Clearly Barbarella is intended to titillate its audience, but one thing which struck me even through this was the odd symbolism of each of Barbarella’s four sexual encounters. In the interests of clarity, I imagine the four sexual encounters to be: on the frozen lake, with Marcan, in the Labyrinth, with Pygar, in the secret headquarters with Dildano, and in the Excessive Machine, controlled by Duran Duran. I do not include The great tyrant’s encounter with Pygar, nor the prospective menage a trois which ends the film, as both of these are encounters unrealized within the experience of the audience, and I believe that the depiction of Barbarella’s orgasmic state is intended by Vadim to evoke in the audience a sort of catharsis, and this orgasmic state is only visible after the four above mentioned encounters.
In these encounters there are other common themes, but no theme seems universal to all beyond the orgasmic state—and even this is questionable in the episode with Dildano. In the first three sexual gratification is awarded in return for the rescue of the protagonist from mortal danger, yet in the fourth it is the reverse, and it is through being put into mortal danger that Barbarella is gratified.
The main issues to consider, however, are the symbolic possibilities of the characters with whom Barbarella has intercourse, and the creatures from whom she has just escaped in order to have intercourse. I suggest that there is a reverse parallelism between the attacker and the rescuer which plays out through the film imbibing it with a very pleasant symmetry.
Consider the first encounter, with Marcan. Barbarella has just been rescued from an attacking horde of mechanized dolls, controlled by wild children who live on the frozen lake. Following this, Marcan compels Barbarella to make love to him in his sail ship. Marcan is more beast than man, dressed all in furs, he prefers life on the edge of civilization. When Marcan removes his furs it is seen that he is as furry underneath as is his dress. At the end of the encounter, Barbarella dresses herself in skins, but she soon discards them and changes into the white costume necessary to meet the blind angel Pygar.
In the second encounter, Barbarella is rescued from a Leather Man by Pygar. I imagine this to be a symbolic progression on the part of Barbarella because she has gone from making love to a beast-man in skins to being attacked by a creature that is composed of nothing but skins (in this case leather), to making love to an angel, clearly intended as a bird symbol as well by the fact that the act is consummated in a nest above the Labyrinth. Whereas the first encounter was a liberation for Barbarella from her Earth set ways of having sex only by taking a pill and then clasping hands, the second encounter—while clearly as orgasmic as the first—is more of a liberation for Pygar who suddenly regains his ability to fly, and thus carries Barbarella up to the city.
The rescue from death comes a good deal before the encounter between the rescuer and the rescued. Duran Duran intervenes when the Magmus is about to consume Barbarella, although he alleges that it is on behalf of the Great Tyrant. Duran Duran places Barbarella into a cage full of vampire parakeets at the behest of the Great Tyrant, and Barbarella is rescued by Dildano. Thus we see that another symbolic progression has taken place. Barbarella has gone from making love to a bird creature to being attacked by birds, and she is rescued by a human being.
Everything about Dildano, however is false. His machines do not work, his henchmen are utterly inept, and even the name Dildano implies, clearly, an object which is a replacement for the genuine article. Dildano is a dildo in every sense of the word. It is not surprising, then, that when it comes time for the sexual act to take place, Dildano insists that it be done as it is done on Earth, with a pill, and holding hands, but without under any circumstances penetrating. Barbarella is not pleased by the idea, as she has grown much fonder of the old style of making love, but the consents none the less.
The scene of the orgasm is a funny one, at first Barbarella seems to be taking some pleasure from the act—her hair even goes curly—but then she is distracted by a man entering the room, and from this point on she seems to have little interest in the act, actually breaking the contact with Dildano at one point and carrying on a conversation with the man who has entered the room.
Following the encounter with Dildano, Barbarella again meets up with Duran Duran who takes her and places her in the Excessive Machine. In this case the symbolic progression is from a sexual encounter with a human being to being captured by a human being, and in a sense rescued by a machine even though this machine is intended to kill her through excessive orgasmic pleasure.
It should be noted at this point, as well, that the symbolic progression is also from the half creature to the full as the lover becomes the attacker. Marcan for example is only half skins, but the Leather Men are all skin; they are the absolute symbol of the beast archetype for when they are blown apart there is nothing recognizable to life inside them, no organs, or flesh; they are simply the skin, the thing which becomes a symbol of power when slain, but becomes a symbol of fear when its mortality is removed from it.
Pygar is only half bird, he has the wings and the nest and the flight, but he is not truly a bird in any sense. A parakeet is clearly a bird. Dildano is hardly a man, he does not know how to make love, he is not actually from Earth, and if I may be so bold, no self respecting man would ever wear brown leather underpants with a cape.
Duran Duran, however is all man. He is an ex-astronaut, a citizen of earth, and unlike Dildano, all his machines do what they are supposed to (though he never expected to meet the power of Barbarella). Duran Duran even captures Barbarella at a place where women sit and smoke “essence of man”. This is the masculine overpowering the feminine in every aspect. It is even the case that like the Biblical Moses, Duran Duran has been aged by his exposure to the ruling power of his planet: the Magmus. In every sense, though, Duran Duran is an anti Moses figure for, unlike Dildano who wishes to liberate his people, Duran Duran seeks the role of the pharaoh: to enslave, and he has in his power a plague his gun which can send people to the fourth dimension, never to return. Like the pharaoh, however, hubris consumes Duran Duran in the end, and he and everything he desires are swallowed up by the Magmus, but back to the point.
The fourth encounter is also with a being that is only half of what it seems to be. For while it is described as a machine which can cause death, it proves to be unable to cause death. The dolls, the Leather Man, and the parakeets, and certainly the Magmus all can kill if given the opportunity, but the Excessive Machine can not. It blows apart, leaving Barbarella totally satisfied. It is also only half and half, because while it acts as an attacker, it also acts as a lover.
Thus a certain circle has been completed. I imagine it as something of a psychic journey for while Barbarella in ever other case is not able to reconcile herself to that part of her former lover which is not like herself, in this case she suddenly embraces the complete unknown and but this act is able to complete herself. The mechanical dolls that attacked her at the beginning now become the warm pleasures of the organ and Barbarella has become a complete individual. Witness the fact that she and her opposite: the Great Tyrant are able to become one by the end, carried off into the heavens by the same angel, like two sides of a soul which have been searching and have suddenly found each other.
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