근친상간의 망령—정신분석으로 보는 <셰임>

Abstract

This paper interprets Shame, a film directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, through a lens of psychoanalysis. The film has been quite controversial in terms of the incest motif even though the director and the main actors do not explicitly admit it. Some viewers who are familiar with liberal western family culture agree with them. However, this paper, focusing on the implicit contents of the film and scrutinizing them within Sigmund Freud’s and his followers’ psychoanalytic theories, argues that Brandon and Sissy are victims of (covert) incest and that this traumatic experience actually engenders Brandon’s sex addiction and Sissy’s psychological instability and depression. To specify this argument, the analysis begins with a common question of whether or not Shame is just an obscene film, as a majority of viewers have asserted, and moves on to discussing the significance of sex to Brandon, the origins of the “self-reproach” of the siblings. and the possibility of their reconciliation with the traumatic past.