And I can never experience anything that has not been before; I hear in songs, see in pictures, and write in quotes that speak for me, language that sees what I see, and makes me think of you when I hear a song. Then it becomes you speaking to me. But I believe in fake plastic men, broken men, men who crumble and burn, and I wonder what looks like the real thing, who tastes like the real thing,
and how to be who you wanted.
With no pure, unblemished meaning, I am wearing out, wanting to turn and RUN- Transport this machine, turn it into my body. Move.
It has been said so many times before:
The [photographic] determination of a woman's sexual desirability by the age and shape of her body is perhaps the most vulgar and common mechanism of objectification. (Sontag)
I understand that I am aged, sexed, stereotyped, and desired; and I know that these categorizations not only compare me against other women but also against the image(s) that constitute Woman. Knowing this, I continue to look at myself in the mirror, visually measure my attributes and flaws, pick at my pimples, and sometimes blow-dry my hair. When I see an image of a super-model on Vogue while I shop for food, I see that she is airbrushed, computer altered, painted, over-exposed, and accentuated, but I still find myself wishing to look like her. And, as I wait in line and scan over titles selling 10-day diets and miracle 3-minute exercises, I know it is a business founded on advertising. Lies disguised in journalism as truth, dependent on whether I distinguish between tabloid and magazine. I look down at the packages gliding towards the register, reconsider my choice of ice cream over frozen yogurt, and dream of abstinence, simultaneously envisioning an exercise that magically tightens my ass, so I can not only try to look like the woman on the cover of vogue, but try to look better than her.
I asked several of my friends what was on their dream Christmas list: success, true love, sex, a black Toyota 4-runner, and a tight ass. Regardless of content (joke, reality, or both) we were quick to prescribe (envision, anticipate, fantasize) a simple, uncomplicated sequence to code happiness. So it bothered me when I watched Natural Born Killers, and once again was left questioning Mallory's image of freedom, the representation of her desires, her interpretation and anticipation of these desires, and the ensuing consequences of her actions. Given Oliver Stone's blatant portrayal of the impact of media images in a post-modern world, it surprises me that Mallory manages to confront her false hope for a purely monogamous relationship, but fails to question her faith in fate and the healing power of LOVE. In Natural Born Killers, Stone denounces modern culture for its nullification of the senses, distortion of reality, molding of cultural expectations, and influence on the boundaries between reality and illusion. Mallory confronts her desire to simplify and understand her sexual identity, however, she fails to escape social construction. Instead, she submerges herself in image, and in doing so affirms that we will always be a social construction. But by emersing into anticipation does Mallory find the content that she is fated for?
The Unconscious
Freud: the founding father of Western psychoanalysis and consequently Western notions of sexuality.
She has seen it and she knows she is without it and wants to have it
A woman inherently lacks a phallus:
After [she] has become aware of the wound to her narcissism, she develops, like a scar, a sense of inferiority.
As a result of the realization of her inferiority, she longs to be a man. Her ensuing normal sexual maturation hinges on her acceptance that, she cannot compete with boys and that it would therefore be best for her to give up the idea of doing so.
Do I let him pass me?
When a girl learns to repress her desire to become male, she replaces it with the desire to love a male. While this repression occurs, the girl may experience,
sadistic, aggressive impulses of the phallic phase, impulses which culminate in infantile clitoral masturbation. Yet the active dimension to the phallic phase cannot have full reign if the girl is to achieve the culturally required norm of femininity.
The girl represses her desires in an attempt to achieve the culturally required norm of femininity. But the image of femininity is not normal; she is not real. The girl has difficulty achieving the norm.
Is she conscious of this?
The girl is able to convert her phallic attachments to love desires when she eventually realizes that her active desires simply cannot come true.
In order to repress, we must have a place to hide.
Although much of Freudian theory has been criticized as sexist and misogynistic, as a culture we continue to accept his delineation of the unconscious space. Freud's theories for the unconscious stem from his inquiries into sexuality. Thus, for critics to denounce Freudian theories of sexuality while maintaining the assumption of a conscious/unconscious dualism invalidates any contention against the dominance of the phallus by unconsciously contradicting the foundation of the argument. Therefore, to believe in the unconscious is to endorse the role of Freudian sexuality in defining, categorizing, and prioritizing mental space.
Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality illustrates how the unconscious is necessary for the repression of perverse sexual drives in order for the human subject to establish a normal identity within society.
To ensure the subject can function as successfully as possible in the world, mechanisms of repression necessarily come into play. It is through repression that desires and wishes forbidden to consciousness are deposited in the unconscious. (Bristow on Freud 1997: 64)
Culture informs each individual what to repress. In order to function as successfully as possible in the world we must understand the difference between reality and fantasy, morality and immorality, conscious and unconscious, right and wrong. But right and wrong are dependent on a cultural definition of the rational. Unlike the conscious mind, which functions under the rational orders demanded by culture, the unconscious mind is the psychic domain that has undergone the arduous but ineluctable process of repression. (Bristow on Freud, 1997: 64)
If the conscious functions under social orders, then the unconscious must function irrationally under the rational orders defined by consciousness and demanded by culture. In as much as the conscious is determined and fabricated by the rational world, the unconscious is molded by what the rational world signifies as the irrational. Therefore, Freud's unconscious is dependent and sewn to the conscious;
The unconscious makes its presence known frequently through such phenomena as parapraxes or slips of the tongue (commonly called 'Freudian slips'), memories of dreams (which enact unconscious wishfulfilments), and gestures (ones that betray what the conscious mind is obliged to repress). (Freud in Bristow 1997: 64)
Although Freudian theory can be used to argue that social demands define the contents of theunconscious, the construction of the container is biological, not sociological, and therefore a more incontestable reality. Both the unconscious and the origins of desire (instincts) are biologically based:
The sexual instinct has to struggle against certain mental forces which act as resistances, notably 'forces' such as shame and disgust. The subject, therefore, strives to regulate the sexual instinct through repression.(Freud in Bristow 1997: 69)
the father says to the mother: Don't think, you're a fucking idiot.
Are we to infer that all perversion is biologically housed as instinct within every human, with the degree of repression making the difference? Is instinct the force or the action of shame and disgust? If our perversions are composite layers of varying proficiencies of repression, then how does society control the nature of repression through the contents of the unconscious? If the unconscious is biological and if Freud contends that,
Female sexuality has an archaic and inscrutable quality, rendering it only partly accessible to coherent analysis.(Freud in Bristow 1997: 79)
then, like the unconscious, a woman is intrinsically connected with nature, and unconscious is outside the privileged realm of rational thought.
I thought this kind of thing didn't happen anymore. The other night, in one of my classes, I fought with another student on whether or not we generally viewed land as female. He said that we see beautiful views, not virgin landscape. I said that we see beautiful views, not handsome land. He didn't agree with me. But, that did not surprise me, especially given my tendency to assign sexist qualities to military sergeants. But, on my way home, I visited some male friends. After inquiring about my day, I proceeded to tell the tale of the argument in class, reliving some of the key phrases such as, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!" (which had to be one of the worst possible examples for him to choose) Upon hearing of my "feminist" tirade, one of the guys responded, "Weren't you complaining this morning about menstrual cramps?"
a hysterical female
For Freud, the unconscious is connected to instinct, and instinct to biology. Yet, if the unconscious is dependent on the conscious realm of mental process, and, if the conscious is sociological rather than biological, then the unconscious removes itself from biology. The unconscious informs 'reality' and becomes a realm for the caging of instinct and irrationality. Thus the unconscious becomes a conscious construction which socializes instinct and transforms nature into a repression of cultural desire.
Mallory meets Mickey-
A surreal parody on the sitcom family with sexually abusive father, a mother who never did a thing, and a son who appears destined to follow in his father's degenerate and perverse behavior.
A laugh-track howls.
The sitcom genre portrays a lifestyle despairingly different than reality.
Mickey: do you always dress like that or are you just waiting for me?
Mallory: why would I be dressed like this for someone I don't know?
Mickey: maybe something inside you told you to. You know, like fate. Do you believe in fate Mallory?
Murdering the father she reveals her unconscious hatred of the phallus and its inherent abusive dominance.
Killing her father she transforms her hatred of the phallus into love.
Layers of media images filter into her unconscious, blurring the damaged lines of the unconscious: what should be repressed, how to be moral. Each successive bullet speaks her desire to dominate the phallus.
However, if Mallory's character is blatantly Freudian, then she also resists and confronts the concept that she is ruled by a biological unconscious. Each bullet revenges the objectification of women. Her violence turns away from her parents and onto the culture which sexually defines her- from a biological Oedipal complex into a realm of social image construction where the unconscious and its biological reality turns into a culturally fabricated image. It isn't until Mallory faces the false reality of a monogamous relationship with Mickey that she realizes her unconscious dreams of Freudian love are merely constructions built on the assumption that female is equivalent to the unconscious and the unconscious is by nature immoral.
Mallory: I see angels Mickey. Their coming down to us from heaven and I see you riding a big red horse. I see the future: there's no death cause you and I are angels.
Mickey: I love you Mal.
Mallory: I know you do baby; I've loved you since the day we met.
Lacan: Image, Other, Desire
The human subject emerges, not from biology, but from a desirous objectification of image. Lacan argues that we perceive ourselves as a composite of mind and a disconnected body, mind becomes the other of body and thus we desire through a visualization of a projected Other. The self is not tormented by impulses and instincts but rather by signs and meanings. Thus, what we know as the self becomes the other.
A child sees a mirror and sees its reflection in the mirror, but it does not recognize the image as its self. Instead, the child sees an image, a reflection of itself, and it comes to know this image as the object of its self. Literally, we see a reflection of our selves when we look into the mirror. Thus, we learn to see ourselves in an image and as a projection. This is the image we associate with 'I'.
For the child to operate in the world, it requires a projected 'I' that will at least provide an image of coherence. Such an image permits the 'I' to come together from fragmentary parts, to gain some stability, no matter how imaginary, in its development. (Bristow 1997: 85)
To obtain personal continuity, we assemble images to constitute an understanding of self. This becomes our conscious notion of who we are. That image is who we believe we are, and therefore what we believe we project to the outer world. Yet, we realize, either consciously (through our minds), or unconsciously (through our eyes), that this object of coherence which we visualize as our 'self', is an image that we see. But,
Stability is not easily attained. From this moment on, the young child enters a structure of anticipation, since it projects the 'I' it believes itself to be. (Bristow)
We anticipate because we sense the disparity implicit in a concept of the self that is the reflection of a projected image. To ease this discomfort, we anticipate an identity which unites the self with the body image projected in the mirror.
Mickey: do you want to get us a hostage?
Mallory: no.
Mickey: what about her? Too heavy, too fat? What's the matter?
Mallory: do you think I'm still sexy?
Mickey: oh damn, we might have to get us a hotel room so I can put my little honey bunny bride on the bed, tie her up.
The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality. (Lacan 1977: 4)
Mallory: you know what I've been thinking baby?
Mickey:course I know what you've been thinking about. You've been thinking about rolling around in that sunflower patch by Tulsa, cutting your hair short, about us settlling down on a boat, with a big lake, dog, and a 26" Sony.
Mallory: I bet I know what you been thinking about.
Mickey: Yeah, I've been thinking about why they keep making all these stupid fucking movies. Don't anyone up there in Hollywood believe in kissing anymore?
Lacan's analysis of how we come to perceive our body as reflected and projected, illustrates the distinguishable identities of the body as an image, and the body as an object. If we view ourselves as both a body and an image, then we subscribe to the notion that the self must contain discernible mind and a body- mental and physical.
Body is thus what is not mind, what is distinct from and other than the privileged term. It is what the mind must expel in order to retain its 'integrity.' It is merely incidental to the defining characteristics of mind, reason, or personal identity through its opposition to consciousness, to the psyche and other privileged terms within philosophical thought. (Grosz 1994: 3)
Body, like the unconscious, is the Other to mind. They are defined by instinct and that-which-must-be-controlled. A person looks into the mirror and sees a projected image of the body. The body lacks mind and is therfore the Other. The body not only signifies the Other, but it also represents the unconscious. But the image is how we know ourselves, it is our surface.
the mind/body relation is frequently correlated with the distinctions between reason and passion, sense and sensibility, outside and inside, self and other, depth and surface, reality and appearance, mechanism and vitalism, transcendence and immanence, temporality and spatiality, psychology and physiology, form and matter, and so on. (Grosz 1994: 3)
Mind: outside, self, depth, reality.
Body: inside, other, surface, natural.
Male/Female
Theorist Rene Girard distinguishes between mimetic desire (desire according to the other)- le desir selon L'Autre, and selon soi- desire "that is a spontaneous and autonomous manifestation of an individual's inherent wants or preferences." (Livingston 1992: 1) Lacan would argue that selon soi can not be distinct from desire according to the other. To see is not to look, and to believe is not to see. Although sight may occur as neurons register an image, vision is the process which transfers sight to cognizance, molds how we see and interprets what we see. Thus we desire what we envision and not precisely what we see. The origin of a sensation of desire may be spontaneous, but its manifestation in, and its revelation to our conscious self is dependent on an image, and image by necessity is the Other. The image of the Other is indivisible from the social constructs which inform what and how to desire.
Mallory re-interprets and re-projects what is desirable, how to be desirable. She sees that they are constructed within a capitalistic, material-based society, written about, and filmed about, in a world in which art, the imaginary, and the real become indistinguishable.
I see another person in the mirror, and I exist because I can be seen and described by others. However, who I am- I believe no one can ever see and language is unable to comprehend. Thus I become two people, that which is seen, and that which is thought, body and mind.
she lives with a broken man
Foucault: Desire, Madness
The distraction of our mind is the result of our blind surrender to our desires, our incapacity to control or to moderate our passions. Whence these amorous frenzies, these antipathies, these depraved tastes, this melancholy which is caused by grief, these transports wrought in us by denial, these excesses in eating, in drinking, these indispositions, these corporeal vices which cause madness, the worst of all maladies. (Foucault 1973: 85)
Madness stems from passion and passion rises from desire.
It isn't just one song that makes me think of you. Lines from so many songs that seem to say what I wish you would say. And so what if that let you catch me; where would we land?
Madness, which finds its first possibility in the phenomenon of passion, and in the deployment of that double causality which, starting from passion itself, radiates both toward the body and toward the soul, is at the same time suspension of passion, breach of causality, dissolution of the elements of this unity. (Foucault 1973: 91)
In madness, the totality of soul and body is parceled out: not according to the elements which constitute that totality metaphysically; but according to figures, images which envelop segments of the body and ideas of the soul in a kind of absurd unity. Fragments which isolate man from himself, but above all from reality; fragments which, by detaching themselves, have formed the unreal unity of a hallucination, and by the very virtue of this autonomy impose it upon truth. (Foucault 1971:)
So many diverse meanings are established beneath the surface of the image that it presents only an enigmatic face. And its power is no longer to teach but to fascinate. (Foucault 1973: 20)
Inherent in a diverse meaning of an image is the implication that fascinations can merge with knowledge, obscuring the real, and confronting the assumption of a truth. If there can be no truth, then we must question the construction of reality, and the nature of our self-existence;
The existence of other minds must be inferred from the apparent existence of other bodies. If minds are private, subjective, invisible, amenable only to first-person knowledge, we can have no guarantee that our inferences about other minds are in fact justified. Other bodies may simply be complex automata, androids, or even illusions, with no physical interior, no affective states or consciousness. (Grosz 1996: 7)
Belief in a reality beyond image is really only a disguised form of belief about the appearance itself.
You say you're jaded, and at times I think I am. But you cannot be jaded if you do not beleive that you have a right to be. I'm pissed because I wish I wasn't. I refuse to beleive because I have already wished and wanted to beleive in something. I am jaded because I do not have it, and I figured I should. I live my daily existence fed by fantasies that can never exist. I manage from day to day because I have deluded myself into thinking that my desires are real. If things can never be true, can they be real?
Desperately seeking to find a place within the imaginary, the subject is forever under siege from the symbolic. Fluctuating, disjointed, heterogeneous, the symbolic outdoes and overreaches the subject's desires to find a stable point for its identity in the imaginary. For the symbolic is shared by all subjects, providing the realm of signification where everyone has access to the pronoun 'I'.
I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realized in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming. (Lacan 1977:86)
Thus, placed between the reciprocal relationship of the observer and the observed, an screen forms for image, symbolizing the notion that existence cannot be independent of visual representation. Because our body is fabricated by the visual screen defined by our society, we attempt to incorporate surrounding fractured images into a unified vision. Because unity seems distant to the disparate images which constitute our 'reality' we project into the future as to what might be, in other words, we anticipate, we dream, we hallucinate.
Sex, beach, and mountains. Sex and beach, beach and mountains. Mountains and sex. A few concepts. Sex and concepts. Everything is destined to reappear as simulation. Landscapes as photography, women as the sexual scenario, thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television. Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether the world itself just here to serve as an advertising copy for another world. When the only physical beauty is created by plastic surgery, the only urban beauty by landscape surgery, the only opinion by opinion poll surgery.
This is a culture which sets up specialized institutes so that people's bodies can come together and touch, and at the same time, invents pans in which the water does not touch the bottom of the pan, which is made of a substance so homogenous, dry, and artificial that not a single drop sticks to it, just like those bodies intertwined in feeling and therapeutic love, which do not touch- not even for a moment. This is called interface or interaction. It has replaced face to face contact and action. It is also called communication, because these things really do communicate: the miracle is that the pan bottom communicates its heat to the water without touching it, in a sort of remote bioling process, in the same way as one body communicates its fluid, its erotic potential, to another without that other ever being seduced of even disturbed, by a sort of molecular capillary action. The code of separation has worked so well that they have even managed to separate the water from the pan and to make the pan transimit heat as a message, or to make one body transmit its desire to the other as a message, as a fluid to be decoded. This is called information and it has wormed its way into everything, like a phobic, maniacal leitmotiv, which affects sexual relations as well as kitchen implements.(Baudrillard 1986: 32)
The subject then is desire, constantly launching itself into the field of other where it seeks to know what it might have become.
Desire is that which is manifested in the interval that demand hollows with in itself, in as much as the subject, in articulating the signifying chain, brings to light the want-to-be, together with the appeal to receive the complement from the other, if the Other, the locus of speech, is also the locus of want, or lack. That which is thus given to the Other to fill, and which is strictly that which it does not have, since it, too, lacks being, is what is called love, but it is also hate and ignorance. (Lacan 1977:263)
How can we know the difference between desire and madness?
And for a minute, I lose myself.
But you're alive. It's only falling frames. (they told me)
References