Eraserhead through the eyes of Noël

 

Spoilers ahead, but I think I am the last person in the world to see this? Anyway, you’ve been warned. Here’s my take on ERASERHEAD:

Henry lives in an industrial neighborhood, and takes a nice long vacation where he ends up focusing on personal issues surrounding his sexuality and frigidity. Lots of sperm symbology abounds, and one even manifests as an infant that he must attend to. I love how this story really turns around a theme that is typically only reserved as commentary on women and their sexual hang-ups/fertility. Henry is for the most part really uncomfortable when it comes to relationships. His interactions with his girlfriend and her family are awkward and full of misunderstandings. There is a really weird dinner scene where he attempts to carve a small chicken but it turns into some full on crazy foreshadowing for his sperm/self/baby butchering later on during the movie climax. 

I feel like I’ve seen enough David Lynch films at this point that I’ve begun to notice mechanisms that Lynch commonly uses for expressing certain ideas. The “stage” is certainly a go-to for him. From the red curtained theaters in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, to the red room in Twin Peaks, the stage setting can be viewed as the subconscious reaching out, attempting to communicate an otherwise hidden idea to a main character. A favorite pastime of Henry’s is to daydream, staring off into the glow of his radiator. He sees a stage there with a bizarre woman who occasionally sings (another common Lynchian tool to signify the vocalization of a subconscious dreamworld) and later she happily stomps on sperm as they fall from the sky. I assume this is Henry’s awkward fantasy of controlling his sexual urges. 

The horrifying conclusion of the movie depicts Henry carefully attempting to undress his “preemie” infant so he can truly see what horror has remained hidden from him, even as he nursed it. When confronted with the unviability and suffering of his own making, he spontaneously stabs the infant and then falls eventually into the embrace of the furnace woman. She is happy and cheerful, pleased that he was finally able to completely sever his ties to his reproductive system. 

There are a lot of other small details to support my theory; when he attempts to hook up with the beautiful neighbor, his infant (fear of reproduction) squeals and whines in the background, trying to distract him. There are occasional glimpses of a man inside a planet, pulling levers and otherwise controlling Henry beyond his understanding. Henry also at one point attempts to hide one small and precious sperm thing, secreting it away in a little cupboard while his girlfriend sleeps so that she will not have access to it. I am unsure why the twigs and mud are always found in his room, unless it is to contrast human nature against the otherwise industrial, controlled world in which Henry inhabits. All in all- a fun movie for Lynch! I’m all for it. 

Recommended by Casey

Reviewed by Noël

Question for Paris: you are ok with Un Chien Andalou, but not this?