Black Widow 1987: The Psychic Anatomy of a Secret Agent

It is interesting why a secret agent is a recurrent character in movies. Hitchcock himself has almost all his movies full of officers in charge of investigations. Perhaps what is exciting about a secret agent is the need to assume multiple false identities at different point of time and search for some elusive truth within the complex framework of reality. Again, reality is different from different perspectives and this makes the job of a secret agent all the more difficult. Isn't it that every man's life is like that? Aren't we playing the game of the secret agents in our own lives to create a sense of reality or meaning from the incomplete knowledge we have about our surroundings and affairs? In this sense, the story of a secret agent is the story of the every-man!

Black Widow Poster

Black Widow (no relation with the Black Widow character in Avengers, etc.) is an exciting movie with a thrilling plot, directed by Bob Rafelson in 1987. It is a story of a female secret agent, Debra Winger, who is so much engrossed in her own shitty job despite that she hates the job itself, the work environment and the bureaucracy. Her attachment to her job is pathologically obsessive. There is an interesting scene in the beginning of the movie in which her personality starts unveiling. The guy who works along with her and helps her get information she needs has a crush on her. Perhaps, he knows that she is so much obsessed with her job that he is very reluctant in expressing his crush. So, as if he is joking, he invites her for dinner. She coldly declines the invitation and says with him it will not be proper. With this, she indirectly acknowledges his crush. Understanding this, he asks if it is because of the company policy (Many companies and authorities explicitly prohibits their employees to date each other), and she says yes. Her yes is not really convincing. It appears that she just wants to avoid the discussion. The guy jokingly replies that to date her he is ready to quit the job and then no policy will come in between. The girl, who was so cold till then, gets obviously upset and pleads not to resign because he is her right arm! The guy is obviously frustrated by her serious response to his joke. Evidently, the girl is so much obsessed with her job and is unable to look at her colleague anything other than as a colleague. He does not enter her mind as a human being, or a friend, or a lover, but only as a useful co-worker. I want to argue that it is her job that has made her so much obsessive towards itself, alienating her from being a normal human being, who can feel crush on a guy.

The case she is recently obsessed with is that of a series of deaths of middle-aged millionaires, who die almost in the same manner (a peaceful death while sleeping). After their deaths, the millionaires'  wealth goes to their young wives. The problem is that in all the cases the wives were much younger than the millionaires and were very recently married to them. The secret agent suspects that these wives are the same woman assuming multiple identities. Indeed, she is right: it is a smart, cunning, young woman, Theresa Russel, who romantically and sexually seduces her victims, gets married to them and then kills them with a poison. Even though Winger's suspicions are true, the manner in which she is obsessed with Russel and the murders she commits is pathological. Winger's behaviour almost suggests that she is in fact jealous of Russel, her sexuality, seduction abilities and smartness. For example, she tells her boss that she knows Russel's character very well because she [Winger] herself was abused as a child by her own father brutally and therefore keeps some kind of hatred against middle-aged men. She says Russel also must be the same kind of a woman, abused in the childhood by some middle-aged man and obsessed with taking revenge against middle-aged men whenever possible. The boss believes this and shows sympathy. But she immediately laughs and says she was joking. The boss was relieved, but what if she was not joking? What if the story she said about her own childhood was, in fact, true? If yes, it is she, Winger, who keeps a grudge against middle-aged men. Perhaps, she is unable to express it freely, but instead projects her own grudge on Russel, who is anyway a murderer. Which explains the reason behind her obsession with this case. She wants to prevent her own fantasy (of taking revenge against middle-aged men) from becoming real. Having known about Russel and her murders, the only way to prevent her fantasy becoming real is by preventing Russel from killing more men. So she decides to chase Russel by assuming a different identity.

Russel is not an idiot. She senses somehow that Winger is the woman officer who is investigating her case. She decides to play a seduction game in front of Winger by introducing Winger to Russel's new victim, who is another wealthy millionaire. Russel allows Winger to develop some attraction towards this man. It is evident  from a single scene that Winger buys it and gets herself victimized. There is a scene in which Russel romantically talks to the man knowing that Winger is watching them from a distance. The camera then goes to Winger's point of view. Winger innocently stares at the distant scene, as if she is watching a movie or fantasizing the scene itself. The very quality of fantasy is this: it allows one to imagine ones own desire getting fulfilled, staying at a safe distance, without really getting involved in it. This scene shows that Winger is seduced by Russel, her beauty, her charm and her vice.

There are scenes in which two women come in close contact, in beach, under the water, in the bed room, and so on. In those scenes with explicit sexual overtones, I found my own desire yearning to be projected on the scene: my own desire to see both beautiful women kissing each other! I am not ashamed to admit it, but to see two women kissing, I think, some sort of sexual fantasy every man keeps under his conscious mind. The kiss ultimately happens but not with the sexual overtones, but with the overtones of revenge.

Russel finally manages to kill the man and able to synthesize evidence against Winger, who gets arrested. At this point, one cannot but sympathize with Winger. Her own obsession and search to find the truth lead her to the snare masterminded by Russel. Russel can ultimately inherit the wealth of the dead man. However, his will stipulated some charitable donations to some cause, which Russel overturns, saying that her husband had "reservations" against the charitable trust, which is a lie. 

We see a successful Russel coming to the prison to meet Winger. There she encounters her dead husband alive! Now it turns out that it was Russel who was actually caught in the snare designed by Winger. Winger knew how Russel was going to commit the murder and was able to prevent it. Russel's attempt to overturn the charitable donations in her husband's will makes the husband, who is actually alive, to realize her betrayal. Having realized that she is found out, Russel peacefully surrenders herself to the police officer, who was waiting. 

To prevent the murder, fake it, take responsibility and turn herself in to the police! Admittedly, Winger went too far to prove her case and create evidence against Russel. However, nowhere in the movie, Russel was shown from suffering from psychic disorder. Of course, when she finds out that she has been followed by Winger, a law officer, she overtly expresses her frustration. But, to my eyes, it did not appear as anything unusual. She is, maybe, just a clever minded criminal. But the steps taken by Winger, the secret agent, shows how pathologically obsessive she is. The plot shows how the murderer is just a criminal, while the investigating officer can be pathologically ill.

Men In Black

After maybe ten or fifteen years, I recently watched Men in Black (MIB) again. It was interesting. In The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Zizek says,

"If something gets too traumatic, too violent, even too filled with enjoyment, it shatters the coordinates of our reality. We have to fictionalise it. The first key to horror films is to say, “Let’s imagine the same story but without the horror element.” This gives us, I think, the background."

MIB is not really a horror movie. But it has this something, which is too traumatic, exotic and excessive an element, in it: the aliens. The weird looking aliens, who have come to the earth and made some kind of a pact with the scientists and authorities and are living along with humans on the earth.  By and large, they are nice "people" but occasionally, they can go wrong. Which is why there is a secret investigative department (of MIB) to investigate alien criminal activity on the earth. Nobody other than those with the MIB (and possibly a few scientists and those in the government) is aware of the aliens' presence and activities on the earth. In case someone sees the aliens or comes in contact with them, the MIB uses some kind of neuralyzers on them and thus they immediately forget what they have seen or experienced. Tommy Lee Jones works as an MIB agent, and Will Smith is a police officer, who has no clue about the aliens and their presence on the earth, and whom Jones tries to and later succeeds to recruit to his department, eventually to replace Jones' own position. Jones wants to retire. While retiring, the MIB agents use neuralyzers on themselves to forget their career and everything about the presence of aliens on the earth. Jones wants to retire because, he says, he has seen enough of vulgar things and wants to lead a normal life for the rest of his life. He wants to forget what he has seen and done during his career as an MIB agent. What he actually dreams of is that he can simply forget his boring career, unburden himself of his responsibilities and memories, go back to his actual life and have a reunion with the woman he loved once. 

Alien Adjusting The Human Body It Intruded

If we remove the seemingly excessive narrative about the aliens from this story, what we get is the story of a secret agent, who has been doing all the dirty work for those in power. He is self-disgusted and bored of his own job and career. He believes that his boredom is not because of his job but because of some kind of sacrifice he made for the benefit of humanity. He does not know that he actually hates his job. That is why he cannot simply resign and go without handing over his responsibilities to a new recruit. He believes what he does is very important for the society and even without his presence, the society and his job should go on without troubles. Though he is old, the woman he left before is young in his imagination, and he truly believes he will have a happy reunion with her. One can immediately see through his illusion! Anyway, to really see if he had a happy reunion with his woman, I will have to watch MIB2. By reading the short summary on MIB2, it appears that Jones' character was not left free for himself and to lead his whatever life, but called back again to be an MIB agent to fulfil his social responsibilities. 

Neuralizer

There is actually a point in the movie when Jones' thoughts are revealed to the audience. When Will Smith was called for the tests before he can join MIB, he did not know why precisely he was there. While he questions the examiner, the examiner in turn asks another candidate something like "Why exactly he was present there." The candidate stands in attention almost with the naivete of a school boy and replies that because he was the best of the best or some bull shit like that. Smith immediately laughs this off and says the kid does not even know what he is saying. Jones is also such a kid, who believes in the greatness of the MIB work. But Jones also secretly knows that it is all just bull shit. We can read it in the faint smile that Jones gives as he secretly observes Smith replying to the examiner. Smith knows the other candidate's belief is an illusion, but is still curious about MIB and would want to join. He knows the futility but denies it. In simple terms, he is a pervert who despite knowing an illusion as illusion, nonetheless, denies it is an illusion and wants to affirm it as his true belief. Perhaps, that is why Jones recruited him. Smith grooms to be a good agent, who, instead of dreaming a woman outside MIB, finds a woman and her makes her join MIB and starts screwing her. After all, perverts always prove to be fighters par excellence for the [whatever] cause they believe in!

Perhaps, a job in this capitalist world is psychically experienced as so traumatic and violent that, even though it brings money and means and enjoyments with it, one cannot imagine a happy, peaceful life without inventing some sort of weird narratives, e.g., about aliens, to justify his/her taking up the job. By imagining ones job as a social responsibility, one believes one can avoid any feelings of guilt, but in fact another kind of guilt follows for the rest of the life.