OFFICE KILLER (Cindy Sherman, 1997)

While discussing the qualities of an uncanny scene, Freud quotes Jentsch as saying that the uncanny creates "doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate." In Office Killer, the "protagonist" is introduced in a particularly uncanny way. The camera shows only the top of her head which is divided by a precise part in her hair that is exactly between two buns on either side. As Jenstsch said, from a shot such as this, it is arguable that this supposedly animate object is in fact not animate at all. This image at first appears to be some sort of odd, animal-like, piece of modern art. This lifeless quality of what is in truth a very live head is what makes this image uncanny.

Sherman's use of this uncanny image is particularly interesting considering the medium. Normally this image would be fixed in Sherman's traditional medium of photography. However, since this medium is film--and since film, by definition, is a motion picture--Sherman's success is based on riding out the visual beat. The trick to making any image uncanny is that it is only able to be created for a moment. This is true because the viewer's eye will adjust to the image and discover its true, uncanny nature. Jentsch says that the uncanny sense is dependent on the fact that the viewer's "attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately." The key here is timing. If Sherman had left the camera on Dorine's head too long, she might have appeared comic rather than uncanny or strange. Sherman uses a distinctly timed cut sequence between the top of Dorine's head and a shot of a woman from the office talking to her. This sequence solves the problem of timing by not giving the viewer enough of the image all at once, and it leaves in question the nature of Dorine by successfully creating the uncanny feeling that Sherman was trying to achieve with these shots.

In Office Killer, Cindy Sherman creates a myriad of images that inspire Freudian feelings of the "uncanny" in viewers. Such strange, "unheimlich" (un-homelike) feelings emerge from one of the key props used in the film--the father-daughter portrait that hangs in Dorine's (Carol Kane) kitchen. The painting, a portrait of a young Dorine standing in front of her father, Peter (Eric Bogosian), done in insanely vivid colors and a sort of creepily unnatural caricature, readily stands out from its background position in certain scenes. On one level, the painting enhances the feeling in the film of an inappropriate, incestuous relationship between Dorine and her father because of the smiling/leering look on Peter's face and his resting of hands upon her shoulders. This sense is then ironically amplified when Dorine notes that her mother (Alice Drummond) created the painting.

A sense of the uncanny emerges on several other levels, however, because of the nature of this image's placement, its content, and its medium as a painted portrait. Typically, one would expect an object such as a family portrait to inspire a sense of family and "hominess," yet this image does not. Although it is in Dorine's home, it is displayed not in a living room or above a fireplace (traditional locations) but instead on a kitchen wall above the dining table. It also features only Dorine's father, making it an atypical "family" portrait--as the artist, Dorine's mother is conveniently left out. Even more striking, however, are the colors used in the painting--bright tones rather than more somber, darker hues characteristic of traditional portraiture. At the same time, the painting's "uncanniness" is enhanced because it also functions as a trompe-l'oeil. It is presented as if it is a real family portrait hanging in a real family's home, yet it is not--it is a prop hanging on a set that draws attention to itself through its brash unnaturalness. It subtly exudes fakeness, yet entices viewers to "suspend their disbelief" and see it as real, and such a positioning ultimately serves to inspire an uncanny effect.

In Office Killer, Cindy Sherman employs postmodern parody and trompe-l'oeil techniques to critique patriarchal structures. Linda Hutcheon argues that "through a double process of installing and ironizing," parody calls into question the notion of the patriarchal original as rare and single (The Politics of Postmodernism 93). Furthermore, trompe-l'oeil (translated as "trick the eye") also exposes the problematic nature of the original by creating a seemingly accurate optical illusion of this original. By imitating women's stereotypical looks to the point to which she confounds with them, Dorine Douglas, the film's protagonist, subverts patriarchal structures and disrupts them.

Dorine's first sentence in the film alludes to her consummation vis à vis her work: "At Constant Consumer magazine there is but one constant rule: Get the job done." The focused, hard-working, and devoted proofreader excels at her work in the office yet remains a bizarre outsider among her colleagues because of her old-fashioned clothes, outdated coiffures, and uncanny conduct. Dorine, who masters the use of relative pronouns and split infinitives, does not reinforce the stereotypical behavior of the successful and appealing women of the office who exchange remarks on physical appearance:
          "Nice eye shadow, clumpy"
          "Nice suit"
Nevertheless, her critique of female stereotypes and patriarchal originals becomes effective only when she imitates such stereotypes and at the same time parodies them.

When she brings her dead co-workers in her basement to recreate a morbid office in her home, Dorine achieves a trompe-l'oeil effect because she transforms these inert, one-dimensional creatures into cognizant, three-dimensional characters engaged in office work. Because she has Virginia write at a typewriter, Mr. Michaels type at a computer, and the girl scouts offer cookies, Dorine believes in their active participation in her alternative office. More than that, Dorine doubles this trompe-l'oeil effect with another one when she herself interacts with the dead characters, addresses them, or watches television with them. She becomes so immersed in her illusive world that in the last scene with her co-workers, Dorine imagines them as living beings working in her basement office and not as cadavers. Furthermore, eccentric Dorine turns into an imitative bricoleur who borrows various physical and behavioral traits from her decomposing co-workers to compose a new look and identity for herself. For instance, Dorine wears Norah's necklace, takes on smoking like Virginia, powders her face like Kim, and wears make-up like most of the attractive women at the office. It is during this imitation that she parodies and deconstructs the patriarchal system that rules at the Constant Consumer headquarters. Although Sherman's trompe-l'oeil techniques show that Dorine eventually looks like her colleagues, "the freaky little mouse" questions the value of the patriarchal originals when she kills her colleagues and thus punishes Mr. Michaels' sexual allusions, the delivery man's appetite for pornography, or Norah and Virginia's shallow beauty.

In the last scene of the film, when Dorine's bricolage-like transformation is complete, we see the consequences of her parodic critique of patriarchy, namely the bag with Norah's head and hands--Dorine's souvenirs of an ineffective patriarchal system. The trompe-l'oeil effect that results after her transformation will trick her future co-workers into believing in Dorine's charm and cuteness instead of acknowledging her deconstruction of stereotypes. The new trickster accepts her limitations by imitating the stereotypical look of pretty women and accentuates her strengths by threatening to subvert other patriarchal structures.

   >  >  >   g e n d e r  h o m e 


Page layout and design ©2004 by Hugh S. Manon for the Oklahoma State University Film Program. Some images on this page are the property of a third party and are used with permission. The marks of Oklahoma State University are controlled under a licensing program administered by The Collegiate Licensing Company.

Last update: 8/27/2004