3rd Rock from the Sun is a program about a group of four, genderless aliens that land on
Earth and pretend to be a human family in order to study us. Dick is the High
Commander and leader of the aliens, but on Earth he acts as patriarch and
college professor. Sally is the Security Officer, but her assignment is to
learn about Earthling females. Tommy’s role on Earth is as a typical American
teenager, even though he is the oldest of the aliens. Harry is a joyful
simpleton, kind but not book smart. His role on the aliens’ mission is to act
as a critical communication device with their home planet and superiors. The premise of the television show is that
the aliens do not want their true identities revealed to the humans. The aliens
regularly employ a slew of Freudian defense mechanisms to prevent being found
out, or maybe just to protect their fragile, newly human egos.
The team all represents
different aspects of Freudian ideas. Dick is the most phallic, as he is
self-centered, competitive, envious and narcissistic. He rationalizes all his
dominating, pushy, bad behavior as justified because he is the commander. At
school, he rationalizes that his genius makes him intellectually superior to
the other staff members and professors (in his alien mind, they are lesser
human beings). Dick believes he is the
superego, the authority on everything. However, his frequent lack of knowledge
and denial that he doesn’t know everything makes him a pretty inept
leader. Although he believes his is
ruled by the conscious, in actuality he is ruled by his impulsive id. In this
episode, “Will Work for Dick” (Goetsch 1997), he can’t even run a copy machine,
and the inanimate object is immune to his demands, emotional outbursts, and
beatings with a messy toner cartridge.
These aliens
do not have human memories of childhood, as they are recent arrivals to this
planet. They are inspired by the
childhood stories the humans, Mary and Nina reminisce about. Mary says she was
fixated on identifying as Cinderella as a child. The ladies tell Sally stories
of how impressed and fixated their fathers were on them during recitals. Sally
is very competitive and desires to attract the attention of her “father” as
well.
When a little
human girl Sally is babysitting wants to play tea party, the aliens are ambivalent
and baffled by her imaginary games. The girl is almost all id, playing fantasy
games as kids will do before the ego is fully formed. Sally decides learning
about human childhood for females during early stages of personality
development is essential to her alien mission. Tommy & Sally try to play
childlike games throughout the episode. This mirrors the genitally minded
psychology of their human characters, who are often portrayed as overly
hormonal, much like insecure, experimenting, junior high kids. The pair are
frequently entangled with romantic discoveries on their mission in other
episodes, however this time they have regressed into behaving as younger
“children” for their investigations.
Sally plays dress-up with Tommy in female clothing, a frequent gender
exploration for young, human children. When the two play with dolls, there is a
little reaction formation as “Barbie” and “Ken” argue about gender wage
inequality. Sally continues to regress into childhood hobbies, wants to
identify as a princess or ballerina and asks Dick for permission to take ballet
lessons. She begs for his approval, which is symbolic for the child who pleads
for the attention and approval of the parent; this is an ongoing theme in both
this episode and in Freudian literature.
Harry’s
character provides another instance of Freud’s structural hypothesis. Harry
operates on instinct, following the whims of his subconscious id. He exhibits
both oral tendencies throughout the seasons of this show, but in this episode
it is just shown as the bit of salt he snatches into his mouth. Freud may have
seen it as anal when Harry uses tweezers to try to refill a salt shaker, too
OCD to ask for help or clues on how to do it properly. Harry gets things done, even if in
ridiculous, alien ways. However, Harry has no experience as an office worker
and is asked by Dick to come work for him at the college. Harry strongly wants
to please the father figure, Dick, and immediately tries to identify as an
office assistant.
Dick lost his
previous assistant, Nina as a result of reaction formation. The boss and
employee had “opposing attitudes (that) generates problems” (Berger 2014). Dick
has a bad attitude about Nina’s role as his helper and would prefer more
submissive behavior. She feels he is unrealistic about what employees are
supposed to do for their boss, and is ambivalent to his frustration about his
desire to catch up after he spent 2 days not working. She chooses to go on a
blind date instead of doing Dick’s last minute requests and prefers to quit
rather than be berated by him. As High Commander, Dick is not used to outright denial
or avoidance of his orders and isn’t sure how to handle this as a human
employer. He suppresses his need to apologize to her and attempts to replace
her. He rationalizes she’ll “never work in this town again” (Goetsch 1997). However,
Nina rationalizes she was only hired to work for Professor Mary who is easier
to work for and less demanding than Dick.
This is why
Harry is brought in as Dick’s untrained assistant. Dick rationalizes, “Working
for me is a reason to live!” Harry is told to repress all his own desires and
make his job his life, and “desk (his) girlfriend” (Goetsch 1997). Dick uses a
stopwatch to time all Harry’s tasks. Nina tells Harry to respect himself and
have limits on what orders he will take from Dick. She shows him how to tell his boss to “talk
to the hand” as a signal of physical avoidance of tasks. Later, Dick denies
losing Nina is effecting his productivity, even though Harry isn’t up to the job.
At first,
Harry denies he is being treated unfairly. Harry pretends his first day on the
job was “the greatest day of my life,” suppressing that he really hated work.
Finally, Harry quits but Dick is in complete denial of his lack of control in
the situation and replies “You can’t quit, you’re fired” (Goetsch 1997). Dick denies it is impossible to both do his
own job and that of his assistant, and he even tries to make his own copies. He
denies his own responsibility for running off Nina until he destroys the copy
machine and gets covered in inky, toner cartridge powder. Dick goes to Nina’s apartment to apologize
and begs her to come back. He is ambivalent to the black mess he leaves on her
all white rug, furniture and clothing. This is a metaphor of how Dick is
frequently ambivalent to how his actions effect those around him. He had been
fixated on how Nina helped him instead of respecting her needs as a human. Nina
herself, was at first more fixated on the stains than his apology, but later
takes pity and agrees to help him at work.
Sally is
excited about everything she is learning through ballet lessons. She proudly
tells her “father” Dick that her teacher said she dances like a drunk bear. She
shows off her plié and he responds that it was a good investment of his money…
for “squats.” Sally rationalizes that her pliés are “French squats” but seems
frustrated that they are not good enough to merit his genuine approval (Goetsch
1997). After being reminded several times about the ballet recital, Dick misses
it due to his copier tantrum. Sally is
ridiculed by the other dancers. When she
tells the guys that she feels betrayed and disappointed in Dick’s absence, “Harry
and Tommy congratulate her on experiencing the neglect and rejection of a
normal childhood, and Harry informs her that ‘if you ever flip out and kill a
guy, you can blame it on Dick’” (TvTropes 2004). They suggest classic Freudian
projection as how human children respond to the failings of their parents. Tommy,
the alien with the most exposure to human children, tells Sally she is “damaged
for life” and that her future problems can be attributed to “bad parenting.”
Tommy says, “take all this emotional baggage and let it feed your adult
neuroses” (Goetsch 1997).
If Sally
projects guilt onto her parent for all of her future anxieties or sins, then she
is in denial about taking responsibility for her actions which is necessary for
learning from her mistakes. Wasting too much time repeating defense mechanisms slows
down the introspection necessary for personal growth. This is the paradox of
Freudian justifications, at some point we have to stop making excuses and give
up dragging around the weight of our past. Brushing off past damage as best we
can, learning what lessons we can from them, then focusing on the future. By using
our current energy to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we humans can move
forward to a healthier, more successful future.
WORKS CITED
Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Analysis Techniques. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks:
Sage Publications, 2014. Print.
Goetsch, Dave. "Will Work for Dick." 3rd Rock from
the Sun, season 2 episode 22. CBS, Los Angeles, California, 4 May 1997. Netflix.
Web. 15 Oct. 2016.
"Live-Action TV / Freudian Excuse - TV Tropes." TV Tropes.
N.p., 2004. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FreudianExcuse/LiveActionTV
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