depth of the subconscious disturbance. Rookie follows into this subterranean hospital, through a waiting room full of dead, heartless bodies--casualties of the trauma.

Rookie manages to distract Doc long enough for Girl and Boyfriend to make a getaway. The stairs fall. The subconscious does not want to let go. It wants to subsume consciousness. Girl, with the help of Boyfriend--perhaps symbolic of consciousness, but this analysis should not get carried away--escape into consciousness and may now be at peace.

Furthermore, with Stepmom dead and Dad recovering, the world seems rosy for Girl. The has left trauma in the subconsciouss, the Traumasite has been exploded. What remains? The trauma does. It attacks again while Girl is getting surgery for her heart. Again, Girl triumphs and kills Doc with medical implements.

Dr. Giggles is thus less a slasher than an expressionistic psychodrama, in which the subject recovers itself through a process of self-analysis, engaging with the trauma at the Traumasite, in the subconscious, with the aid of Rookie and Boyfriend--analysis and consciousness--to free herself from trauma and ready herself for the becoming well, ordered in life, represented by the surgery. Hippocrates was right, 'for extreme diseases, extreme remedies.'

This film is recommended for students of psychoanalysis and literary departments for a fascinating depiction of psychosexual trauma playing out in a cinematic field.