Funny Girl and maturation

#relationships #idealisation #love #maturity #archetypes

Funny Girl is a 1968 film by William Wyler starring Barbra Streisand. It is a musical biopic depicting a love affair between Fanny Brice and Nick Arnstein and is also based on a book. Here I share a commentary of the characterisations and not the people the film is based on. All comments are based in biases inherent in my experience of the film, which is theoretical and not factual.

The film came across as an accurate vehicle for articulating psychological concepts that commonly occur in relationships. They will be explored a bit here with reference to the plot - beware spoilers below! Due to the focus being Barbra's stunning performance, it also was incredibly entertaining and captivating a watch. Highly recommended viewing!

The film ends as it begins, Fanny by herself in a theatre. She gestures with her hands as she mimics the sound of someone shooting into the crowd. To me, this scene reveals how this elegant lady has a playful side, one in which she is comically in touch with her aggression in a light-hearted way. The way I see it, the film depicts the maturation of Fanny. We go way back to when she is part of an ensemble as she exposed to not be like the other girls. She is called out because her legs are too skinny, she doesn't look as classically beautiful and cannot keep in time with the other women.

Fanny appears to move to her own rhythm which much dialogue reveals. Her humorous rebelliousness is peppered throughout the film across many contexts.

Due to her perseverance and rebelliousness, Fanny lands a leading role singing her own part. She then catches the eye of gambler and entrepreneur Nick Arnstein. The meet cute happens when he comes backstage to congratulate her on her performance. This lands her another leading part in another production and Fanny's career in the theatre appears to take flight. As this occurs, she is woo-ed by Nick. He initially says he does not want to get 'involved' or 'tied down'. He leaves her and returns which seems to have a hypnotic effect on Fanny because she decides to quit the tour of her current theatre production she fought so hard for and runs to be with Nick instead. It could be said that Nick engaged in 'love-bombing' by providing the allure of the scarcity of his attention with the generosity of gifts and a note that said 'I love you'. As I watched this, I thought about the 'trickster' archetype. I like how archetypes can be a way to depict a universal and pervasive way of being across time and space. Something we can relate to within our childhood fairytales and lives today. With Nick being a gambler and entrepreneur he could fit the 'type'. He is unconventional from the start, mysterious even, alluring to Fanny who states how she could have any man given she is in the theatre. Another possibility for an archetype that Nick possesses is the 'don juan', as he plays the cad persona to a tee. These days, in his character, you may also notice hints of the modern term f***boy.

There is a lovely 'tell' which reveals Nick's deceptive side. He plays a game of poker with Fanny's aunts and pretends to have a bad hand, losing the game completely. He comes across as intellectual and cunning because of his ability to hold this piece of information to himself while orchestrating a completely different way of being to serve a greater goal. He seems to enjoy the game of cat and mouse he engages in with Fanny.

Ultimately Fanny finds a way to convince him to marry her, in her own charming and cunning way. Fanny appears to be deeply in love with her husband. They have a child and live together but he is away a lot and we see the marriage come under strain. This culminates in him playing poker instead of coming to an opening night of a new production Fanny is starring in.

While Nick works away, Fanny has returned to the theatre and we see her warming up for a show. She talks about her daughter to her friend and he gives somewhat appropriate feedback on how bright and lovely she is. Fanny doesn't seem satisfied with this so she pushes for him to say how beautiful she is. It is at this stage it becomes apparent how much Fanny values aesthetics too. She found a man who she admired (a few times she compliments him on his looks) but he ultimately was unable to be a compatible partner for her. I wondered about Nick's avoidance and prioritisation of gambling, his lack of honesty to Fanny about his debts and the deceptiveness. During a reunion their daughter is crying and Nick says 'that isn't very attractive dear so I wish you'd stop'. I wondered about his own relationship with himself, how does he connect with 'unattractive' feelings?

Egos and coping strategies

This film made me reflect on egos and coping strategies we employ to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable and afraid. We put on masks and navigate the world playing a role to find some organisation amidst the uncertainty inherent in everyday life. Without defences and egos we would barely function so we need them o that we don't leave ourselves too open, potentially fragile to the influence of the unconscious or conscious agendas of others.

The thing with survival, and our egos as masks is that it can be like a house of cards where the masks build on top of more masks stacked high, piled up and thick before we then have created a wall so deep of versions of ourselves that we can no longer feel or connect to our most sincere, honest, true selves. Any exposure may feel too threatening to topple the self. But we can also evolve and change, be a bit open, discern how and when to let love into our lives, in order to grow and be impacted by the world, lest it impact on us and topple the house, to a point where we no longer recognise ourselves. I see the self as separate from ego, a self exists beyond labels, beliefs, thoughts, aesthetics. The ego defends the self but is does not define it.

In the film, egos are involved here. Fanny's ego wants to be with Nick but Nick's ego wants to be free and 'win'. The issues become evident when, the better Fanny performed in her career, the more he felt inferior and needed to gamble to compensate. It is hard to not conclude that Nick felt a need to earn more money in order to feel an equal, or perhaps, more like a traditional role of man as a provider? One ego defence and a mask Fanny wore well was the role of comedian. She used this well to maintain a close bond with Nick. Whenever they were faced with a difficult encounter she turned it around into a joke. She was creative and able to deflect any vulnerability in their connection with ease.

Repetition compulsion

In an early scene, Fanny's mother described how Fanny's father was unreliable and said something like he is 'better off staying wherever he is'. Unfortunately this pattern was repeated in Fanny's choice of partner. This is typical of what happens, we are drawn (unconsciously usually) to someone who has similar traits and characteristics of our parents so that we can try and work through whatever we did not receive or experience from our parents that we needed as children. There is a belief somewhere that this time it will be better.

Relational dance and reinforcement of shame

This working through involves a unique relational dance between two people based on a combination of their stuff/emotional baggage. In this film, Fanny's mother tries to share her outsights on what is being repeated from her own relationship when she tells Fanny 'when you look at him, you only see what you want to see'. She tries to encourage her to work through the problem together, perhaps also more able to see the ego in Nick that Fanny somehow is unaware she is bruising by becoming successful and taking charge by trying to fix the problem. This demonstrates the power of the unconscious allure of repressed desires. After finding out about his secret debts, Fanny tries to help Nick by arranging a job for him but he becomes suspicious at receiving such a generous offer and it seems her actions inflict more shame than he was feeling before.

Nick becomes deceptive again and after taking offence at being emasculated when he is told his wife is offering him a 'meal ticket' and he cannot stay out of the spotlight with such a woman. He becomes involved in a criminal enterprise for which he pleads guilty and is sentenced to two years in prison. Did Nick just give himself up or did he also give up on himself?

They were both engaged in a kind of deceit in their own way - partially-relating and selectively attending to what was before their eyes.

Even the crime brought to mind parallels of their relationship being based on 'a phoney bond'. Left humiliated and ashamed the couple part and agree to see how they feel after Nick has served his prison term.

Absolutes and archetypes

Before Nick goes away he tries to tell Fanny that she is better off without him anyway, commenting 'we are just not good for each other' and 'I can't run in a race I can't win, let me go'. These references speak to ego language to me because of the black and white absolute thinking: winning and losing, good and bad. Another archetype comes to mind here, the puella archetype. Reflecting on Fanny's absent father in the film, I was curious about how she made sense of this, or how Barbra made this connection in her acting too. One of the most moving songs is 'People'. It includes the lyrics, 'people who need people are the luckiest people in the world'. I guess due to where this song was placed in the film, I take it that Fanny felt she needed Nick, but perhaps on a deeper level her younger self needed a father to relate to, one who could facilitate her development into the world in a way where she feels cherished, praised so she needn't seek this so badly from someone who was just unable to sustainably meet this need. Or maybe the need was just so deep that no amount of flowers and declarations of love would fill it? Dr Schwartz writes of how a father's absence can result in the adoption of a puella archetype where a woman remains stuck in pursuit of youth and beauty to the detriment of maturation (Schwartz, 2010).

A possible myth and false dichotomy this film draws attention to is how there seemed to be a need to choose between the relationship and the career.

Sacrifice, commitment and organic relationship growth

Barbra seizes the moment and ends up marrying Nick because she dropped out of a show. It is just not possible to know whether this commitment would have occurred without such a spontaneous, self-sacrificing gesture. She then reflects on what she would do differently once Nick is out of prison and says she 'won't make the same mistakes' referring to her pursuit of performing in the theatre. In the final meeting of the couple, there is only one yellow rose in the vase, compared to the abundance of roses the first time Nick visited. Symbolically this brought to mind how a relationship is like a plant, an organic, living separate entity both people pour water, oxygen and food into. It might need a bit of tentative pruning and shaping but it is a joint enterprise both people co-create. Unfortunately this was the one enterprise this entrepreneur was unable to sustain.

Maturation

I see how in this film, Fanny matures in her character, developing into a women who becomes more integrated and whole. This was wonderfully portrayed with her elegance and humour in the opening scene. She had set out to find a person to come home to, not wanting to live for her career but ended up with a man who was rarely home in the evenings and then went away a little more permanently before leaving for good.

It seems to me that maturity came from opening herself up to love. Building herself up after the pain of it not working out, she exudes a new aura of wisdom thanks to the realisation of the need to let go of an idealisation of a man she thought she married. In response to Nick's initiation of a break up conversation of 'I have been thinking', in response, Barbra's brilliant delivery of Fanny's line is: 'I simmered and stewed, I cried my eyes out but I never really thought until today'. Was this her revealing her softness? Her vulnerability? He lack of cunning when it comes to the ways of her heart? And we witness that in return of her love for him, all she wanted was for him to see her in the way she looked at him, as beautiful. He replies 'what did I ever give you that you couldn't have given to yourself?' It is true, all partners and others in our lives just give us opportunity to connect with that which is within us, laying dormant. Their love is a reminder of what is already there.

Reference:

Schwartz, S.E. (2021) The Absent Father Effect on Daughters, Routlege: Oxon, UK and New York, USA.