Film Studies Essay

Film Studies Essay

- 2000-3500 word on three texts relating to one of more of the theorists.
- Essay: if you plan to do an essay you will need to introduce your texts and how they relate to your theorist - a brief synopsis or clips that demonstrates this will highlight your intentions.

This assignment will elaborate on the similarities between the theory created by Jacques Lacan through using the film Legally Blonde as a thesis. In this study I have chosen to compare Jacques Lacan's theory of 'The Want' to the film Legally Blonde (Robert Luketik 2001), which portrays a Malibu Barbie named Elle Woods. Elle Woods is a perky, keen, style icon sorority babe draped in pink and eager to solve the world's fashion emergencies. We as an audience idealise Elle from the start of the film as she seems to have the perfect life, the big group of plastic friends, the hunky admirable boyfriend and the bank account of 'daddy'. Throughout the film Elle has constant wants she tries to achieve, once we see her achieve them they're replaced with new wants which we see her then strive to accomplish and unlock her true identity as not just a 'dumb blonde' but an independent and determined woman. We see Elle as never being satisfied as well as wanting respect and within being stereotyped as a 'dumb blonde' challenges Elle and starts her journey in which links to Lacan's theory of the want. We see her conform to the more professional look as the film continues to in a way 'fit in' to societies values and identification of a lawyer. The hypothesis I have decided to explore is 'Is desire/want shown throughout the mainstream film Legally Blonde'.

Elle's hunger for wanting Warner to propose arises at the start of the film, the introduction is a fantasy like montage with lots of close ups creating enigmas for the audience on what's happening. The film starts with Elle's long blonde wavy locks with an extreme close up and a pull focus to present the audience with an enigma, the pink curly playful writing also connotes Elle's barbie lifestyle from just one shot of her brushing her hair. Next we see that a letter is being delivered by bike and the audience see flashes of the journey which we assume to be for this unknown beauty. Throughout the montage the audience get glimpses of what Elle's utopia is like, and the sorority in which she belongs to is all too cliche. Before we even see Elle we can imagine what she looks like / is like / smells and looks like from the enigma's created by the multiple close ups. 
By using the soundtrack in the background Perfect Day - Hoku it connotes the cheerful mood everyone is in and connotes the film to be seen as an idealistic world for the audience. When the letter finally arrives and mentions Warner and the 'good luck tonight' we guess that Elle has relations with him and by blowing a kiss to the picture frame suggests her desire towards this boy. She then goes shopping to pick out the perfect outfit and we see again her desire to look perfect and what Elle even describes 'the night she'll always remember'. Elle's current "Demand for love remains unsatisfied since the other cannot provide the unconditional love that the subject seeks" ('The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis' by Seuil in 1977) Which Seuil wrote in a seminar held by Jacques Lacan himself which exactly connotes the way Elle feels as she is unsatisfied by the way her love cannot be reciprocated by Warner whom she loves unconditionally. However the underlying message of the film is not for Elle to want Warner but to crave the acceptance of society for she is placed into this category of dumb and uneducated and to challenge this stereotype of blonde and pretty faced girls of being nothing but a sexual object.


Skipping to the night, we see in fact is was not the perfect day juxtaposing the music used, when Warner is driving alongside Elle when she is refusing to get in due to her heartache and Warner is still arguing with her about why she can't be good enough for him, she uses the line 'I grew up in Bell Air Warner, across the street from Aaron Spelling' interestingly Elle uses this as a device to look desirable, the fact that she grew up in a rich place with rich successful neighbours to get Warner to stay with her and comparing her to 'Vanderbilt's' who are amongst her with being rich. Right from the start we see Elle and Warner's tiff to relate to how being successful (and rich) as being desirable to each of them which connotes most mainstream film motifs. Lacan describes this in the "Imaginary phase" which was constructed by himself in the years 1936-1953. We physically see Elle turn into the opposite of what we thought of her, a slob, who sits in bed and cries over boys, which Lacan also quoted that "Anxiety as we know, is always connected with a loss... with a two-sided relation on the point of fading away to be suspended by something else, something which the patient cannot face without vertigo"(Lacan, W Grandoff 1956) Which connects the loss that Elle is feeling and the change of anxiety in her which she depicts all men to be the same and sits in bed with tears flooding down her eyes with comfort food.



A big scene that stands out to me in Legally Blonde in context of Lacan's term 'paranoiac knowledge' I thought about Lacan's evidence of the mirror stage and transitioning into "paranoiac alienation" in which Lacan condenses it to misidentification by having said 'ego is actually alienated from itself in the other person'. "This then leads to paranoiac knowledge in which the child or subject has a distorted relation to reality and to others, because with its misplaced ego there is perversion in the subject's cognition of the external".
I specifically thought of this scene because of the desire and the lack that the boy has that explores so deeply to the paranoiac knowledge. The character who is named 'Dorky David Kidney' which explains it all, perfectly exemplifying how the audience and the other characters are supposed to see him, here the scene is shown through a backward facing tracking shot from Elle as the frame opens up to reveal him more, the pull focus is still on Elle but our attention is mainly focussed on the background as the diegetic conversation is the main vocal point the frame widens to reveal David. The conversation we hear is him getting rejected from a girl on campus we feel empathetic towards him and the non-diegetic sad music draws attention to the matter that he is the outcast. She responds with, ''No, you're a dork", which is predominantly how he is supposed to be seen.
He attempts to show social status to her by stating the fact he goes to law school, trying to construct a way in which she views him favourably. However he fails and she replies with "girls like me don't go out with losers like you". Her language towards him expresses how she see's him in relation to herself - socially beneath her. By using words such as "loser" and "dork" show how she is not interested in him due to these points about the way he is constructed socially, without even knowing him personally she denies him because of the traditional values she has of him and because of what he looks like. 
Here enters Elle, Elle who we understand throughout the film people have described her to be attractive, blonde and sexually desirable. Elle slaps David and accuses him of breaking her heart and "giving her the greatest pleasure ever known and then taking it all away". She does this to show David to be desired by her, to show the girl he is striking out with to want to be with him. Through this conversation they've now had she changes her opinion on him to be that of a 'Casanova' to now make him desirable to her, as Elle walks away after slapping him the girl now questions "when did you want to go out?", completely changing her opinion through the use of Elle, suddenly has a change of heart as she obviously classify's Elle -a beautiful girl - to be high in the social hierarchy which relates to.


'What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them give you the universe?' (Lacan 1901-1981) Which directly relates to this film in the way Elle could never be given the universe if she is constantly stuck in this circle surrounding the stereotype she is given. The social standing in which she has she battles through the film to change this, and when given love it still isn't enough for her as she doesn't just want to be seen as desirable, she wants to be taken seriously as a law school student and she spends the whole film trying to achieve this. She wants respect and acceptance, even the professors saw her as just a hair colour and the lack of respect she is given throughout her life has created a want as she is only seen as a sexual object which is uncovered throughout the film that this is completely untrue. "It takes a lot of confidence, self-love and self-worth to realise that you are capable. And that you have every right to leave your lane, and do things in the same way that other people do"(Allan Hennessey, n.d). This quote represents Elle and that realises she is capable of other things and can become whatever she wants as long as she can put her mind to it as well as anyone can do.
Throughout the film, we can identify many occurrences that feed into Lacan's theory of Lack, that Elle embodies the audience as a whole that we all that we are constantly lacking something in which we desire. Despite this throughout the film we also see a personality change in Elle, her dress sense and use of language becomes more and more formal (obviously still with lots of pink) we see her use educational terms as we see her flourish into an elegant form of her former self which we also compare ourselves to as Elle is in a version of all the audience's perspective as we all align with her and feel her emotions too. We empathise with Elle and see how she constantly forms these unconscious desires and the aim of Lacan's psychoanalysis is to 'lead the analysed to recognise their own desires and by doing so to uncover the truth behind their desire'. In which I believe Elle accomplishes just that by finding her true self and completing her desire in which was to initially get Warner back which became to uncover the truth behind Brooke's murder trial. Once Warner wanted to get back with her after realising she's not a 'bimbo airhead' but an intelligent women, Elle realises she doesn't want Warner after all subsequently uncovering her true form and now probably has many other want's in her life. Therefore this proves my hypothesis of 'is desire shown throughout the mainstream film Legally Blonde.  However at the end of the film we are shown quotes that say that Elle has finally reached her perfect world and is no longer in that state she was in of lacking throughout the whole film, so Lacan's theory was pressed in the film right up until the end which also shows the audience that Love is achievable no matter what Lacan's theory contains. 

REFERENCES
- Legally Blonde film directed, by Robert Luketik 2001.
- The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, by Seuil in 1977
- Lacan Fetishism : The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real with W Grandoff 1956
- Imaginary Phase Lacan, 1936-1953
- 'What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them give you the universe?', Lacan 1901-1981
- Allan Hennessey, n.d
- https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17063853.Allan_Hennessy

Laura Mulvey Essay

Laura Mulvey Essay

Task 2) Apply Mulvey's theory of 'the male gaze) (refer to a single film sequence (of your choice) and refer to the male gaze)
- Use film terms (technical & visual) to state how the theory is composed in your chosen sequence.

- JUST GO WITH IT

In this film by A plastic surgeon convinces his assistant to join him along with his young girlfriend on a trip to Hawaii and pose as his ex-wife to cover up a lie, but he ends up complicating the situation further. The film compares the two equally beautiful women in a way unconsciously trying to play off each other in order to get the attention of plastic surgeon Danny. The scene I have chosen depicts one of the women Palmer, a beautiful blonde and physically fit women jumping into a lake while exploring islands of Hawaii, despite this competition JENIFER ANISTON arises and is also shown to be in a sexual way.

The theory summarised

-HOLLYWOOD/MAINSTREAM/NARRATIVE CINEMA MANIPULATES VISUAL PLEASURE.

- IT CODES THE EROTIC INTO THE LANGUAGE OF THE DOMINANT PATRIARCHAL ORDER.

Trailer of the film

The scene 

Notes from the scene
'I don't know about you guys but I am gonna cool off'
takes her top off, all people in scene are fixated on her body however is a mid/long shot
'Look at that thats terrific'
'Does the hotel know you took those pillows honey? '
'She really wears that bikini well'
Jumps into the pool but is a long shot, no close up of her body 
Perfect gorgeous\that was a ten
long shots of Palmer not exactly intensifying her body but still showing it, not in a sexual way 
Long shot of her taking her clothes off
Makes jokes about her taking her clothes off '90's gown' 'bathing cap'
Close up, slow pan up of her revealing her body
the song Begging you starts which dictates her to be sexualised in this instance 
The camera is slowly fixed on her body
Slow motion of her walking towards the edge wearing her bikini
The boys reaction, camera zooms in from mid shot closer of the boys fixed on her unrecognisable hot body
'Yeah'
'I have to be alone'
Long shot from the back of her as if it was from the boys neutral point of view angle so we are really seeing her physically 'IN the male gaze'
'God I have to start taking the stairs more'

Essay

The first line of the scene from Palmer is 'I don't know about you but I am going to cool off, so initially we know she's going to undress to get in the pool. A mid shot of Palmer and the group is used so the audience can grasp their reactions to her body. However no close ups which is odd, on the contrary Palmer has been sexualised throughout the whole film as she is shown to be physically fit, blonde and attractive. Despite this, in this instance possibly because of the way she's been shown throughout the whole film, director Dennis Dugan has decided to change slightly how she is viewed in this scene in comparison to Katherine who is shown to be in everyone's minds, the bombshell. 


The boys however still make comments about Palmer's body such as 'Look at that, that's terrific', as if she has done something great or achieved something. In actual fact she has just took her clothes off. By using the key word 'that' describe her body as being detached from her, as she is just a figure and not an actual person, sexualising her completely. 


There are many long shots of Palmer used after this but not in a extremely sexualised way as she has already been used in a lot of the film in this sexualised light so I think in a way they have sort of de-sexualised her to show Katherine in a much 'brighter' light. 

Due to this being a big Hollywood film with very minimal narrative which is guessable to the audience straight away, due to this narrative cinema they are commonly known for they manipulate the visual pleasure of the male gaze for the audience to easily encode that women are the focus point and that their bodies are the most important part of them.

Palmer now requests for the rest of them to join her due to the water being 'magical'. At this point Katherine replies saying she will go in, this could be from the many sexual comments being made to Palmer in a way she feels threatened, so subsequently joins her. The boys however make jokes about her going in in behalf of her in a way 'competition' being a clear beauty. 

Danny jokes about her taking her clothes off saying 'You got a bathing cap too' 'A 1920's swimming gown honey' retorts about her age gap between Palmer. Katherine is pictured in a long shot taking her clothes off yet however Danny is still watching her get undressed while making these comments which links to the theory of scopophilia and that's what we the audience should all have our attention on despite the jokey comments he is making.


We are then immediately zoomed in as the calm ambient sounds are now changed to a more sexual song to fit the scene 'Begging by Macdon' which starts right from when the camera is zoomed into Katherine's body revealing her in just a bikini. The slow pan upwards showing her top half sexualising her much more than Palmer was to focus their attention on in this case 'the underdog'. 
After Danny's last remark he is left speechless and silenced after seeing her body, which connotes major values of the male gaze as we the audience align our opinions with him as he is the main character. 

The camera zooms out to reveal Katherine slowly walking to the edge of the river the camera still slowly fixated on her body they've used slow motion in this way to make the audience also fixated on her body sexualising her in the highest form. The boys replies and reaction one being 'I have to be alone', and the other 'Yeah'. Sometimes simple comments are most effective which works in this instance. The final long shot of her from the back of her body as if it were exactly from the boys neutral point of view angle so we really are physically seeing her 'IN the male gaze', Danny's final comment being "God I have to start taking the stairs more" in relation to fro what he'd just seen and a reference from the film already when him and Katherine have had jokes about using the stairs. I believe this scene perfectly executes the male gaze and by using a beautiful well known for her charm and good looks Jenifer Anniston uses it very well.

Laura Mulvey Analysis

Laura Mulvey Analysis

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: (i) that of the man behind the camera, (ii) that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and (iii) that of the spectator gazing at the image.

The film critic Laura Mulvey coined the term male gaze, which is conceptually contrasted with and opposed by the female gaze. As a way of seeing women and the world, the psychology of the male gaze is comparable to the psychology of scopophilia, the pleasure of looking; thus, the terms scopophilia and scoptophilia identify both the aesthetic pleasures and the sexual pleasures derived from looking at someone or something.

Fascination and film

- Film fascinates us (engages our emotions), through images and spectacle.

- Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject (= a spectator)

- She says she is using psychoanalytic theory 'as a political weapon'.

Cinema and pleasure

- HOLLYWOOD/MAINSTREAM/NARRATIVE CINEMA MANIPULATES VISUAL PLEASURE.

- IT CODES THE EROTIC INTO THE LANGUAGE OF THE DOMINANT PATRIARCHAL ORDER.

Scopophilia

- Scopophilia = pleasure in looking (Sigmund Freud 1905, in 'Three Essays')

- Examples of the private and curious gaze: children's voyeurism, cinematic looking.

- The most pleasurable looking = looking at the human form and the human face, figural looking (corresponds to psychic patterns).

'Woman as image, man as bearer of the look'

- Pleasure in looking split between active/male and passive female.

- Women connote 'to-be-looking-at-ness'

- The visual presence of women -works against the development of a storyline, freezes the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.

- The woman functions as both erotic object for the characters within the screen story and erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium (object of fantasy).

- The spectator is led to identify with the main male protagonist.

- The power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look.

Fetishistic Scopophilia

- The image of the woman also carries a threat

- There are two avenues of escape from fear of femininity for the male spectator.

             -investigate the woman, demystify her mystery

             -disavow(deny) castration by turning the woman into a reassuring fetish. The image                of the woman > overvalued: this is the cult of the (beautiful) female star, e.g.                          Bridgitte Bardot or Anna Karina for nouvelle vague.

The male gaze and fetishistic scopophilia in 'Le Mepris/Vivre, Sa Vie'

- Scopophilia is the force driving the movements and positioning of the camera.

- The gaze is male, and the spectator is led to identify with this male gaze.

- The cinematic apparatus is not gender-neutral (in later readings, camera can also register differences of sexuality).

Feminist Film Theorists by Shohini Chaudhuri

- Since it began in the 1970's, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood. This book focuses on the groundbreaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, and Barbara Creed. Each of these thinkers has opened up a new and distinctive approach to the study of film and this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideals. it illuminates the following six key concepts and demonstrates their value as tools for film analysis:

- The Male Gaze
- The female voice
- Technologies of gender
- Queering desire
- The monstrous-feminine 
- Masculinity in crisis 

Shohini Chaudhuri shows how these four thinkers construct their theories through their reading of films as well as testing their ideas with a number of other examples from contemporary cinema and television. She concludes that the concepts have not remained static over the past thirty years but have continually evolved with the influence of new critical debates and developments in film production, signalling their continuing impact and relevance in an era that is often unthinkingly branded as 'post-feminist'.

Summary
In her celebrated essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. Mulvey proposes that narrative cinema produces the male as agent of the look and the female as the object of spectacle through mechanisms of voyeurism and fetishism. In this way, narrative cinema imposes 'masculine' viewing strategies on all of its spectators, irrespective of their actual sex. Her argument gave rise to a number of debates, particularly as to whether narrative cinema systematically excludes women and the 'female gaze'. To answer these questions, feminist theorists investigated films targeted at female viewers as well as studying the actual reception of films by female audiences. Mulvey herelf modified her arguments in her 'Afterthoughts' to her essay, where she considers the role of the female spectator. She argues that, in accepting the 'masculinised' subject position offered to her by narrative film, the female spectator can engage in a form of 'transvestite' identification, which involves altering between genders. However, the universalising tendencies of Mulvey's psychoanalytic framework also came under scrutiny, including from black feminist theorists, who stressed the importance of integrating the role of history into the analysis of filmic representation, as well as recognising that women's oppression is not exclusively determined by gender.

Youtube video's explaining theory

REFERENCES

-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze (Neville, Lucy July 2015)
-) https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/psychodynamic-perspectives-on-personality/
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MpDbbvM3qo
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLJsHaLLcwk
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl2Eh8swrEs
-) 
-) Feminist Film Theorists book by Shohini Chaudhuri
-) King Edward one drive powerpoints

Jacques Lacan Essay

Jacques Lacan Essay

Task 2) Apply Lacan's theory of 'want' (refer to a single film sequence (of your choice) and refer to his theory.)
- Use film terms (technical & visual) to state how the theory is composed in your chosen sequence.

- The Wolf of Wall Street

In this film by Martin Scorsese, he portrays the main character of world renowned icon Jordan Belfort known for his stairway to the top from being a stockbroker. We see a thirst for wealth right from the start, and we see throughout the film his mannerisms and his thought process changes to become more based around money and wealth, the scene i've chosen to focus on portrays jordan to be doing an inspirational last speech for his team, however ends it by saying 'i'm not leaving' as the thirst for wealth becomes too desirable to change.

Lacan's theory summarised

- Jacques Lacan created the idea of the 'lack' and that it causes desires to arise.

- "Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but the lack of being whereby the being exists."

- This is similar to the Freudian approach of ID acting on the hedonistic lifestyle whereas the Super ego acts on moral principles and what "lack: relates to is the Ego which is in between.

- From a Freudian approach, the "lack" of hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa.

Trailer of the film

The scene 

Notes from the scene

The shot starts off with Jordan hugging his financial advisor who has suggested him to step down due to the increasing laws he is breaking and suggests he will be getting off much easier with only a couple of years time in prison done, however will live the rest of his life lavish due to the millions he has made while at the company. 
medium close up, long duration shots, constantly changes shot types to long shots to show all the people depending on him.

He describes one of his fellow brokers 'Kimmy' as being one of the original 20, beautiful sophisticated, $3000 Armani suits, drives a brand new Mercedes Benz spends winters in bahamas summers in hamptons, 
mouths thank you and cries to show her admiration for jordan

at 3:24 the camera switches to the audience and pans zooming in and out on people clapping and pointing to him to show their appreciation.

Refers to Stratton as his home.

Even though he's come so far and worked his way up, he isn't ready to stop working towards the top,  become blinded by the fact he's the top he's become an inspiration to everyone.

The impression his desire and want gives fuels everyone within the workplace due to the kind and generous impression he gives off.

You can see that his want ultimately grows too heavy because he retorts to the crowd, 'i'm not flipping leaving' 
'the show goes on'
 'this is my home' 
'they're gonna ned a flipping wrecking ball to take me out of here' 
'they're gonna need to send in the national guard of swat team cus i aint going no where'

Essay

The scene I've decided to analyse is from The Wolf of wall street(Martin Scorsese, 2013) I believe this scene is iconic to analyse as the whole film is about how Jordan's greed and desire for more and more money became the ultimate death of his career as a stockbroker and him himself. I've decided to choose this scene as for me it's the turning point of the whole film where he realises his greed was too big too stop. 


The shot starts with Jordan hugging his financial advisor whom in the scene before agreed with Jordan that he would leave the company due to the progressively worse laws he was breaking and suggests he will be getting off easier with only a couple of years in prison done, however he will live the rest of his life lavish due to the millions he had made at the company. He kisses him to establish to the audience the high admiration he has for him, the camera then pans to Donnie who we know as the audience is Jordan's business partner as they started together in the trade, you can see by Donnie's sorrowed long face he doesn't want to let Jordan leave the company as his best friend. Both of these shots are over the shoulder shots from Jordan to show their love and at the same time sorrow for Jordan leaving the company he made his and many others millions of dollars at.
You can see from the background the amount of Jordan's employee's who completely look up to him as a role model, I really like these two comparing shots as you can see how easily his presence can bring a crowd to cheers. How he is able to silence them all with a hand motion as if he is a teacher to a class of children. In this long shot you can see how may people really look up to Jordan as joint-owner of the company and how many people he has inspired with the same money mindset, this shot's also fairly long with no cuts to ensure the realism of jordan's forthcoming speech.










In this picture you can see Jordan talking, the scene cuts back to this mid/close up shot of Jordan talking to emphasise the importance of his speech, his desire has not yet overridden him as he does not know until after the executed speech that he will in turn, not leave due to the family he has created at Stratton. 
He describes one of his fellow brokers 'Kimmy' as being one of the original 20, beautiful sophisticated, wearing $3000 Armani suits, driving a brand new Mercedes Benz, spends winters in Bahamas summers in the Hamptons. He describes her life as this to everyone as it being everyone else in the room's goal in life to also achieve this. Using materialistic items and holidays as being everyone's dreams and hopes shows them as being extremely materialistic, stuck up and shows their desires to be extremely money orientated.
Even though he's come so far and worked his way up, he isn't ready to stop working towards the top, he's become blinded by the fact he's at the top because he's become an inspiration to everyone. The impression his desire and want fuels everyone within the workplace due to the kind and generous impression he gives off. 

After Jordan has delivered the whole speech the camera then pans to his fellow colleagues who are considered as close to him they're shown to create the image of Jordan as the idealistic man and their goals are of Jordan's to one day own Stratton. They're pictured pointing, cheering and mouthing how much they love him to show their complete admiration to their boss.


 This last part from when he shows them that he is not actually leaving the whole crowd goes wild, colleagues jumping and cheering showing their love and support for him as their boss as he's shown care and generosity throughout all their time at Stratton as a fellow stockbroker. 
The long shot shows the reaction of the whole room and how their desires have been made possible from the man standing in front of them, the whole crowd clap to show their complete appreciation for him. The ending scene where they turn into wild animals completed my analysis to show how they've turned inhumane in order to con people out of money and how all their dreams rely on money and working as a stockbroker.

Jacques Lacan Analysis

Jacques Lacan Analysis

In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan argues that the Symbolic order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of the Symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order.

Mirror stage

- Initially, Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months.

- By the early 1950s, Lacan's concept of the mirror stage had evolved: he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of 'Imaginary order'.

- As Lacan further develops the mirror stage concept, the stress falls less on its historical value and ever more on its structural value. "Historical value" refers to the mental development of the child and "structural value" to the libidinal relationship with the body image.

- It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship. The dual refers not only to the relation between the Ego and the body, which is always characterised by illusions of similarity and reciprocity, but also to the relation between the imaginary and the real. 

Lack Stage

- Jacques Lacan created the idea of the 'lack' and that it causes desires to arise.

- "Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but the lack of being whereby the being exists."

- This is similar to the Freudian approach of ID acting on the hedonistic lifestyle whereas the Super ego acts on moral principles and what "lack: relates to is the Ego which is in between.

- From a Freudian approach, the "lack" of hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa.

The Three Lacks Stage

- Lacan distinguishes between three kinds of lack. According to the nature of the object which is lacking

- The first one is Symbolic Castration and its object related is the Imaginary Phallus 

- The second one is Imaginary Frustration and its object related is the Real Breast

- The third kind of lack is Real Privation and it's object related is the Symbolic Phallus

-  The three corresponding agents are the Real Father, the Symbolic Mother, and the imaginary Father. Of these three forms of lack, castration is the most important from the perspective of the cure.

"Lack" link to Freud

The symbolic version of the phallus, a phallic symbol is meant to represent male generative powers. According to Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, while male possess a penis, no one can possess the symbolic phallus. Jacques Lacan's Ecrits: A selection includes an essay titled the significance of the Phallus which articulates the difference between "being" and "having" the phallus. Men are positioned as men in so far as they are seen to have the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus. Women, not having the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus. The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.

Henri Wallon

- Lacan's concept of the mirror stage was so strongly inspired by earlier work by psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age of about six months, human infants typically become very interested and devote much time and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images.

-This could be interpreted biblically as the bible notes that Human are dominant race and we were created in "god's image and likeliness" and we can appreciate the higher qualities whereas animals are 1 dimensional and only require the ability to survive and reproduce.

Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Jacques Lacan rereads Freud using the theoretical methodology developed by structuralism. He seeks to anchor psychoanalysis firmly in culture rather than biology. As he explains, he aim is to turn 'the meaning of Freud's work away from the biological basis he would have wished for it towards the cultural references with which it is shot through' (1989: 116). He takes Freud's developmental structure and articulates it through a critical reading of structuralism to produce a post-structuralist psychoanalysis. Lacan's account of the development of the human 'subject' has had an enormous influence on cultural studies, especially the study of film.

According to Lacan, we are born into a condition of 'lack', and subsequently spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome this condition. 'Lack' is experienced in different ways and as different things, but it is always a non-representable expression of the fundamental condition of being human. The result is an endless quest in search of an imagined moment of plentitude. Lacan figures this as a search for what he terms 'l'object petit a' (the object small other); that which is desired but forever out of reach; a lost object, signifying an imaginary moment in time. Unable to ever take hold of this object, we console ourselves with displacement strategies and substitute objects.

Lacan argues that we make a journey through three determining stages of development. The first is the 'mirror stage', the second is the 'fort-da' game, and the third is the 'Oedipus complex'. Our lives begin in the realm Lacan calls the Real. Here we simply are. In the Real we do not know where we end and were everything else begins. The Real is like Nature before symbolisation (i.e before cultural classification). It is both outside in what we might call 'objective reality' and inside in what Freud calls our Instinctual drives (The ID). The Real is everything before it became meditated by the Symbolic. 

The Mirror Phase and The Imaginary

For Lacan, we are born too soon. We can't walk, talk or see. We begin as broken people. At some point, however we encounter an image of ourselves in a mirror and begin to identify ourselves as a distinct person in the world, separate from others. The image seems to be better than us and is external to ourselves, so this identification is problematic in itself. This process is the Mirror Phase and it allows us to enter into the realm of the Imaginary - with the emphasis being on the idea of the image.

This Mirror Phase can act as a metaphor for what we do in the cinema - and this idea was developed by Christian Metz. We sit in the dark , quietly (Metz clearly doesn't go to your average multiplex), and don't move, whilst watching an image of a person who is much bigger, stronger, more intelligent, braver and more resourceful than ourselves. The mirror of the cinema screen doesn't reflect us back but shows whom we'd like to be. I'm no Brad Pitt, but I wouldn't mind being him(well aside from in Meet Joe Black(1998)).

Notes on film clip.

Life, lust, fantasy.

The second you get what you seek you don't want it, desire supports fantasy

only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Living by your wants will never make your happy. Not measure life by what you've obtained, rationality.

Never satisfied, always want more, always driven by desire of something.

A Passage from Andrew M. Butler's 'The Pocket Essential Film Studies' Book, refers to theory Lacan - pages 75-78.

Lacan was a French Psychoanalyst who felt that Freud had been misinterpreted by his followers. In his return to Freud he was to be influenced by the idea of structuralism, partly the anthropology of Levi-Strauss and the signifier/signified split. It is traditional to point out that Lacan is difficult and that some of the translations of his work are poor, but in the transcripts of his seminars he also emerges as a very witty person.

Lacan solves one criticism that can be aimed at Freud's versions of the Oedipus complex: what bout single parent or same-sex families who seem to be able to produce well-adjusted individuals? The father is here replaced by the phallus - also a signifier for our patriarchal society - and the Name of the Father, which functions with the threat of castration. Anyone - an uncle, a stepfather, a woman, even the mother - can function as the phallus.

The child desires to be desired by the mother but the mother desires the phallus. The child therefore attempts to become a phallus for the mother and to become the centre of her world. The child fails and the result differs according to sex. The male is reassured that even if he's failed now, one day all this will be his, he may yet become the phallus. In the meantime, he has the compensation of language, which Lacan calls the symbolic order. The female cannot fully access the symbolic order (which is patriarchal) and can only console herself wit thoughts of a time before she was castrated ... But this, perhaps, is to get ahead of ourselves.

The Mirror Phase And The Imaginary

For Lacan, we are born too soon. We can't walk, talk or see. We begin as broken people. At some point, however, we encounter an image of ourselves in a mirror and begin to identify ourselves as a distinct person in the world, separate from others. The image seems to be better than us and is external to ourselves, so this identification is problematic in itself. This process is the Mirror Phase and it allows us to enter into the realm of the Imaginary - with the emphasis begin on the idea of the image.

This Mirror Phase can act as a metaphor for what we do in the cinema - and this idea was developed by Christian Metz. We sit in the dark, quietly (Metz clearly doesn't go to your average multiplex), and don't move, whilst watching an image of a person who is much, bigger, stronger, more intelligent, braver and more resourceful than ourselves. The mirror of the cinema screen doesn't reflect us back but shows whom we'd like to be.

The Symbolic Order And The Real
As part of the Mirror Phase the individual becomes anchored in language - he or she is spoken to or spoken of, and is located in time, space and language. This language it so be understood in terms of Saussure's network of signifiers and signifieds, as explored in Chapter 5. Signifiers can be exchanged for other signifiers in an endless chain of signification. 
After the child has gone through the Mirror Phase, the Oedipus complex follows and the child faces the signifier of the phallus or Name Of The Father. The male child emerges rom this and can enter the Symbolic Order - one day he will be associated with the phallus, but in the meantime he must make do with the system of exchange that includes the patriarchal social system. In contrast, the female child can only console herself with the (fake) memory of the time before she was castrated, when she was associated with the phallus, and cannot fully enter into the Symbolic Order.
From a feminist point of view, this is as problematic as Freud's analysis, but some feminists such as Julia Kristeva have argued that women must find their own, non-patriarchal order or language of babble, which she calls the semiotic. Most films follow a masculine structure, a liner narrative which begins with a disruption to the social order, and then various attempt to reinstate it successfully. A feminine structure might be different - see for example the works of Sally Porter and Jane Campion, or even Derek Jarman, where episode outweighs the entire story. 
Aside from the imaginary and the Symbolic, Lacan posits the dimension of the Real, which is that which exists before and beyond language, and cannot be symbolised. The Real is the moment when Tyler Durden is a unified whole before his breakdown, or the flash frames which intervene in the first half of the film, or the moment when you appear to see the edges of the film.

Youtube video's explaining

References
-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan
-) A Passage from 'The Pocket Essential Film Studies' Book, refers to theory Lacan - pages 75-78 (may 2005 Andrew M. Butler)
-) Main information from One Drive powerpoints on Kec Moodle.
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agTYUU4gTOo (September 2016, 'Then & Now')
-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkAXsR5WINc (September 2009, 'YaleCourses')