Beyond Lolita Traversing the Cinematic Fantasy of Girlhood - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Beyond Lolita Traversing the Cinematic Fantasy of Girlhood - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Oct 24, 2023 331 likes •640 views

Beyond Lolita Traversing the Cinematic Fantasy of Girlhood Louis-Paul Willis - Film and Media 2013 Aim Distinguish two forms of cinema: 1. Fantasmatic cinema: Reactionary, ideologically alligned 2. Analytic cinema: Radical, new

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Beyond Lolita

Traversing the Cinematic Fantasy of Girlhood

Louis-Paul Willis - Film and Media 2013

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Aim

Distinguish two forms of cinema: 1. Fantasmatic cinema:

  • Reactionary, ideologically alligned

2. Analytic cinema:

  • Radical, new forms of spectatorship
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PLAN

1. Pertinence of contemporary Lacanian film theory 2. Fantasmatic cinema v/s analytic cinema 3. “Look closer”: American Beauty (Mendes, 1999) 4. Beyond fantasy: Exotica (Egoyan, 1994)

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  • Traditional Lacanian film theory’s misconceptions:
  • GAZE = active, subjective and objectifying
  • DESIRE = desire for mastery
  • Not aligned with Lacan’s definition of these concepts
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
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  • “The Lacan who served as a point of reference for these theories was

the Lacan before the break”

  • Slavoj Žižek, “The Undergrowth of Enjoyment”
  • “For Lacan, psychoanalysis at its most fundamental is not a theory and

technique of treating psychic disturbances, but a theory and practice that confronts individuals with the most radical dimension of human existence”

  • Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian film theory
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  • Desire = desire for a prohibited/impossible object
  • “Lacan claims that an object becomes the object of desire only in so far

as it is prohibited (there is no incestuous desire prior to the prohibition of incest) -- desire itself needs Law, its prohibition, as the obstacle to be transgressed”

  • Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian film theory
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  • Fantasy:
  • An attempt to mitigate trauma
  • Provides an imaginary access to the object of desire (objet petit a)
  • “Fantasy has come to mean the making visible, the making present, of

what isn’t there, of what can never directly be seen”

  • Elizabeth Cowie, Representing the Woman
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian film theory
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  • “Fantasy is able to provide the subject a relation to the impossible object

because of the form that fantasy takes, a form that makes is especially amenable to the cinema”

  • Todd McGowan, The Real Gaze
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian film theory
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  • “Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire, it

tells you how to desire”

  • Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian Film Theory
  • 1. Contemporary Lacanian film theory
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  • 2. Fantasmatic/Analytic Cinema
  • Popular cinema = fantasmatic cinema (generally)
  • Happy ending = fantasy
  • “The brief nature of the common Hollywood ending allows for the fantasy
  • f resolution to remain especially strong as it provides a glimpse of the

ultimate satisfaction but does not have to reveal what happens after the momentary conclusion”

  • Hilary Neroni, “Jane Campion’s Jouissance”
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  • 2. Fantasmatic/Analytic Cinema
  • Traversing the fantasy:
  • Marks the end of analysis
  • Subject confronts the lack beyond fantasy
  • Traumatic
  • “The drive is what remains of desire after the image of realization 


[i.e. the fantasy] has been stripped away”.

  • Todd McGowan. Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema
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  • 2. Fantasmatic/Analytic Cinema
  • Analytic cinema:
  • Brings viewer to traverse a given fantasy
  • Confronts spectators to their fantasies
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  • 2. Fantasmatic/Analytic Cinema
  • Analytical cinema:
  • Produced by major studios (American Beauty)

OR

  • Produced by independent studios (Exotica)
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  • 3. “Look closer”: American Beauty
  • “Fantasy involves [...] the arranging of, a setting out of, desire; a

veritable mise en scène of desire”

  • Elizabeth Cowie, Representing the Woman
  • Filmic rendition of Lester’s fantasizing:
  • Cheerleader’s uniform
  • Shift in soundtrack
  • Filming and lighting of the strip-tease
  • Angela’s wink
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American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)

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American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)

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American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)

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  • 3. “Look closer”: American Beauty
  • Barbra Ann Churchill. The Lolita Phenomenon
  • PhD thesis
  • Posits the sexualized young girl as a “child (femme) fatale”
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  • 4. Beyond fantasy: Exotica
  • Particular aspects of the Exotica nightclub:
  • Owned by a woman; managed with “family values”
  • Highly sophisticated decoration; exoticism of nature/femininity
  • Staging of performances
  • Eric (DJ): narrative support for the collective male fantasy
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  • 4. Beyond fantasy: Exotica
  • “Within [its] imaginary isolation, one seems not to have to sacrifice the
  • bject. One is able to enjoy it, but with the restriction that one can only

enjoy the image of the object, not the object itself”

  • Todd McGowan, The End of Dissatisfaction?
  • “Fantasies cannot bear the revelation of speech”
  • Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII
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  • 4. Beyond fantasy: Exotica
  • Fantasy:
  • Veils the lack in the Other
  • Answers the enigma of “che vuoi?” (What to you want from me?)
  • Maps out our desires
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Recap

  • Fantasmatic cinema:
  • Perpetuates the logic of fantasy
  • Analytic cinema:
  • Provides a “counter-spectatorship” where fantasies are traversed
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Traversing Screen Fantasies

The Radicality of Contemporary Film Spectatorship

Louis-Paul Willis - FSAC 2013