Thoughts on Col. Lockjaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another
This piece examines Sean Penn’s performance as Lockjaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. The character resonates not due to his complexity but rather his tragic simplicity. Lockjaw’s singular motivation is survival—to become part of the right-wing organization known as ‘The Christmas Adventurers.’ When he achieves that goal, he discovers that what he receives is not acceptance, but annihilation.
Lockjaw’s narrative serves as a cautionary tale about the pursuit of purity. Previously an army colonel, his life unravels when it’s revealed that he had an affair with Perfidia, a leftist revolutionary married to Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio). This affair leads to an ‘illegitimate’ child, a symbol of impurity, prompting one Adventurer to remark chillingly, “He got his dick dirty.” This line encapsulates the far-right’s ideology in minimal form.
The character embodies the quest for belonging, reflecting a broader fantasy among right-wing movements, including the Hindutva movement’s aspirations for global legitimacy. Lockjaw’s aspiration to join a hyper-masculine, militaristic order mirrors this, yet the film illustrates that such a club ultimately excludes him. As he is welcomed into the Adventurers, he marvels at his new office—full of glass and overlooking a city skyline. However, Anderson treats this moment with a wry humor that hints at irony: his paradise is, in fact, a coffin. When the members later incinerate him, the act is portrayed not merely as betrayal but as purification, erasing him from the system he idolized.
Lockjaw’s demise exemplifies themes of identification and exclusion. His aspiration is rooted in what psychoanalysis identifies as the phallic order, a structure representing power and societal authority. Lacan posited that the phallus symbolizes mastery, not merely an organ. Therefore, to embody phallic qualities is to appear whole and untainted. However, when Lockjaw’s desires transgress established boundaries, his fantasy crumbles. The “dirty phallus” must be eliminated for the illusion of purity to endure.
This dynamic mirrors the Hindutva ideology, which upholds a sanitized self-image while grappling with internalized ‘dirt.’ The tension manifests in its relationship with the Muslim Other, which serves as the vessel for what Hindutva disowns within itself. The hostility extends to a global scale; like Lockjaw, Hindutva longs for validation from western right-wing figures. The movement’s alignment with foreign nationalistic sentiments often meets with contempt, reinforcing a narrative of exclusion. This pattern reflects Lockjaw’s plight—his submission to the elite ultimately leads to rejection.
In his portrayal, Penn infuses Lockjaw with a powerful sense of tragedy, depicting him as a man oblivious to his transformation into a mere caricature. His fiery end serves as a visual metaphor for the ideology he served, a cleansing fire that ultimately consumes its own. Anderson leaves viewers with an image of a man so desperate for purity that he misconstrues death as a form of transcendence.
Lockjaw’s fate is indicative of the flawed aspirations embedded within nationalist fantasies of cleanliness—whether they belong to American, Israeli, or Indian ideologies. The real tragedy, as Anderson suggests, lies not merely in Lockjaw’s death but in his failure to recognize that those he trusted for redemption were the same agents of his destruction.
Ahnas Muhammed is a research scholar and Young India Fellow at Ashoka University, specializing in the intersection of psychoanalysis and anthropology to explore contemporary Muslim identities in India.
References
Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (J. Strachey, Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 65–143). London: Hogarth Press.
Lacan, J. (2006). The signification of the phallus (B. Fink, Trans.). In Écrits: The first complete edition in English (pp. 575–584). New York, NY: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1958)
Anderson, P. T. (Director). (2025). One battle after another [Film]. Warner Bros.
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