Repression in The White Ribbon

This is Diana. The repression in the film The White Ribbon was very obvious. The happiness seemed like it was drained out of the villager’s lives, especially the children of the village. That is what caught my attention the most from the beginning part of the film we viewed.

The kids of the small village in Germany looked exhausted of happiness and life. They were so serious, that they almost didn’t seem like kids, in my opinion. Instead of running around, being noisy and playing outside, the young girl and boy (I believe it was Klara and Martin) were always so stoic. They acted as though they must be punished for anything they did, so living like a careless child was not how they acted and came across to me as sort of eerie.

Their father, the pastor of the village was the rule, law and the last word in the children’s lives. There was a scene where he reprimanded his kids; the two, Klara and Martin were made to feel guilty because they disappointed him. They were later hit with a cane as their punishment and the kids feared him greatly. Their house was not a warm and welcoming home.

The father/pastor can be looked at as the super-ego, according to Freud’s book, Civilization and its Discontents. “Authority is internalized through the establishment of a super-ego… The super-ego torments the sinful ego with the same feeling of anxiety and is on the watch for opportunities of getting punished by the external world.” Page 86. The kids have an intense fear of their father and he becomes their conscience or super-ego.

The children are made to feel guilty, sinful and impure. The father used the white ribbon in their hair as an example; wearing the white ribbon meant that the children were clean and pure but after their sinning they lost the white ribbon. Through the cane punishment, the children can wear it again. This manipulation creates a strong and lasting sense of guilt within the kids. On page 88 of Freud’s book Civilization and its Discontents, it reads, “Thus we know of two origins of the sense of guilt: one arising from fear of an authority, and the other later on, arising from the fear of the super-ego.”