South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lynch But Were Afraid to Ask Lacan The Impossible David Lynch by Todd McGowan Review by: Robert Sinnerbrink South Atlantic Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Fall 2007), pp. 128-132 Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784743 . Accessed: 07/03/2013 11:05
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Review Essay Everything You Always Wanted Know About Lynch But Were Afraid to Ask Lacan
Robert
_Macquarie

to

Sinnerbrink
University, Sydney_ New York: Columbia

The Impossible David Lynch, by Todd McGowan. UP, 2007. 280 pp. $24.50. Fans and scholars of David

Lynch's work tend to fall into two oppos ing camps. There are those who maintain that Lynch's films defy rational interpretation,which suggests thatwe should sensuously intu

films, provided we assume the appropriate (Lacanian) perspective.2 has produced themost theoretical Inspired by Zizek, Todd McGowan ly sophisticated study of Lynch's work to date, defending an Lacanian unabashedly reading of Lynch's oeuvrefromEraserhead (1977) toMulholland Drive provoking (2001). For McGowan, Lynch is no avant-gardist on critical reflection the nature of the medium (such as

it rather than conceptually analyse his uncanny narrative and image sequences.1 Then are those, like Slavoj Zizek, who insist thatwe can discern intelligible narrative structures and coherent themes inLynch's

complicitous nature of our own (cinematic) desire. Rather than the more conventional substitution of fantasy for desire, Hollywood Lynch's films,McGowan argues, are structured by the sharp separation of theworld of desire from the fantasy structures that support and
sustain it.

Godard). Rather, his work attempts to remove the barriers between viewer and film, forcing the spectator "to become aware of how' the film takes into account the spectator's desire" (2).3 Lynch's immersion of the viewer in the fantasy structure of cinema powerfully reveals the

perspective, theworld of desire is one of lack, the lack of the desired object or of the lost object; it provides the driving force of narrative cinema, involvingmysteries to be solved, questions to be answered, or

In this compelling analysis of Lynchian cinema, McGowan bril core articulates the of Lacanian film From this liantly concepts theory.

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South Atlantic Review knowledge to be gained.

129

In contrast, the world of fantasy is that of enjoyment, satisfaction, the overcoming of the deadlocks inherent in desire; fantasy sustains the familiar conventions of Hollywood narra tive film,with of obstacles, resolution of mysteries, and formation of the couple. According to Lacan, we do not experi ence ordinary social reality as a world of desire opposed to that of fan its overcoming

tasy; rather, fantasy supports and supplements desire, providing com pensatory enjoyment in response to the inherent dissatisfactions of desire, thereby lending coherence to our experience of social reality. Conventional film narrative moves seamlessly from desire to fantasy, resolving irresolvable conflicts while maintaining narrative and experi ential coherence. Lynch's originality?what makes his an "impossible the sharp cinematic separation of desire and fantasy, which disrupts our sense of cinematic and social reality. cinema"?is All of Lynch's films, McGowan argues, follow the structural pattern first articulated in Victor Fleming's The Wizard of 0% (1939), which visually opposes the dark, troubling world of desire (Kansas) to the world of fantasy (Oz) (18). But unlike Fleming, pleasurable, satisfying who "uses the dream of Oz to reconcile spectators to themonotony of theirKansas" mate?often (19), Lynch follows the logic of fantasy to its ulti us fully in violent or destructive?conclusion, immersing the dimension of fantasy and forcing us to traverse it fully. In doing

resolution of the deadlocks so, Lynch refuses the standard Hollywood of desire through compensatory immersion in fantasy.As McGowan argues, Lynch does not deconstruct normality, or ironically parody it, as many critics maintain. Rather, his films demonstrate the uneasy coexistence of fantasy and desire within social reality itself, separating also fully immersing us in the world of fantasy, thus giving us a "total experience of fantasy" in all its ambivalent ramifications (2Iff.). of desire while presents an intriguing Lacanian "ethics of fantasy": traversing fantasy to its completion reveals its role in con our sense of reality, structing provides a point of identification with McGowan's conclusion thatwhich ismost traumatic within fantasy and desire, and thereby enables us to gain a critical distance on the relationship between desire and fantasy by revealing their underlying structure and distinctive log makers" interprets Lynch?"the Hegel of film the (23)?as artistically revealing speculative identity of opposites: the separation and unity of desire and fantasy in our sub ics. In this sense, McGowan the mysterious world

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Robert Sinnerbrink

jcctive experience. Like a cinematic Phenomenologyof Spirit, Lynch's films work through successive permutations of the relationship between desire and fantasy, presenting us with ever more complex experiences of their simultaneous separation and unity.The ultimate aim of this immersion in fantasy is to transform our relationship not only to cinema but to our way of experiencing social reality.Far from the ideological apologist for the status quo depicted by some critics,4 McGowan's analysis, as a cinematic critical theorist, Lynch emerges, in evoking through sound, image, and narrative the sources of our ideo logical capture through the interpenetration of desire and fantasy in the construction of social reality. are many riches in this sophisticated and original study. marvellous McGowan's readings of individual films (in particular There Eraserhead (1977), Wild atHeart (1990), and Lost Highway (1997)) elo quently articulate Lynch's cinematic strategy of separating theworld of desire from that of fantasy.The Lacanian theme of the "impossibili to the inherent limitations in symbol ty" of the sexual relation?due ising the asymmetrical character of masculine and feminine desire?is also brilliantly rendered inMcGowan's readings of Blue Velvet (1986), Wild atHeart, and Lost Highway. In Blue Velvet it is the opposition between masculine fantasy and the fantasies of Jeffrey Beaumont feminine desire, where (Kyle and Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) McLachlan) (as rescuer and tortur er respectively) fail to domesticate the disruptive nature of Dorothy Vallens's sive world Cage) (Isabella Rossellini's) desire. In Wild atHeart, it is the exces of fantasy versus the absence of desire: Sailor (Nicolas

live out a fantasyworld without the dis (Laura Dern) deadlocks of desire of Oz without Kansas" ("the Wizard turbing (111)), where the possibility of enjoyment is stymied by the violence and brutality of social reality (125-128). In Lost Highway it is the con and Lula trast between the disturbing world of desire (the Fred/Renee story) (Bill Pullman/Patricia Arquette) and the satisfyingworld of fantasy (the Pete/Alice story) (Balthazar Getty/Patricia Arquette); this oppo

in the course of the film, with the desiring (mascu line) subject (Fred/Pete) eventually being confronted with the dissolu tion of his fantasy and subsequent compulsion to repeat (as signalled in the concluding sequence). sition is undone In this respect,McGowan's Lacanian reading provides a compelling 'fantasy' account of the coherent development of Lynch's thinking on

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South Atlantic Review

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the relationship between desire and fantasy, culminating in themagnif icent Mulholland Drive, the 'feminine' fantasy/desire counterpart toLost argues, we find the separation of the Highway. Mere too, McGowan (feminine) world of fantasy?talented Betty's (Naomi Watts's) rescue and love affairwith themysterious 'Rita' (Laura Elena Harring)?and failed relationship, dismal acting (Naomi Watts's) career, and revenge attack upon Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Both worlds, however, finally collaps into each other during Harring). desire?Diane's the film's breathtakingly tragic conclusion (214-219). brilliant theoretical resolution of Lynch's McGowan's narrative

mysteries raises the question of whether it does justice to the other aesthetic dimensions of his work. In good Hegelian fashion, Lynch's cinematic style?visually and aurally signifying the contrast between themysterious world of desire and the satisfying world of fantasy?is effectively aufgehobeninto speculative Lacanian film theory. But this is precisely the problem: does Lynch's art need to be conceptually com laHegel or Lacan?in order to understand its dazzling prehended?a cinematic ideas and narrative abstractions? Moreover, can this Lacanian model account for Lynch's specifically cinematic reflections on film, particularly evident, for example, inMulholland Drive and EMPIRE INLAND does not reflect (2006)? Interestingly,McGowan

on the significance of Lynch's specifically filmic meditations on cine for it is arguably the history of film itselftowhich we are indebted ma; formany of our shared cultural fantasy schemata and gendered narra tives of desire. McGowan's reading of Lost Highway, for example, over

looks that the fantasy dimension of the film is indebted tofilm noir, where the noir style ismore evident in the first part (the Fred/Renee story) than in the second (the Pete/Alice story). As McGowan the latter part of the film is shot in a reassuringly Hollywood notes, realist

style (167 ff.); but its narrative content?including corrupting iemme and masochistic noir hero?is noir pure film fatale fantasy, a fact that neat narrative separation between the dark world unsetdes McGowan's of desire and the reassuring world of fantasy. McGowan's theoretical commitments also result in the occasional forcing of narrative elements into his encompassing Lacanian frame. We might question, for instance, his claim that the second part of Mulholland Drive (theDiane/'Rita' story) lacks "a sense of temporality" or "clear narrative logic" (201). To take two of McGowan's examples, one need not on the Diane's coffee table as interpret piano ashtray

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Robert Sinnerbrink

an earlier complex flashback to phase of her doomed relationship with 'Rita' (Laura Elena Harring). Similarly, the blue key left by the hitman Diane has hired does not randomly appear and disappear from her it signifies "the atemporal logic of desire" (201). More simply, itmarks a shift in the diegetic temporal frame between what happens before and after 'Rita's' murder, which iswhat the blue coffee table because key explicitly signifies (as distinct from themysterious triangular blue key!). Taking the second part of the film as a flashback reconstruction of the failed relationship between Diane and Camilla, which provides the basis for the oneiric Betty/'Rita' fantasy of the first part, makes narrative and cinematic sense of these otherwise puzzling elements.5

appearing and disappearing because of the atemporal character of the film's narrative (201); rather,we can more readily take itas signifying a

the many mysteries of the Lynch's cinematic world. Nonetheless, fascinating Lacanian 'fanta so all of Lynch's films McGowan that sy' admirably presents?that can be analysed through the opposition between desire and fantasy? a certain impasse here. For ifwe resolve perhaps reaches theoretically all the narrative mysteries in Lynch's work, we might also silence the rich cinematic language?Lynch's beautiful, abstract, "big fish"
ideas?that sensuously reveals them.6

are very minor criticisms of what that unlocks temporary film-philosophy These

is a brilliant work of con

Walter Chapin Centre for the Humanities, 2000). 3 The Impossible David lynch (New York: Columbia Todd McGowan, UP, 2007). 1 See Jeff Johnson's Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in theWorks of David lynch (Jefferson NC: MacFarland, 2004). 5 For interpretations of Mulholland "Cinematic Ideas: David "'Its No see Robert Sinnerbrink, along these lines Drive, Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no.5, June 2005 and Calvin Thomas, <http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n34sinnerbrink>; Drive lynch'sMulholland

P. Nochimson, The Passion of David lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood (Austin: U of Texas P, 1997). 1 (Seattle: Slavoj Zizek, The Art of theRidiculous Sublime: On David lynch's Lost Highway

1 See Martha

Notes

Your Film': Abjection and (the) Mulholland \jonger (Death) Drive," Angelaki, vol. 11, issue 2, August 2006, 81-98. " inDavid See Lynch's discussion of the creative thought behind INIAND EMPIRE Consciousness, and Creativity (New York: Lvnch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, 2007), esp. 139ff. Tarcher/Penguin:

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