Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [18]
The T-shirt, a gift from Maeby, is read as “Shemale” (SHE-Male) by the viewers and by Maeby because of Lindsay’s voice. Lindsay’s voice was gravelly and manly throughout this episode (“Sad Sack”) due to a night of excited drunken screaming at a single’s bar. Regardless, Steve Holt (!) finds Lindsay attractive. Maeby, fearful of losing her crush to her mother, lies to Steve Holt (!), telling him that her mother is actually a man who thinks that he can pass as a woman. Believing the shirt to be a heartfelt gift, Lindsay is oblivious to the joke being played on her.
Michael, Marta, Ann Other Freudian Slips
A slip of the tongue—a Freudian slip—occurs when a person intends to say one thing but says something else that sounds or seems similar to the original intended word. Recall the exchange between Michael and Marta in the episode “Marta Complex.”
Marta: So you’re saying there’s no one that you’re even interested in?
Michael: There was somebody for a little while, but it was too much of a brother . . . bother.
“Brother” and “bother” sound similar and betray an embarrassing thought or desire. Michael, of course, was in love with Marta, but couldn’t do anything about it without ignoring his mantra that “family comes first.” But the slips didn’t stop there. After the chants of “Speech! Speech! Speech!” (for no one in particular) at a family party, Michael gives in. He closes with an even more telling slip, “To Gob and Marta. To love and happiness. I love you all, Marta.”
In addition, Michael is always forgetting Ann’s name (Her?). On one occasion, Michael calls Ann “Egg”—another example of a Freudian slip. What inspires this slip? Ann’s eating habits. George Michael tells us all about it.
George Michael: Oh, it’s so cute. She sometimes takes a little pack of mayonnaise, and she’ll squirt it in her mouth all over, and then she’ll take an egg and kind of . . . Mmmm! She calls it a “mayonegg.” [concerned pause] Are you okay?
Michael: I don’t feel so good.
Michael was decidedly not okay. Later in that same episode, “The One Where They Build a House,” Michael inadvertently replaces Ann’s name with “Egg” when George Michael asks about buying the diamond cream that Lindsay mentioned earlier in the episode (“A million ∗∗∗∗ing diamonds!”).
Michael: George Michael, I’m sure that Egg is a very nice person. I just don’t want you spending all your money getting her all glittered up for Easter.
Due to the disgust and nausea induced by Ann’s “mayonegg,” Ann and the snack were inextricably linked in Michael’s mind. This caused Michael, who has trouble recalling Ann’s name in the first place, to refer to her as “Egg”—a reference, hold the mayonnaise, to what made Michael ill earlier in the episode.
Motherboy, or the Oedipus Complex
Although parapraxes provide good evidence for the existence of the unconscious, a lot of what goes on in the unconscious is unknown to us. The Oedipus complex is one example.
Motherboy, while awkward, is nothing compared to Freud’s Oedipus complex. Motherboy, of course, is what Lindsay calls the “I’m in love with my mother dance thing” and is the main event in the episode “Motherboy XXX.” According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is very important in the development of a boy’s psychology. The complex derives its name from the Greek tragic hero, Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother—though the true identity of both his parents were unknown to him at the time.
Freud believed that every boy experienced the Oedipus complex. Put simply, the Oedipus complex manifests itself as the resentment of the young boy towards his father, who disrupts the