Children are impressionable human beings. There are always discussions concerned with protecting the youth from the dangers of society and personal interaction. It has been fundamentally established that children should learn from their parents or guardian, instead of being susceptible to outside forces. Therefore, it makes sense that children’s personalities, perspectives and habits develop primarily through a child/parent relationship. In essence, children are being molded into a form designed by their parents, accepting and understanding the world in accordance to the parental model. Furthermore, as Lucie Cantin explains in her essay on “The Trauma of Language”, a child will inherit certain needs of satisfaction in a civilized culture as well as placement of desire on an object. In other words, language creates impressions on the youth, evoking inexpressible needs of the parent onto the child’s life. As Cantin expresses throughout her essay, a child is born out of a parental desire and is bound to the unsatisfied expectations of the parent’s life and therefore is a creation of possible attainment. Yet, if there were an impediment in this development and language relationship, would a child still inherit these needs and perspectives? An analysis of the relationship between a father and his deaf son in There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007) highlights this particular situation and is productive in understanding the effect of language in relation to Lucie Cantin’s essay.
Cantin bases much of her discussion of the relationship of language between parent and child with respect to the role or function of the father. She claims that “the father is purely a signifier…a metaphor; for the child, he represents the signifier of cultural law, the signifier of the effects of language on human beings” (Cantin, p. 41). The father is an accepted position of authority, connecting the child with civilization. In this assessment then, the father impresses certain perspectives of the outside world. Through this relationship the child learns to see and interact with the world as the parent or father does, developing through their direct language. Moreover, the “symbolic world of myths, beliefs, laws, moral and human behaviors-which forms the very tissue of civilization-is created through language” (Cantin, p. 39). The father is both the link to civilization and the creator of how it is understood through language.
This relationship is definitely apparent between Daniel Plainview and his son, H.W. Plainview in the film There Will Be Blood. H.W. is constantly at his father’s side; watching and listening to him interact in society. Daniel takes his son on scouting trips, teaches him to hate the corporate men, displays wily con-man business skills and reinforces the importance of fierce competition. H.W. is learning to understand the world through his father’s perspective and language. It is as if Daniel is molding his son to be a miniature model of himself, inheriting his need for satisfaction. A prime example is a conversation between the father and son in which Daniel explains how he will swindle the Sunday Family into a deal for their oil rich land, reiterating business skills and a dominating position in society. This modeling relationship between father and son is made even more blatant in Daniel’s repeated introduction of H.W. as “my son and my partner”. As Lucie Cantin states, H.W. is being bred to understand “the law of the father is what represents…the law of the culture” (Cantin, p. 41).
Daniel Plainview has a need to succeed by any means possible; this is not an instinctual need but a desire created out of a cultural ideal. In his perspective of civilization, to be satisfied is to be wealthy and powerful. Therefore, Daniel places his object of desire on the discovery and control of oil as a commodity. As discussed, H.W. is adopting these traits and learning to interact in a particular manner due to his father’s influence. However, since Daniel’s desire can never really be achieved, he is constantly moving toward completion but never fully attains his complete satisfaction. This is a very critical aspect of Cantin’s essay in that desire is just a substitution of an unnatural need designed by language in civilization and satisfaction is not really achieved (Cantin, p. 46). It can be observed that H.W. is following in his father’s footsteps as he is always involved in the business, eagerly informing his father about an oil puddle on their “hunting” trip and his own fascination with the oil drilling. Daniel is the signifier for H.W., becoming a representation of what he wants and how to act in civilization. However, the tragic accident that causes H.W.’s deafness alters the development of his life and relationship with his father, primarily through the impediment of language.
On the most basic observation, H.W.’s deafness causes a blockade of language between him and his father. Not only can H.W. not hear himself speak, Daniel is unable to speak with his child, communicating through rudimentary hand sign language and an over emphasis on enunciation. H.W. is no longer Daniel’s side partner and capsule of development; instead he stays at home and is nursed to sleep with whiskey. It is as though since Daniel cannot fully communicate with his child, he must find another subject to impart his wisdom and cultural needs of satisfaction. Yet, H.W. has already been well molded by the language relationship of his father, understanding what his role should be in society. This is displayed in the scene in which H.W. attempts to murder Daniel’s brother, his replacement, by burning down the house. It could be seen as a cry for attention, but it is more appropriate to designate the action as a learnt aspect of fierce competition and untrustworthiness of the outside others. Therefore, before his deafness, H.W. has definitely begun to inherit needs of satisfaction from his father through the relationship of language. Yet, his development has become halted and he must re-learn how to speak in order to continue growth. It is obvious this will occur without Daniel’s influence as H.W. is sent away to a school for the deaf. Furthermore, Daniel as the authority figure and connection to civilization through language disappears and H.W. must reestablish his own perspective of life.
This alteration in authority figure is obvious in the introduction of H.W.’s sign language teacher and translator. The two are seen communicating through sign language in multiple scenes. It seems as though both men are learning from each other, H.W. explains how the oil drill operates and in another scene they seem to be having an in depth conversation in which H.W. is listening to the teacher. This change emphasizes Lucie Cantin’s argument that the “father” is “not the father, strictly speaking, merely because he may have impregnated the female” (Cantin, p. 41). So if the “father” is an accepted authority figure and link to language and civilization, the substitution of the teacher for Daniel is a fluid change because H.W. now understands the world through a different perspective due to the power of language. Also worth noting is the fact that Daniel is not the biological father of H.W. and in essence took in the child in order to satisfy his need for satisfaction. Daniel has in many ways lost this control and language relationship with H.W. but has still implanted a cultural desire of success as well as underlying dissatisfactions with his own life.
As already discussed, the desire placed on an object is an unnatural occurrence and substitutes for a real need and satisfaction. Not only does Daniel communicate his desire for wealth and competition but also the lack of satisfaction in his own life. “With or without knowing it, what the parent demands form the child is fraught with the dissatisfactions that have marked the parent’s own life. Such demands carry unconscious and unsatisfied desires from past generations” (Cantin, p. 41-42). Daniel is an adoptive parent with no wife and really no family of his own. His own greedy desire to be all-powerful and wealthy taught H.W. how to interact with the world but also brought about what is lacking in Daniel’s life. Without the incident causing H.W.’s deafness, he may have well remained in a model of his father, but this barrier in language forced him to re-authoritate power of the “father” as well as alter his perspective of civilization. The lack of satisfaction in life is inherent to the ability to speak, creates desire, feeds it and sustains it (Cantin, p. 40). Daniel’s lack of satisfaction in his own life and focus on the object of desire is emphasized in the change of H.W.’s life. H.W. eventually weds Mary, learns the family business and sets off on his own oil endeavors. He has attained a satisfaction his father lacked in establishing a family, instead of a “partner”.
In the final scene between Daniel and H.W., the change in language and the ripple effect there after is consciously brought to the surface, illustrating the power of language. As the first signifier of language and civilization, Daniel taught how to be an oil businessman and interact with society, but with the addition of the new “father” in the teacher it can be inferred that H.W. understood the lacking of family. Without knowing it Daniel invested the need for this satisfaction in his son whereas it was something he could not attain in his own life. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that he would cast away his adopted son, berating both him and the sign language teacher. Daniel’s “quest for satisfaction or individual happiness, to use Freud’s words, is not in the logic of desire” but instead a replacement of his lack of satisfaction with a real family (Cantin, p. 46). His son achieved what he never could imagine but could only continually strive for in an unrelenting need to satisfy his objected desire.
This highlights an interesting analysis in the discussion of the language barrier in the result of H.W.’s deafness. Although the incident affected H.W.’s development in construction of civilization and needs of satisfaction, it also illuminates the deafness of Daniel. As the father, he is the link to society but has cut off any real involvement from the outside world; he is deaf to all others. His desire for the object is so strong and unrelenting that he has figuratively broken off communication to the outside world and eventually with his own son. It is very poetic then that H.W. becomes deaf and must relearn language, altering his development and attainment of satisfactions. Daniel is the actual deaf person, never listening to others or himself and being unable to attain satisfaction. “Language only eliminated the jouissance of the need by replacing it with partialized or mediated satisfactions” (Cantin, p. 42). Daniel ultimately never reached satisfaction, living alone with his wealth, only to realize that his deaf son understood what was lacking.
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