The Elf-Oedipus

The film Elf (2003,) often considered a modern Holiday classic, is a perfect Oedipal drama. Elf depicts the humorous, family-friendly story of Buddy, a human played by Will Ferrell who, as a result of an accidental kidnapping by Santa Claus, was raised amongst the elves in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole in complete ignorance of his true species. After a lifetime of demoralizing incidents in which Buddy fails to properly fit in with the other elves, Buddy one day accidentally learns that he is in reality a human who was adopted by an elven father, whom he calls Papa Elf. Buddy then resolves to find and redeem his biological father in the human world (also known as Midtown Manhattan,) and discover the truth of his inherited human nature. Presented with the loss of his identity, social belonging, and potentially thousands of years of assumed lifespan, I argue that Buddy the Elf copes by projecting a pattern of Oedipal desire onto the human relations into which he is thrust. Buddy’s inability to outlive his functionally immortal elven father is precisely what drives him to seek a new, mortal father whom he has any hope to surpass — as Sigmund Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, “a rival by getting rid of whom he or she could but profit.” (83)

Buddy’s realization of his human origin is a traumatic event. In the film, his panic is depicted not only through Ferrell’s agitated performance, but also through visual expressions: flashbacks to moments in Buddy’s life where he stands out from (and above) the other elves and distorted images of a mocking jack-in-the-box toy that both startles him and represents his failure to work in the North Pole. However, when Buddy screams in anguish upon realizing his human origin, he mourns not his humanity, but his mortality. Elves, who comprise the only community and family that Buddy has ever known, are shown to live dramatically longer lives than humans. Buddy’s adopted father, Papa Elf, did not achieve the title of Master Tinker until age 490, an age that he is assumed to have now surpassed.

Spectrally underlying the abhorrent knowledge of Buddy’s humanity is the unspoken realization that Buddy is doomed to die well before his father — perhaps by an eternity. As an elf, Buddy is an eternal child. Papa Elf’s fatherly dominance is as infinite as his lifespan, and so Buddy is forever shielded from the specter of parental death. Likewise, Buddy’s assumption of his own extended lifespan insulates him from any need to achieve psychosexual maturity at the same rate as his much-faster timeline of physical maturity. Buddy’s realization of his human origins, in significantly compressing the amount of time Buddy believes he has to live, therefore forcibly relocates his temporal position in life from that of a child to one with a terrifying proximity to maturity, age, decay, and death. It also forcibly transits his childhood phallic-stage sexuality (in which, by serving as Papa Elf’s “Apprentice,” he can dream of one day replacing him,) to an adult psychoneurosis.

At the beginning of the film, Buddy traumatically learns not only that Papa Elf is not his biological father, and not only that his original father is a human on Santa’s Naughty List, but also that Buddy’s father’s descent into Naughtiness was accompanied by the death of Buddy’s original mother, Susan Wells. Walter Hobbs, in his despotic rejection of charitable giving, family time, and the Christmas Spirit, already represents Buddy’s ideal moral nemesis and serves as the film’s initial antagonist. But the stakes of doing moral battle against his father are increased dramatically by the implicit connection that Papa Elf’s retelling of Buddy’s origin makes between his father’s villainous turn, his mother’s death, and both of their (albeit lacking in agency) rejection of an infant Buddy. In his original descriptions of the Oedipus Complex in The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud writes “The more tyrannically the father ruled in the ancient family, the more surely must the son, as his appointed successor, have assumed the position of an enemy, and the greater must have been his impatience to attain to supremacy through the death of his father.” (83.)

Given, however, Buddy the Elf’s general aversion to violence and profound tenderness toward all people, the methods by which Buddy seeks to destroy Walter are symbolic and rehabilitative. Instead of bringing about the literal death of his father, Buddy sets out to destroy the man his father has become. Buddy defeats Walter’s “tyrannical rule,” by completely restructuring his father’s home life, familial relationships, work lifestyle, and personality. In doing so, Buddy also effectively reverses the effects of the restriction (through abandonment) and loss (through death) of his mother as a desiring-object, as brought about by his father’s Naughtiness. As in Freud’s reading of Hamlet, Buddy “take[s] vengeance” — in his own kind and festive way — “upon the man who did away with his father and has taken his father’s place with his mother.” However, unlike Hamlet, Buddy succeeds.

In classic Freudian fashion, Buddy’s actions in defeating his father also facilitate a transition into sexual maturity. Through Buddy’s partnership with a human woman, Jovie, he is able to achieve a socially-normative sexual relationship and family structure relative to his temporal location in a human lifespan, as opposed to that of an elf. However, by securing a mate and progeny by means of the very same heterosexual relationship through which he is acculturated to human society, Buddy ultimately actualizes the very same Oedipal conflict that rendered him unable to succeed Papa Elf. Fulfilling the functions usually assigned to a mother figure, it is Jovie, Buddy’s first and only human friend, who becomes responsible for guiding Buddy’s sociosexual development through discipline (scolding him when he encroaches upon her shower,) guidance (introducing him to New York City’s many festive, romantic activities on their date,) and affection (inviting him to a kiss on the lips instead of his immature, trepidatious kiss on her cheek.)

Buddy’s resurrection of his mother as a desiring-object through the restoration of his father’s position before her death is here literally manifested in his desire for a woman who provides him with expressions of love that mirror maternal care. Her apparent “affinity for elf culture,” expressed not always purposefully through singing Christmas songs and dressing in elf clothing, only enhances Buddy’s perception of her as a maternal figure, as she demonstrates the potential for Buddy to return to the elven society of his youth, instead of being cast out into the human world completely. In fact, Buddy, Jovie, and their child (who is depicted in a bundle of blankets,) do indeed return to visit the North Pole in Elf’s final scene. Buddy is able to re-enact the idyllic moments of his now retrospectated childhood, this time with a mother — of whom, it is uncertain. Buddy’s acceptance of his human mortality and subsequent acceptance in the human world is enacted through the destruction of his father & the literal creation of a mother for his eventual child.

Finally, also apparent in Elf are symbolic motifs from Oedipus Rex itself: Santa’s oblivious binding of Buddy within his sack echoes Laius’ binding of Oedipus’ feet in the woods, oblivious of the implications his act carries. As a result, Oedipus’ feet are permanently disfigured; his disability stems literally from the site of his displacement from his original world. Buddy, too, is coded as disabled in his displacement from the human realm from which he originates. Buddy’s developmental “progress,” in relation to the elven society in which he attempts to function, is consistently presented as lagging behind the elven children, and he is even referred to as “special,” an offensive euphemism for intellectual and developmental disability. When we also consider the extended elven lifespan, we realize that Buddy may be forced to compete against dozens or even hundreds of years of childhood education with only 18 or so of his own. Both Oedipus and Buddy are disabled, in both embodiment and sociality, by their alienation from not only their original fathers, but also the temporal worlds apart from which they are both doomed to die an accelerated death: Buddy by means of a mismatched natural lifespan with the elven world and Oedipus by means of prophecy and ensuing banishment.

In describing Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Freud writes “The action of the play consists simply in the disclosure.” (85.) However, we must ask ourselves: were it not for a divine plague upon Thebes, and were it not for the “artistically delayed” and “comparable to the work of psychoanalysis” (85) disclosure of Oedipus’ true parentage, could he and Jocasta have remained as jolly as Buddy and Jovie? And were it not for the disclosure of Buddy’s true parentage, could he have avoided the trauma of Oedipus’ abhorrent self-knowledge? An underdeveloped narrative in the story of Elf is, of course, Papa Elf’s acceptance of his own son’s imminent death in his lifetime. To what extent is Buddy’s extended impotence a result of Papa Elf’s failure to negotiate these terms? We can only ask, as Freud questions Oedipus, “Where shall be found, Faint, and hard to be known, the trace of the ancient guilt?” Even Elf’s presentation as a secular Christmas film is haunted by the birth of Jesus Christ: a boy who is destined to die in service of an unknowable, infinite Father. We may never know for sure from where Elf derives its dramatic stakes. But we can be certain that Elf (2003) is an Oedipal drama on par with Sophocles’ original work that will be recalled and reiterated for ages to come.