Bonnie and Clyde

Recently saw the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway; one thing I noticed about this production was how much cameras, photography, newspapers, even Bonnie's written poem about their legend, all figure into the story. Every where one looks, someone is representing one's self either in photos or in print. Everyone seems to be obsessed with committing themselves to a representation. The complication comes from the fact that the representations appear to both conceal and reveal them, frankly admitting that we cannot perceive either the world or ourselves without representation.

At least in Clyde's case, some of that may be psychosexual; Clyde appears to struggle with E.D. and sexual anxiety throughout most of the film, allowing for a very easy Freudian reading that he is projecting his own sexual inadequacies onto phallic symbols such as firearms, and into such exciting tensions as bank robberies. But staying with the Freudian speculation, death drive also appears to be a propelling motivation, for by embracing potentially deadly situations they hope to control death itself. This preoccupation with death drive is apparent not only in Bonnies desire for the orgasmic "le petit more" with Clyde, but also when she demands that they drop Gene Wilder out of the car once she learns he's an undertaker.

The desire to control the death drive may also be behind their relentless quest for representation, for once someone is preserved in the by-definition lifeless representation (photos, print, etc, are all inorganic by nature), then they have imprinted their existence onto death, the one force that never dies, ironically ensuring their immortality.

Bonnie and Clyde finally having sex near the end can, in that sense, do nothing else but presage their own death, for Clyde no longer has to project onto a representation something he has enacted in vivo. Now that he's engaged in a life-creating and life-affirming act, he no longer needs to imprint onto lifeless representation; he can dispense with symbols, as can symbols now dispense with him. Likewise, Bonnie's publishing of a poem about their adventures ensures that they will now live forever as legends; there is no longer any need for them to remain alive. Both the two lover and representation itself can dispense with each other.

They die in short order.