The Depiction of American Public Libraries in Film - Libraries as Sites of Secrecy/Libraries as Sites of Sexuality

7. Libraries as Sites of Secrecy

A common thread in the public perception of libraries is the idea that they are a place where certain activities are forbidden. There is a useful dialectic between the sense of the public library as an area in which all are welcome and the need for certain rules to be imposed. Film-makers exploit this tension to produce a variety of effects, which can be broadly divided into two strands, the sexual and the non-sexual, of which the latter will be considered first.

By far the most commonly used aspect of the perceived oppressiveness of libraries is the need for quiet. The soundtrack often emphasises this aspect of the location by omitting music and featuring an almost subliminal sound affect to contrast with the pervading silence, such as the sound of Sophie’s (Meryl Streep) footsteps on the hard marble floor in Sophie’s Choice, the wheels of the book trolley in The Pagemaster or the squeaky ceiling fan in Chinatown.

Films often feature illicit, whispered conversations between characters hiding in the stacks. This technique is commonly used when a conspiratorial air is being conveyed. An example of this is the scene in A Simple Plan in which Sarah Mitchell (Bridget Fonda) is telling her husband, Hank (Bill Pullman), about a news story she has discovered through some research. The information she is relating is important, secret and urgent, factors emphasised by the risk of being overheard in a quiet, public space. The conversation is interrupted by Sarah’s boss calling for her to continue her work.

It is fairly common, as in the case of A Simple Plan, that a staff member is the agent of the library’s oppression (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Philadelphia Story, Salmonberries). Walker and Lawson have demonstrated that librarians are commonly considered by the public to be ‘quiet, mean or stern (and)…..stuffy’ . Nevertheless, users are also frequently shown as disapproving of the behaviour of central characters, either independently (Henry Fool) or in conjunction with staff (Ghostbusters, Stanley and Iris). Such occurrences confer a number of desirable characteristics onto the main characters, such as individuality, rebelliousness and non-conformity. The library’s status becomes that of an unthreatening, largely benign, institution that can be disrupted without fear of serious consequences.

In the instance of Chinatown, the supercilious librarian is overtly unpleasant and obstructive, so the audience is gratified when the rebellious J.J. Giddes (Jack Nicholson) tricks him into lending out a ruler, which is then used to surreptitiously rip out a page of an important ledger. There is a particularly revealing point of view shot from the librarian’s perspective, showing Giddes disappearing into the stacks and thus out of the library’s sphere of surveillance and control.

The example of Chinatown reflects a common suggestion in films that the stacks or, occasionally, the closed collection reflect the uncontrolled areas of the library. This can be extrapolated into a psychoanalytical framework, the open areas of the library becoming a metaphor for the ego of the brain and the hidden areas become the wild and barely controlled id. This is well demonstrated by the scene from Ghostbusters based in New York Public Library. The opening shots of the exterior and the reading room show a calm, ordered environment with users working quietly at their desks. The camera then follows an elderly, female librarian down some stairs into the dark, low-ceilinged closed collection. The mood immediately shifts to one of menace, signalled by the ominous music and trailing steadicam shot most commonly associated with the horror genre. Unseen by her, books begin to fly around and the card catalogue sprays from the drawers. The rise of the Gothic genre in the eighteenth century created a link in the public consciousness between the uncanny movement of inanimate objects and the unconscious, or what Freud later termed the id. There is also a mock psychoanalysis scene which takes place in the reading room, during which the librarian admits that ‘I had an uncle who thought he was Saint Jerome ’, thereby overtly introducing the ideas of psychotherapy and madness to the film.

In a later scene, we see the ghost of an old, female librarian floating in the closed collection. Initially, she fulfils the stereotypical behaviour of the job, shushing the Ghostbusters as they talk amongst themselves. However, the barrier between the controlled and the uncontrolled breaks down under provocation, when she mutates into a terrifying, threatening figure, suggesting that the id is barely suppressed. In this instance, the library is a site of behavioural suppression, but the suppressive qualities disappear in the closed collection.

It is clear that the library takes on a large range of connotations in Ghostbusters, emphasised by the foregrounding of these scenes at the start of the film and being the location for the first ghostly sighting. The film-makers are using a number of signifiers that the library represents: history, secrecy, the hidden, the sense of order that is soon disrupted.

7.1 Libraries as Sites of Sexuality

There is a natural progression from the suppressed behaviour suggested by the cinematic library environment discussed in the previous chapter to the revelation or enactment of sexual desires. Brewerton argues that, despite the largely sexless image of librarianship as a profession, 'libraries are widely acknowledged to be sexy places...the silence and the regulations breed a tense sexual atmosphere.'

This is most commonly indicated in films by flirtatious conversations in the stacks between potential lovers. Like the urgent, whispered conversations common in thrillers (See Chapter 7), the library represents a silent, repressive environment against which to rebel in a range of films including The Philadelphia Story, The Big Sleep, The Music Man, Public Access, Salmonberries, City of Angels and Henry Fool.

The gentlest form of this is the type shown by the courting couple, Zaneeta Shinn (Susan Luckey) and Timmy Everett (Tommy Djilas), in The Music Man. The relationship is one of classical young love, as signalled by an early shot of the couple reading Romeo and Juliet in the library. We later see the pair engaged in the age-old conversation wherein the young man is trying to persuade the young woman to meet ‘at the old bridge’, a place previously mentioned as a notorious spot for lovers. The appeal of the illicit, unsupervised meeting place is strengthened through the contrast with the studious, quiet library.

A somewhat more aggressive form of flirtation is shown in Henry Fool. The obnoxious Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) states that ‘This place is crawling with chicks’, and encourages his friend, Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) to pursue a woman. There is then a sequence of shots from Simon’s point of view showing a number of attractive young women working at desks or OPAC machines. No other individuals, either staff or users, are shown, reflecting the heightened sense of reality apparent in the film as a whole and the sexual fantasies of the shy Simon. Eventually he selects a woman to approach but is only able to write a poem, leave it on her desk and leave hurriedly. The impression left on the audience at the time is a romantic one, but this is later comically undercut by a reference to the letter as a ‘pornographic note’. The implication is that sexual desire is virtually indistinguishable from romance, and that it is only barely suppressed by the controlling yet public environment of the local library.

Salmonberries contains a number of library scenes in which the stacks are clearly a metaphor for the id. The small library is generally shown in dim light, with mist visible indoors, emphasising the coldness and mystery of the Alaskan setting. The narrative charts the developing relationship between the middle-aged librarian, Roswitha (Rosel Zech), and Kotzebue (k.d.lang). A strand throughout the film is the romantic pursuit of Roswitha, who is unsure of her sexuality, by Kotzebue. This theme is dramatically introduced in an early scene in which Roswitha has mistaken Kotzebue for a boy. Kotzebue then disappears into the stacks, to reappear provocatively naked. The stacks are once again representative of the unconscious mind, and the appearance of Kotzebue is a metaphor for our subliminal desires emerging into the conscious world.

The logical extension of this aspect of the public library environment is the popularity of it as a location for sexual activity in pornography . Debbie Does Dallas , one of the most popular pornographic films from the genre’s 1970s heyday, features a pair of scenes set in a library. In one, a library assistant called Donna is visited by her boyfriend Tim (Herschel Savage) who, in a somewhat less euphemistic reprise of the scene in The Music Man, persuades Donna to engage in intercourse in the stacks. They are caught in the act by the librarian, Mr Biddle (Jake Teague), who takes Donna to his office and agrees not to sack her in exchange for the opportunity to spank her. These two scenes demonstrate in an overt way the two elements of the library as a site of sexuality that emerge from the films discussed in this chapter. Respectively, these are the stacks as an uncontrolled area wherein the id is permitted to emerge into the conscious world and the librarian as an agent of control in the library environment.

There are also examples of films (Hairspray, Imitation of Life) in which young characters claim that they are going to the library as a way of escaping parental control, when they are in fact engaging in sexual activity of some form elsewhere. This suggests that libraries, for the parents, represent a controlled, educational and safe environment in which good behaviour can be assumed. In story-telling terms, irony is evoked through the contrast between the dowdy image of the library and the glamour to be found in other places. In Imitation of Life, Annie Jones (Juanita Moore) is shocked by the revelation that her daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), is not 'reclassifying books after hours' at Manhattan Public Library as she claimed, but is in fact dancing at a seedy nightclub. The role of the library as the counterpoint to the wild nightlife of New York is reinforced by Annie's cry of 'You told me you had a respectable job at the library'.

The enactment of private desires in a public place is the essence of the library as a site of sexuality. The overheard thoughts of users in City of Angels are explicit in this respect, including the lines 'What if I screamed, just screamed right now?' and 'She’s been looking at me for the last half hour, maybe I could just hang here a little longer’. The distinction between controlled behaviour and baser instincts is portrayed as a thin line, and consequently the public library becomes a more interesting place than it may initially appear.