Controlling the Light: Homosocial Relationships and Sexual Frustration in The Lighthouse

““God save thee, ancient Mariner!/From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—/Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow/I shot the Albatross”  ”

— “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

““If I had a steak...I’d fuck it.” ”

— The Lighthouse

With its two main characters and square aspect ratio, the relationship between Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas (Willem Dafoe) plays a central role in the success of Robert Eggers's newest film, The Lighthouse.  During the movie, the two wickies drink copious amounts of alcohol, debate about lobster dinners, go mad, and become entranced by the mythical light of the titular lighthouse. While it can be assumed that two people, especially men, forced to be together in isolation would hate each other, the wickies find a way to go beyond the expected level of spite, pettiness, and brutality.  The role of homosocial relationships and the presence of sex within the movie popped into my mind while rewatching the film. After all, the island they are on is strictly all-male, and both Winslow and Thomas hold sexual frustration and enact on them with the light and on their own.  

With the homosocial nature of The Lighthouse, the biggest elephant in the room is the titular lighthouse. Eggers's himself described the project as "Nothing good can happen when two men are trapped alone in a giant phallus." Besides the typical Freudian or even psycho-sexual analysis, both men fight for control of the lighthouse. The light itself becomes a totem for this desired masculinity. Pattinson's Winslow longs to see the tip of the lighthouse, but Dafoe's Thomas prevents him.  While in the lighthouse, Thomas towers over Winslow and controls the relationship, withholding the sacred nature of the light. This forces Winslow to be dependent on him as he secretly schemes for other methods to see the light for himself. The homosocial relationship between the men is grounded upon the lighthouse and ultimately creates a reason for its existence.      

During their isolation on the rock, both Thomas and Winslow engage in overtly masculine acts mixed with more intimate moments.  During the latter half of the film, the men warmly embrace each other and sway. Soon, they lean in for a kiss before Winslow pushes Thomas away and engages him in a fistfight.  It’s the line in the relationship that neither will cross and so they devolve into fighting as a way of expressing that intimacy. This idea is further explored when Thomas criticizes Winslow's poor job of cleaning the house and Winslow responds, "I ain't never intended to be no housewife." Both of these men grapple with the role of the master and the servant.

Thomas enjoys the more masculine role, ordering Winslow around to keep care of the lighthouse and threatening to mark him up in the logbook. He holds power over Winslow.  However, it becomes overturned at the end of the film when Winslow ties a leash around Thomas's neck and forces him to walk on his hands and knees.  Within this homosocial community, both wickies aim to preserve some masculinity hierarchy. This hierarchy prevents the wickies from experiencing real intimacy and has them engage in more toxic performances of masculinity.   

The light of the lighthouse gives both Thomas and Winslow a form of release from their frustration.  Thomas strips in front of the light and describes its beauty in feminine terms.  Thomas eroticizes the act of staring at the light and the pleasure he receives from it. He creates a feminine proxy that can keep him company. When Winslow underneath the locked grate to Thomas and the light, fluid drips down from the ceiling, followed by a flowing tentacle in place of Thomas. Eggers reinforces the sexual energy that the men receive from the light by including this scene. Not only with the fluid, but the phallic nature of the tentacle engages with the sexual power from the light. As for Winslow with the light, he cannot comprehend the truth of the light and must laugh hysterically as his screams become distorted, and he falls down the stairs.  Much like the puzzle box in Hellraiser, there is both pain and pleasure that his mind cannot comprehend. The light provides comfort and horror to both of the wickies. 

Finally, with Winslow, the theme of sexual frustration engages with him the most. Within his mattress, he finds a mermaid figurine and instantly becomes haunted by it. In his daydreams and nightmares, the mermaid appears and beckons him. He tries to keep the siren away with self-release, but she never leaves. All he can do with this frustration is keep it at bay the best he can, with each time becoming more animalistic and impersonal. He yells out unintelligibly and breaks the statue after imagining having sex with the mermaid. However, the mermaid shares more fish like biology in that regard. The fantastical nature of the mermaid becomes a female fantasy that Winslow can latch onto and can unload his frustrations. Yet, he becomes trapped by this fantasy and is forced to destroy the object to free himself. In the same way the light enslaves Thomas (and, later Winslow), the mermaid figurine traps Winslow and dictates the way he is able to release his frustrations.  

The Lighthouse is a great horror film that explores various ideas and themes within it, chief among them homosocial relationships and sexual frustrations on an isolated rock. As a result, it is one of my favorite films to rewatch and analyze with different lenses as we’re all self-isolated on our own COVID-like rock.

I mean, what else can we do now except watch movies?