[I]t was fit, Barry
believed that she should give up the pleasures and frivolities of the world,
leaving that part of the duty of every family of distinction to be performed by
him.
- Narrator discussing the titular character’s relationship
with his wife in Barry Lyndon
[1]
Since the above quote and its source capture the themes of
Transference and Counter-transference that Lacan cover in our current portion
of his Anxiety seminar [2], I’ll use
this film to work through it.
Like The Shining,
the movie begins with a funereal piece, in this case, Handel's “Sarabande” [3].
We get the intertitle, “By what Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title
of Barry Lyndon,” then a distant view of men preparing to duel. The narrator tells
us that our protagonist’s father had been a lawyer, and that he would have
“made an eminent figure in his profession,” then we see one of the men fall
before hearing that he had been killed “over the purchase of some horses.”
{The loss at the start of this satirical
tragedy gives us a convenient opening into our current section of Anxiety. Lacan describes the (lost) “o’s”
relationship to tragedy and comedy as something that wants to get on “the stage,”
and that, in modern theater, this role is performed by the spectator. He further
discusses the analyst as “Other” to the subject in transference, warning
against confusing the big and the small “other,” the latter of which is what an
analyst must take into himself as the cause of the patient’s lack “to restore
the subject’s access to the world.” [4 (Schema p 6)]}
A woman holding a bouquet of lilacs walks with decorum across
the screen, first alone, then alongside a well-dressed gentleman. The narrator
tells us that, although receiving many marriage proposals after her husband’s
death, Redmond’s mother, Belle, lived only for her son and the memory of her “departed
saint.”
{We’ll use Belle’s memory to recall
an article Lacan discusses, an article by counter-transference expert Margaret
Little
* in which a subject, having made a “broadcast” on a topic which had interested
his previous analyst,} revived in himself the feeling of mourning that he had
about the recent death of his mother who, he says, could therefore not see
success represented for her son at being in this [broadcast] momentarily
promoted to the position of a star.
Margaret Little is struck … by the fact that effectively the analyst in making his interpretation had done no more than interpret what was passing through his own unconscious, namely that effectively he was very sorry at the success of his patient. [5 (scholarly citations removed)]
Margaret Little is struck … by the fact that effectively the analyst in making his interpretation had done no more than interpret what was passing through his own unconscious, namely that effectively he was very sorry at the success of his patient.
We cut to a sculpture of a small child, and in the
background we see rain falling behind a window with lilacs on the sill. The
romantic tune, “Women of Ireland” plays over the faint sound of thunder while the
camera pulls back, revealing a young man - our protagonist - and a young woman playing
cards. The narrator exclaims about the “magnificent secret” of first love
before introducing the young woman as Redmond’s cousin, Nora Brady - the cause
of Redmond’s early troubles. After winning a hand, she stands up, has Barry
turn, and hides her neck ribbon in the bosom of her dress. Walking towards him,
she tells him that he can have it if he finds it, but that she will think very
little of him if he does not. Redmond, still seated, opens her hands and says
that he cannot.
{Barry’s search can bring us to our
next passage, where Lacan claims that Ms. Little’s story illustrates an advance
on Freud’s definition of mourning, Lacan’s forefather having defined the
concept as “identification with the lost object.” Because} of the irreducible
character of the miscognition concerning [a missed loved-one’s] lack, this
miscognition simply is reversed, namely that this function that we had of being
his lack, we now believe we are able to express in the fact that we have been
lacking to him, even though it was precisely for this reason that we were
precious and indispensable to him. {Lacan also provides an illustration from later
in Ms. Little’s text, where she interprets the acting out of another subject, a
kleptomaniac. In this case, her understanding of (and relationship to) the
subject deepened when the analyst admitted her own confusion and pain at the
client’s surprisingly passionate mourning at the death of a former caregiver
from whom she had long since drifted apart. Lacan thus identifies what makes it
possible for a subject to transfer to the analyst the reaction involved in
mourning – a feeling that there was a person for whom she was able to be a lack:
a feeling of anxiety.} [6 (scholarly citations removed)]
After whispering impatiently that Redmond hasn’t looked
properly, Nora assists him, and, when he succeeds, asks why he is trembling. At
his reply that it is from the “pleasure of finding the ribbon,” she says, “liar,”
bends down and kisses him. The narrator then tells us that the United Kingdom
had been threatened with invasion, and we see a regiment of soldiers march to
“The British Grenadiers” as townspeople, our couple among them, watch. After
the narrator tells us of Redmond’s envy, we see the captain, Quin, dance
awkwardly with Nora, then cut to her and Redmond walking through a forest,
quarreling. She protests that she doesn’t care about the captain, though calling
him a “pleasant rattle of a man” and listing his good qualities, including how
he looks in his regimentals. When Barry points out that she danced with Quin
five times while refusing to dance with him, Nora brings up Redmond’s poverty
and calls him a “boy.” She persists in this vein when he declares his intention
to fight the captain, and our protagonist leaves, telling her that she had best
have Quin take her home. Nora weakly calls after him, then turns away. Speaking
of which,
{Lacan lists two turning points that
allowed Ms. Little to introduce “the function of the cut” of transference. The
first was the analyst’s expression of fatigue at the subject’s usual narrative,
the second is her expression of indifference, when the subject criticized the
redecoration of her office, to the subject’s opinion. Adding more background on
Ms. Little’s kleptomaniac patient, Lacan interprets the compulsion as a message
to the subject’s mother, who had} never been able to make of this child
anything other than a sort of prolongation of herself. [The stolen object]
means that there is somewhere another object, my one, the o, the one which
deserves to be considered, to be allowed to isolate itself for a moment.
This function of isolation … has the … correlative pole of this function of anxiety. [7]
This function of isolation … has the … correlative pole of this function of anxiety. [7]
We see Redmond chopping wood in a hen-filled farmyard while
the narrator tells us of Barry’s resolve to stay away from Nora, a resolve that
was “steadfastly held for a whole week” before he abandoned it. Seeing Nora and
Quin exchanging words of tenderness (His heart “has never felt the soft flame”
except for Nora “and four others,” and she had “never felt the inclination for
another,”) our protagonist returns her ribbon. At Quin’s expression of indignation,
Nora protests that her cousin “don’t signify any more than my parrot or lapdog,”
and her chaperoning brothers, Mick and Ulick, try to placate him. Quin, as an
Englishman and “man of property,” is outraged. He pulls out a neck ribbon that
Nora had given him, casts it to the ground and leaves, Nora running after him,
and her brothers rebuking Redmond for threatening the 1500 guineas a year that
the union would bring them. We cut to Redmond entering a large rustic hall where
his uncle and family are dining. At his uncle’s invitation, Redmond takes a seat
in front of his rival, who shoots him smug looks and whispers to the family’s
patriarch. Redmond’s uncle stands and announces Nora and Quin’s engagement,
raising a toast to the fiancés. When he reproaches Barry for not joining in, his
nephew stands, saying, “Here’s my toast to you,” and throws his wine - glass
and all - at Quin, challenging the captain to demand satisfaction. Another
elder relative, Captain Grogan, offers to take him home, and as we watch him and
Redmond walk past a herd of sheep, he reproves Barry for his insensitivity to
his financially-distressed Uncle, whose loan Quin would pay. He points out that
Nora had been “flinging herself at the head of every man in these parts” for
the past five years and reminds the younger man that, due to his uncle’s
kindness in giving him and his mother a house rent free, he should be as
attached to him as to his own father, and Redmond agrees.
{We can relate this transfer of
filial affection to our present study, where Lacan has his pupils cover articles
by Ms. Little and other analysts, one by T.S. Szasz, which compared the
analytic goal to science, and the other by Barbara Low, which compared it to
the sublimation which presides over artistic creation. He points out their
common theme of counter-transference and notes that all are impeded by the
desire of the analyst before he defines counter-transference as “everything
that the psychoanalyst represses of what he receives as signifier in the
analysis.” Lacan warns us that counter-transference is therefore not really the
question, pointing out that there is no analytic theory of what desire is. Returning
to the subject of the identification of desire with the law, he then pinpoints
what these analysts repress in their interpretations:} It is not only the fact
that in analytic doctrine, with the Oedipus complex as its central corpus, it
is clear that what constitutes the substance of the law is the desire for the
mother, that inversely what normatives desire itself, what situates it as desire,
is what is called the law of the prohibition of incest. [8]
Seeing Redmond’s determination, despite everything, to fight
for Nora’s hand, the captain shakes his head and smiles. “Faith, and I believe
ye!” Taking him in his arms, he says, “Give me a kiss, me boy. You're after me
own soul. As long as Jack Grogan lives, you shall never want a friend or a
second.” After he agrees to arrange a meeting with Quin, we cut to the two
seconds preparing pistols as “Sarabande” plays. Grogan, bringing a gun to Redmond,
tries to coax him into apologizing, saying that Nora will marry Quin and that Barry
will forget her - “You're but a boy and Quin is willing to consider you as
such.” He gets his friend’s nervous rival to confirm that he will be satisfied
if Redmond apologizes and goes to Dublin, Grogan even offering Barry ten
guineas to help him enjoy the visit. We get a closeup of Quin’s encouraging
smile fading as Redmond angrily declines the offer. When Redmond observes that
the pistol he gets isn’t his, his cousin says it is his own, adding that
Redmond’s will serve for the next round if needed. We see a wide-eyed Quin
swallowing hard and trying not to shake as Redmond’s cousin orders the duelists
to cock and aim their guns, then a long shot of him falling after they fire. Mick
Brady pronounces him dead, and they all take off their hats as Nora’s brother reminds
Redmond of the lost 1500 guineas a year. He adds that Barry should leave before
the police arrive, and Ulick offers to ride with him. As the two approach the
Barry cottage, Redmond’s mother meets him with a hug, while the narrator tells
us that he “was destined to be a wanderer.” Inside, to Mrs. Barry’s question of
whether Redmond wouldn’t be as safe in his own house, his cousin argues against
the idea, saying, “You do know what can happen to him if he's taken.”
{We’ll halt on this line to examine
the aforementioned identification from the perspective of sado-masochism as
well as simple neuroticism - Lacan asserts that although desire} appears by
presenting itself as … a subversion of the law, it is in fact well and truly
the support of a law. [Indeed, the neurotic] cannot for his part sustain, give
its status to his desire except as unsatisfied for himself or as impossible.
{To elaborate this heteronomous character of ethics, Lacan turns to the meaning
of effacing traces.} [9]
Redmond rides through the countryside, as the narrator tells
us, “thinking not so much of the kind mother left alone, and the home behind
him, but of tomorrow and all the wonders it would bring.” When he reaches an inn
and asks for some water, a bestubbled middle-aged man with a young,
disreputable-looking companion greets him, asking him to join him for a drink, and
then offering him something to eat. Redmond declines, drinks his water and leaves.
We cut to the woods and see him warily approach a man with his back to him and
a tree blocking the path. When he gets close, the man turns with two pistols
trained on him – it is the gentleman from the inn. Greeting Redmond genteelly,
he introduces himself as Captain Feeny and his companion as his son, Seamus [10],
who, also holding a pistol, has ridden up behind Barry. After politely telling Redmond
to dismount, Feeny asks his son to search him. Seamus finds 20 guineas, and Redmond
asks if he can keep them, telling Feeny his story. Although saying that
Redmond’s tale “is the most intriguing and touching I’ve heard in weeks,” the
captain denies his request, but he does let him keep his boots, saying the next
town is only five miles away. The highwayman takes Redmond’s horse (and all the
belongings it carries) - “People like us must be able to travel faster than our
clients,” and lets him go, telling him that he can put his hands down.
{The common status of the fugitives
in this scene can help us track with Lacan as he stresses the need for aporia
* in discussing traces, since, in reality, they are not effaced:} The real
referring the subject back to the trace, abolishes the subject also at the same
time: for there is no subject except through the signifier, through this
passage to the signifier: a signifier is that which represents the subject for
another signifier. [11]
Redmond reaches town, where a crowd has gathered in front of
a tavern. We see an army recruiter promise the means to become a gentleman, then
cut to Redmond marching in uniform while the narrator tells us that “King
George needed men too much to heed from whence they came.” In the next scene, Redmond,
eating with his new comrades-in-arms, complains that his beaker is full of
grease, and a larger, more hardened soldier, Mr. Toole, ridicules him, saying,
“Give the gentleman a towel and a basin of turtle soup.” After Toole drinks
Redmond’s ration and throws the beaker at his feet, a companion prompts Barry –
“Ask him about his wife the washerwoman, who beats him.” Redmond asks his
antagonist if the towel is of his wife’s washing, adding, “They say she wipes
your face often with one.” With a little more information he continues, “Why
did you hide when Mrs. Toole came to visit you? Afraid of getting yer ears
boxed?” As Toole rises, picking up his bench, a superior tells them to fight it
out with fists, having the men form a square for the purpose and announcing,
“The last man to remain standing is the winner.” Redmond allows the bigger,
slower man to tire himself, punching at the air and almost breaking out of the
square after a misdirected lunge. After knocking Toole down several times, the
smaller man wins, and his fellow soldiers cheer, carrying him on their
shoulders.
{With this match we can illuminate how
Lacan again uses the subject of masochism to bring us to the “transversal”
dimension of the real: What} escapes the masochist and what puts him in the
same position as all the perverts, is that he believes of course that what he
is looking for, is the jouissance of the Other; but precisely, since he
believes it, that is not what he is looking for. What escapes him, even though
it is a tangible truth, really lying about everywhere and within everybody’s
reach, but for all that never seen at its true level of functioning, is that he
seeks the anxiety of the Other. {Lacan disagrees with Freud’s characterization
of anxiety as a signal of the internal danger for the ego.} the Psi-system as
Aufbau, as structure, as that which interposes itself between perception and
consciousness, is situated in another dimension as other qua locus of the
signifier; … anxiety is … a specific manifestation at this level of the desire of
the Other as such. [12]
More troops arrive as Barry’s regiment prepares to leave for
Germany. We watch a parade of them march past Redmond, one of them winking at
him from his horse – it is Captain Grogan. We then see the two together in a tent
as the captain reproaches Redmond for not having written his mother to let them
know what had happened to him, and dismisses the younger man’s expression of
shame about having lost her money and his father’s sword and pistol - “You are
her only concern.” When Redmond asks about Nora, Grogan’s round face acquires a
somewhat impish expression as he says, “She took on so about your going away
that she had to console herself with a husband.” He reveals the deception of
the duel, a ruse that allowed Nora to marry Captain Quin and her family to receive
his 1500 guineas a year - the guns had been loaded with tow. Nevertheless,
Grogan says admiringly, Redmond had hit Quin. “He was so frightened, it took
him an hour to come to.” Grogan then asks if Redmond needs cash, warmly encouraging
him to draw on him if he does; the elder man had gotten a share - 200 guineas -
from Redmond’s uncle, “and, while they last, you shall never want.” After the
troops reach Europe, we see Redmond’s first battle, in which Grogan gets shot. Redmond
carries him over his shoulder to the woods. When he puts him down, his mentor
tells him that he has only a hundred guineas left. Chuckling, he says, “I lost
the rest at cards. Kiss me, me boy, for we'll never meet again.” Redmond does,
then breaks down sobbing, still holding his dead friend. With Grogan’s death, Barry
loses interest in war. We see his new perception in shots of soldiers carrying
animals away from a burning farm while the narrator comments about “ploughmen,
poachers and pickpockets” doing the work of the “great warriors and kings.” Then
Redmond witnesses two officers, who had left their uniforms on a bank, holding
hands in the river, as one, Jonathan Fakenham, worries that the other will be
cross with him about his going away to bring dispatches to Prince Henry.
{We’ll pause on the officer’s
concern about provoking a quarrel to consider Lacan’s discussion of the
temporal dimension of desire of the other, in which the Other} puts me in
question, interrogates me at the very root of my own desire as o, as cause of
this desire and not as object, and it is because he is aiming at this in a
relationship of antecedence, … that I can do nothing to break this grip except
by engaging myself in it. {The professor characterizes this relationship as
Hegelian, saying we have resistances to it but that against it,} a good part of
the resistance slips. Only for that it is necessary to know what desire is and
to see its function, not at all simply on the plane of the struggle, but on the
plane of love. {Lacan introduces an article by analyst Lucia Tower about} two
gentlemen (bonshommes) – to speak as one spoke after the war, when one spoke
about ladies (des bonnes femmes) in a certain milieu – you will see two
gentlemen with whom, what she recounts, what she recounts is particularly
illustrative and efficacious, they are two love stories.
Why did the thing succeed? In one case when she was touched herself, it is not she who touched the other, it is the other who put her on to the plane of love; and in the other case the other did not get to it and that is not interpretation, because it is written down and she says why. [13]
Why did the thing succeed? In one case when she was touched herself, it is not she who touched the other, it is the other who put her on to the plane of love; and in the other case the other did not get to it and that is not interpretation, because it is written down and she says why. [13]
We hear the pair affirm their affection for each other as Redmond
takes the messenger’s papers, horse and uniform, then we see him ride by blue-clad
soldiers as we are told that he was glad to see these Prussian uniforms,
uniforms that meant that he was out of English occupied territory. Over the
pompous tune of the “Hohenfriedberger Marsch,” the narrator tells us that Barry
had “determined never again to fall from the rank of a gentleman.” With
Redmond’s disguise, I’ll uncover my next quote:
[Anxiety] is masked and veiled at
the same time, it is masked by formulae which are styles perhaps that are too
cautious under their coating, as one might say, their carapace. [14]
On his way to the neutral country of Holland, Redmond meets a
pretty German woman, Lischen, and asks for something to eat. We cut to him sitting
with her as she feeds her young son, and we hear the faint sound of thunder outside.
At his query, she says, in broken English, that her husband has been fighting
in the war since spring. They express sympathy for each other and join hands. “Women
of Ireland” plays as Lischen asks his name, “the name before Fakenham,” and invites
him to stay with her a few days. He agrees, and they kiss. The tune plays on in
the next scene as Barry says, “Auf Wiedersehen, mein schönes Lischen” and she answers,
looking deeply into his eyes, “Auf Wiedersehen, Redmond.” Still speaking
German, they declare their love for each other, and she tells him to look after
himself, hugs him and says, “God be with you.” As they kiss and Redmond leaves,
the narrator comments, “This heart of Lischen's was like many a neighboring
town that had been stormed and occupied many times before Barry came to invest
it.”
{This brief involvement can
incarnate what Lacan calls a “primary truth” about the dialectic of love:}
[I]nsofar as desire intervenes in love and has as I might say an essential
stake in it, desire does not concern the beloved object. [15]
The pompous “Hohenfriedberger Marsch,” returns, and we see
some soldiers marching raggedly dressed young men between them past a herd of
sheep. The narrator tells us that King Frederick had “had to employ scores of recruiters
who would commit any crime, including kidnapping, to keep supplied those
brilliant regiments of his with food for powder.” A group of Prussian officers
approach Redmond, and one of them, Captain Potzdorf, hails and questions him. When
Barry tells him he is on his way to Bremen, Potzdorf tells him he is going the
wrong way. Redmond says that his departure was “so hastily organized that my orderly
forgot to prepare proper maps.” After looking at Redmond’s identity papers,
Potzdorf offers him a meal and bed for the night, bringing him to an imposing fortress.
We see them at a candlelit [16] table, drunken soldiers behind them singing the
“Marsch.” The narrator tells us that Potzdorf asked Redmond questions about
England and that the younger man invented stories, stories which Potzdorf
encouraged “with a skillful combination of questions and flattery.” Finally,
Potzdorf asks to whom Redmond is carrying his message. When Barry says that it
is General Williamson, a man who has been dead for ten months, Potzdorf tells an
underling to arrest our hero, blackmailing Redmond into “volunteering.”
{We’ll use this scene to catch the gist
of Lacan’s discussion of an article regarding a} common … slipping, seduction, and
capture … of the pen by a thesis, [which insists] … on the oriented character
of fear [in contrast to anxiety,] as if fear were already made up completely of
the locating of the object, of the organisation of the response, of the
opposition … between what is Umwelt [environment] and everything which in the
subject has to face up to it. {Lacan opposes to this view various stories,
including one in which a protagonist sees in} a very high storey of the tower
to which he knows … one cannot gain entry in any way, a mysterious inexplicable
flame which nothing allows him to attribute to any effect of reflection … a
story, therefore, which involves fear but no anxiety. [17]
The “Marsch” is now played by fife and drum as Redmond in
his new uniform leads a half-naked soldier through a double-line of Prussians,
each using his sword to add a welt to the victim’s back. The narrator describes the harsh life Barry
and his new comrades have to endure as well as the bad company into which Redmond
falls, company that quickly raises him to an advanced level “in the science of every
kind of misconduct.” We then watch him and his fellows protecting a fort from French
soldiers. Captain Potzdorf enters just before enemy cannon hits his building,
knocking a beam down on him, pinning him to the floor. Barry, hearing his call
for help, moves the weight, puts the officer across his shoulder, and carries
him to safety. We see an assembly with a Colonel presiding. Calling Redmond
forward, he removes two Frederick d'or from an ornate box. Handing the coins to
him, he says, “You're a gallant soldier, and evidently of good stock, but
you're idle and unprincipled. You're a bad influence on the men, and for all
your talent and bravery, I'm sure you'll come to no good.” Redmond answers that
he has done only what other soldiers do and, looking at Potzdorf, adds that he
had “never had a friend or protector before to show that I was worthy of better
things.”
{Barry’s reward for saving Potzdorf
can help us recollect the following quote, upholding the idea that anxiety, the
signal that does not deceive,} is the signal of the real and … of an irreducible
mode under which this real presents itself in experience … This real and its
place, is exactly what with the support of the sign, of the bar there can be
inscribed the operation which, arithmetically, is called division. I already
taught you to situate the process of subjectification in so far as it is at the
locus of the Other, under the primary species of the signifier, that the
subject has to be constituted; at the locus of the Other and upon the given of
this treasury of the signifier already constituted in the Other and just as
essential for any advent of human life as everything that we can conceive of in
the natural Umwelt. … It is with respect to the treasury of the signifier which
already awaits him, constitutes the deviation where he has to situate himself,
that the subject, the subject at this mythical level which does not yet exist,
which only exists starting from the signifier, which is prior to it, which is
constitutive with respect to it, that the subject carries out this first interrogative
operation: in 0, if you wish, how many times S? … $ is equivalent to o over S -
o/S … [18]
The “Marsch,” transformed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, plays
again as we see a carriage ride down a boulevard of stately buildings. The
narrator tells us that the war is over and that Redmond had ingratiated himself
with the captain. Our protagonist enters a large rococo hall where a jovial Potzdorf
introduces him to his uncle – the Minister of Police. Barry’s mentor asks him to
help them discover whether a gentleman in the service of the Austrian Empress
is a spy. Expressing suspicion that the man, the Chevalier de Balibari, is
Irish, they promise to appoint Redmond to the police bureau, allowing him to
move in a better sphere than that in which “fortune has hitherto placed” him. Barry
agrees and, during the carriage ride, Potzdorf gives him his instructions and
backstory – He will play the role of a Hungarian who cannot speak a word of
English. Redmond enters an enormous hall and approaches a man seated at a small
table. From Barry’s point of view we see his round-faced new acquaintance,
wearing an eyepatch and luxurious attire, take Redmond’s papers. The narrator
claims that the Chevalier's “splendor and noble manner” made it impossible for
Redmond to continue his pretense, and we see Barry start to confess, introducing
himself as an Irishman and revealing the deception, finally breaking into sobs.
Chevalier goes to Redmond, holds him in his arms, and pats his back.
{We’ll use Chevalier’s patch to
illustrate the very abstract formula above, to reflect Lacan’s use of the story
of Oedipus who, when he had realized what he had done, had torn out his eyes,
thereby becoming a seer.} [19]
We cut to Redmond reporting to Potzdorf and his uncle about
Chevalier’s religious activity. The narrator tells us that Barry’s new friend
instructed him to tell the truth “as much as his story would possibly bear.” We
then see Chevalier and others playing cards. Redmond, acting as his valet, observes
their hands and signals him. “If, for instance, he wiped the table with a
napkin the enemy was strong in Diamonds. If he adjusted a chair it meant Ace
King.” We hear music from Il Barbiere Di
Siviglia as the narrator introduces Chevalier’s depraved-looking opponent, Prince
of Tübingen, a man with “intimate connections with the Great Frederick.”
{With Redmond’s napkin we can
absorb meaning from Lacan’s description of two paintings by the baroque artist
Zurbaran, who took as his subjects Saints Lucy
* and Agatha,
** one saint whose eyes had been put out, the other, whose breasts had been cut
off – Our lecturer discusses the appeal of these uncanny images, in which the
saints carry these removed parts on a tray, to a masochist:} What does this
position of object mask, if it is not to rejoin himself, to posit himself in
the function of human rag, of this poor scrap separated from the body which is
presented to us here… [20]
After losing a hand, the prince stands, menacingly accusing
Chevalier of cheating him. At his opponent’s protest, he says “If you will have
your money now you must fight for it. If you will be patient, maybe I will pay
you something another time.” When Chevalier points out that accepting his
nonpayment would force him to give up “an honourable and lucrative occupation,”
the prince replies, “I have said all there is to be said. I am at your disposal
for whatever purposes you wish.” The Potzdorfs, fearful of repercussions if the
well-connected prince dies, instruct Redmond to ascertain their suspect’s
intentions. Chevalier, saying that the prince would have no reason to pay if he
backed down, tells his protégé to say he will demand satisfaction, promising that
if he is sent out of the country, Barry will not be left behind. Hearing that the
gambler will soon challenge the prince, Redmond’s employers say that when
Chevalier goes for his morning drive, two officers will meet him and “escort”
him to the frontier.
{This ousting can drive home Lacan’s
point that, in the sadist, anxiety is less hidden, is in fact an “altogether
required condition” of the victim.} This is not a feature which is obvious
along the track of the imaginable, and the privileged character, the moment of
enthusiasm, the character of supreme trophy brandished at the high point of the
chapter [of de Sade’s The 120 Days of
Sodom,] is something which, I believe, is sufficiently indicative of the
following: it is that something is sought which is in a way the reverse
(l’envers) of the subject, which takes on here its signification from this
feature of the glove turned inside-out which underlines the feminine essence of
the victim. [21]
In the next scene, these two officers accost Redmond, who is
dressed as Chevalier, telling him that they have been ordered to bring him to
the frontier, and offering him, if he complies, payment for Tübingen’s debt.
The “Marsch” plays once more as the narrator says, “And so, without papers or
passport, and under the eyes of two Prussian officers, Barry was escorted
across the frontier into Saxony and freedom. The Chevalier himself had
uneventfully crossed the frontier the night before.” The Barber of Seville returns, the narrator telling us that Redmond,
now a professional gamester, resolved from then on to live “the life of a
gentleman.” We cut to a French chateau and learn that the two gamblers were “speedily
in the very best society where play was patronized.” Inside, a foppish young
man, Lord Ludd, surrounded by fellow aristocrats, loses a bet. He asks for and
receives credit for 5,000 Louis d’or and places all on the four. Chevalier
pulls a card from his sleeve, and the client loses, the gentleman excusing
himself to go to dinner with his two beautiful companions. As he signs a
document Redmond hands to him and leaves, the narrator comments that the
partners “always played on credit with any person of honour or noble lineage.
They never pressed for their winnings or declined to receive promissory notes.
But woe to the man who did not pay when the note became due.” We then cut to a
swordfight between Redmond and Ludd as the narrator continues, “It was Barry's
skill with the sword, and readiness to use it that maintained the reputation of
the firm.” As the client swipes at Barry, he finds Redmond’s sword already
pressed against his chest. Dropping his own, he says, “I will pay you today,
sir.”
{We’ll use this painless victory as
a foil for Lacan’s conditioning of the previous quote:} It is the passage to
the outside of what is most hidden that is involved; but let us observe at the
same time that this moment is in a way indicated in the text itself as being
totally impenetrated by the subject, allowing there precisely to be masked here
the trait of his own anxiety [as de Sade goes to] …all sorts of exhausting
trouble … to realise … the jouissance of God. {Lacan then notes that In the “masochistic”
Zurbaran images that he had mentioned,} anxiety appears in separation; but then
– we see it clearly – if they are separable objects, they are not separable by
chance like the leg of a grasshopper, they are separable because they already
have, as I might say, very sufficiently, anatomically a certain stuck on
character, they are hung there. … {After considering naturalistic explanations
for the images’ power, Lacan remarks that what is essential for his students is
for them} to perceive where this questioning leads, to the level of castration.
[22]
The narrator points out the difficulty and danger of
Redmond’s employment, adding that, for all their success, he and his partner
lived a wandering and disconnected life for which they had little to show but
some fine clothes and a few trinkets. We cut from a country road to the exquisitely
manicured grounds of a spa as Schubert’s “Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major” [23]
plays. We learn of Redmond’s decision to marry a lady of “fortune &
condition” as our protagonist turns to look at a woman in the background, Honoria,
“The Countess of Lyndon, Viscountess Bullingdon of England, Baroness Castle
Lyndon of Ireland.” The camera zooms in on her and her companions as we learn
more about them – her husband, Sir Charles Lyndon, “a cripple, wheeled about in
a chair, worn out by gout and a myriad of diseases”; her chaplain, “Mr. Runt …
tutor to her son”; and Lord Bullingdon, a cherubic blonde [24] and melancholy
little boy, “much attached to his mother.” We cut to her and Samuel Runt seated
across from Redmond at the gambling table, the chaplain looking rather
concerned as he notices our hero staring at the beautiful woman. We see her eyes
move from Redmond to the table and back several times before telling her
companion that she is going outside. The bittersweet romantic music continues
as she enters the moonlit terrace, then Redmond slowly approaches her, takes
her hands as she turns toward him, and kisses her. We then cut to a sunlit
scene of the two of them in a punt as our narrator says, “To make a long story
short, six hours after they met Her Ladyship was in love. And once Barry got
into her company he found innumerable occasions to improve his intimacy and was
scarcely out of Her Ladyship's sight.”
{The pole of our couple’s boat can
guide us to Lacan’s caution against an overly literal reading of the word
phallus. He compares the organ to a “sting” - an instrument “for hooking on,”
and notes that joissance can linked in this broad way to the function of the
object. Thus the orgasm, as putting the instrument out of action, might pose a challenge
the idea that joissance is an “essential part of the organism,” a challenge he
reinforces by reminding us that in coitus interruptus, in} the very nature of
the operations being carried out the instrument is revealed in its suddenly
failed function of being an accompaniment to orgasm, in so far as orgasm is
supposed to signify a common satisfaction. {Bringing us back to Freud, he notes
that his predecessor put forth anxiety} in its essential function there
precisely where the accompaniment of the orgasmic build-up with what is called
the exercise of the instrument is precisely disjointed… Subjectivity, if you
wish, is focussed on the collapse of the phallus. This collapse of the phallus,
exists in any case in a normally completed orgasm. [25]
We see Redmond enter a gilt-coated gaming room where Sir
Charles is at cards. To his rival’s caustic remarks about his relations with Honoria,
Barry coolly says that she had been introduced to him “to advise me on a
religious matter, of which she is an expert.” The old man cackles, then starts
to choke, exclaiming, “He wants to step into my shoes!” Aiming more sarcasms at
the couple and infuriated by Redmond’s disingenuous replies, he asks, laughing
defiantly, “What are the odds, gentlemen, that I live to see Mr. Barry hang
yet?” Redmond says simply, “let those laugh that win,” and leaves, while Lyndon
chokes, then wheezes and grabs his chest. He takes a bottle of pills from his
pocket, tries to open it, and convulses, sending the pills flying.
{We’ll let these pills put across Freud’s
idea of} the function of castration as intimately linked to the decayed … object
of caducity {Lacan notes this object’s relation to the partial object, the
partial object itself an invention of the neurotic, and brings up the frequency
of subjects’ testimony that they had one of their first orgasms} at the moment when
it was absolutely expected that something would be torn from [them.] The
collection of the copies: at that moment [they ejaculate] … at the high-point
of anxiety... [26]
One of Sir Charles’s companions leaves for a surgeon while
the others give him one of his pills with some brandy. The narrator reads from The Saint James' Chronicle, his voice
fading as the screen goes black: “Died at Spa in Belgium - Sir Charles Reginald
Lyndon Knight of the Bath, Member of Parliament and for many years His
Majesty's Representative at various European Courts. He has left behind him a
name which is endeared to all his friends." We get a moody Schubert piano
piece, part of “Impromptus, Op. 90,” during intermission, after which we get an
intertitle: “Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters which
Befell Barry Lyndon.”
{The ominous title card can help us
spell out Lacan’s discussion of the linguistics of the Russian phrase for “I am
afraid”:} the negation described as expletive, the one on which I put such a
stress, because I find in it nothing less than the signifying trace in the
sentence of what I call the subject of enunciating, as distinct from the
subject of the enunciation, that in Russian also, there is the affirmative
sentence, I mean the sentence which designates in the affirmative, the object
of my fear, what I fear, it is not that it should not come, it is that it
should come, and I say: that it will come (qu’il ne vienne), where I find
myself confirmed by Russian, in saying that it is not enough to qualify this
expletive ne as discordant, namely to mark the discordance that there is
between my fear: since I am afraid that it will come, I hope that it will not
come. {Commenting that the aforementioned discussion reminds him of the
similarity between the desire of the teacher and the desire of the analyst,
Lacan moves on to his material for the day.} [27]
Moving a year ahead, we get a closeup of the Reverend Runt’s
pale, androgynous face as he reads the “Solemnization of Matrimony,” then a
shot from his point of view of the large church, with the side pew and balcony
filled with people. A beam of sunlight shines through the stained-glass window
on the couple, standing between Chevalier and Redmond’s mother, Lord
Bulllingdon next to her. Runt gravely tells the couple that marriage should not
be used “to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites like brute beasts,” and we
cut to Bullingdon as the chaplain reminds his mother and stepfather of the
“causes for which matrimony was ordained,” the first of which is procreation and
upbringing of children. The camera then focuses on Barry as Runt lists the second
cause – “a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication." The narrator
tells us that Redmond had arrived at the pitch of prosperity, assuming the
style and title of Barry Lyndon, and Vivaldi’s melancholy third movement of “Cello
Concerto E-Minor” plays as we see him and Honoria in a carriage. His wife,
bothered by the smoke from Redmond’s pipe, tries to signal nonverbally, then asks
Redmond to put it out for a while. Blowing smoke in her face, he kisses her,
and the narrator tells us that she was “destined to occupy a place in Barry's
life not very much more important than [his newly acquired] elegant carpets and
pictures.”
{We can use Redmond’s cooling
affection to freeze in our memory the key points Lacan had made, formalizing
them with some tables and mathemes, which lead to the conclusion} that at the heart, … of the
experience of desire, there is which remains when desire is “satisfied”, that
which remains, as one might say, at the end of desire, an end which is always a
false end, an end which is always the result of a mistake. … [This synchronic
remainder] is there to remind us that the object drops from the subject
essentially in his relation to desire. That the object should be in this drop,
is a dimension that must essentially be emphasized to take this further little
step to which I want to lead you today, namely what could, with a little
attention, already have appeared to you the last time in my discourse, when I
tried to show you the shape in which there is incarnated this object o of the
phantasy, support of desire. [28]
After a brief shot of the road being used by a herd of sheep
and two carriages, we see the young lord and Mr. Runt riding in one of them. To
the chaplain’s reproachfully questioning his “glumness,” the boy says that he
doesn’t think his stepfather loves his mother at all – “and it hurts me to see
her make such a fool of herself.” A closeup of a newborn baby’s face zooms out
slowly into a serene “portrait” of him with his mother and Redmond. The
narrator introduces the child as Bryan Patrick Lyndon, then we cut to our hero
in a brothel being fondled by two bare-breasted women while officers in the
background drunkenly sing “The British Grenadiers.” The narrator tells us of
the couple’s separate lives, and we hear Jean-Marie LeClair’s “Le Rondeau de
Paris” as we cut to Redmond’s torpid wife with her two sons. We then see Lady
Lyndon, Mr. Runt and Lord Bullingdon playing this piece and hear the line
quoted at the top of this entry.
{The paternal absence in these last
two scenes can give us room to discuss the distinction between the desire
relation in castration anxiety and that involved in sado-masochism. As to the
former:} At the level of o, it is because the phallus, the phallus in so far
as it is, in copulation, not alone the instrument of desire, but an instrument
functioning in a certain fashion, at a certain animal level, it is for this
reason that it presents itself in the position o with a (-) sign. {Lacan
emphasizes that the foregoing culminates in an} impasse through which the
negative which marks the physiological functioning of copulation in the human
being finds itself promoted to the level of the subject in the shape of an
irreducible lack. [29]
We get a long shot of Redmond’s new home, Castle Hackton,
then one of his wife, Runt and Bullingdon walking the grounds along a stream. As
they come to a clearing they look across the stream and see Redmond kissing
Bryan’s nursemaid. We get a closeup of Bullingdon’s hand taking his mother’s,
then see Barry and Honoria make eye contact before she turns and walks away, the
Vivaldi piece resuming as the narrator deplores that Lady Lyndon must now “add
jealousy to her other complaints and find rivals even among her maids.” We cut
to Honoria playing cards with Runt and two other ladies until late, then to a
closeup of her daylit face staring blankly ahead. As we pull back, we see she
is taking her morning bath flanked by two well-dressed women - one reading from
a book in French while another looks on. The door knocks, Redmond enters and
asks if he can speak to his wife. After they leave, he looks into her eyes,
whispering, “I’m sorry.” She reaches out and takes his hand. He sits beside her
and they embrace.
{With her pardon we can explore the
latter desire, as to which Lacan reiterates the counterintuitive claim that what
the masochist aims at is the anxiety of the Other, then that sadism aims at the
Other’s joissance, but denies that they are simply reversals of each other:} I
am only isolating two terms in each; to illustrate if you wish what I mean, I
would say that, as you might assume after several of my essential schemas, they
are functions with four terms, they are if you wish squared functions …
reciprocal occultation of anxiety in the first case, of the object o in the
other (sadism) … [an o marked with the manifest character of destiny] [30]
We get another shot of Castle Hackton, then watch Redmond being
groomed as some merchants show him a coat “made of the finest velvet, all
cunningly worked with silver thread.” Honoria enters with her sons, telling
Barry that they are going to the village. Redmond kisses her goodbye and tells
Bullingdon to take care of his mother. The boy stiffens and turns his head away
from Redmond’s attempt to kiss him, repeating this reaction after Barry
tells him to give his father a “proper kiss”. When his mother scolds him about how
he is behaving towards his father, Bullingdon answers solemnly, “My father was
Sir Charles Lyndon. I have not forgotten him, if others have.” Honoria slaps
him, saying he has insulted his father, and he retorts, “Madam, you have
insulted my father.” Redmond excuses himself and stepson as having “something
to discuss in private.” We see him in a library laying a cane across the
child’s backside six times, then warning him, “if you force me to, I shall
speedily become used to the practice.” The narrator comments on what he feels
is Redmond’s somewhat understandable blaming of his stepson for all “the evil
consequences which ensued.”
{Barry’s assignment of
responsibility can point us to another term Lacan adds to the list above –
oblativity. Foregrounding this addition, he connects his aforementioned belief
that female analysts understand countertransference better than males with one
of women’s superior understanding of the desire of the analyst as well as one
in the structural misunderstanding between Men and Women. Referring to his
tables and mathemes, he says,} When S reemerges from this access to the Other,
it is the unconscious, namely this, the barred Other, 0, … all that remains to
him is to make of 0 something of which it is less the metaphorical function
which is important than the dropping relationship in which he is going to find
himself with respect to this o. {He continues that} to put myself forward as
desiring … is to put myself forward as lack of o, and that what must be
sustained in our account is the following, the fact is that it is along this
path that I open the door to the jouissance of my being. {After commenting that
being seen as loveable shows that “something has gone wrong with the business”
Lacan claims that} Every [need] for o along the path of this enterprise, let us
say, since I have taken the endocentric
* perspective, of encountering a woman, cannot but unleash the anxiety of the
other, precisely because of the fact that I no longer make her anything but o. [31]
We cut to Lord Bullingdon, now about twenty years old [32],
holding his mother’s hand. We hear Schubert’s "German Dance No 1" as
we hear a man off-screen say, “I shall show you the knot that never was.” The
narrator notes that the young lord’s “hatred for Barry had assumed an intensity
equaled only by his increased devotion to his mother,” and the camera pulls out
to show a large group of people on the Castle grounds watching a magic show put
on for Bryan’s eighth birthday. We cut to the child in a miniature sheep-drawn
carriage led by Redmond and attended by his mother and several children of the
local nobility and gentry. We get a view of Castle Hackton at dusk, then Redmond
and his mother putting Bryan to bed. Our protagonist, sitting on his son’s bed,
tells a story of having received nineteen guineas from Prince Henry for having
severed as many heads in battle. We see his mother smile indulgently, then his
son, holding a stuffed sheep, asking if he can sleep with the candles lit. When
Mrs. Barry says, “big boys don't sleep with the candles lit,” Bryan replies,
“I'm afraid of the dark.” Although Belle says that there is nothing to be
afraid of, her grandson continues to wheedle them, and Redmond gives in.
{We can use the boy’s fear of the
dark to move, at Lacan’s request, in the opposite direction of the previously
covered “heroic” path as he notes,} very curiously once more, confirming the
non-reversibility of their journeys, that you are going to see arising
something which will appear to you perhaps to have a less conquering tone. {He
repeats that w}hat the Other necessarily wants along this path which
condescends to my desire, what he wants even if he does not know at all what he
wants, is nevertheless necessarily my anxiety. … in so far as she wants my
jouissance, namely to enjoy me – this can have no other meaning – that the
woman stirs up my anxiety, and this for the very simple reason inscribed for a
long time in our theory; the fact is that there is no desire realisable on the
path that we are situated on unless it implies castration. [33 (scholarly
citations omitted)]
We see Honoria and Bryan wave cheerfully from a boat as it
passes behind the arch of a bridge, her chaplain and elder son rowing. The camera
pulls back to show Redmond and his Mother watching from the top of the bridge.
Belle expresses satisfaction - “my darling boy has attained a position I knew
was his due, and for which I pinched myself to educate him.” Then we get a
closeup of her as she says that, although Lady Lyndon now considers Barry a
“treasure,” she might later tire of him or die, leaving Redmond penniless and
his son at his stepbrother’s mercy. Telling Barry, for his own and his son’s
welfare, that she won’t rest until he has a title, she urges him to consult
with his friends, concluding that “money well timed and properly applied can
accomplish anything.” Redmond talks to former minister Lord Hallam – “whose
acquaintance he had made, like so many others, at the gaming table.” As they
play cards in a sumptuous room hung with portraits of royals [34] the barrister
refers him to Lord Wendover “of his Majesty’s closet.” We cut to the man in
question saying, “My friends are the best people.” He qualifies the statement
as the camera pulls out to reveal two paintings behind him (one of cherubs with
a lamb, the other a Rembrandt-style painting of a more earthly grouping) – they
are “not the most virtuous or, indeed, the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or
the stupidest, richest or best born, [simply] people about whom there is no
question.” He concludes the interview by remarking that “any gentleman with an
estate and 30 thousand a year should have a peerage.” The “German Dance” resumes
as we get a brief view of a fountain, with a sculpture of Atlas holding up a zodiac-decorated
globe in the center, then we cut to Redmond and his wife and two patrons at
what appears to be a large “picnic” on the manicured lawn, Wendover telling them
an apparently engrossing story in which a stranger asks him, “is Lord Wendover alive
or dead?"
{This question, along with
Redmond’s quest for recognition from his “big other,” can help us through our
next passage. Lacan reminds us of the independence of jouissance and desire,
due to the break that separates the two being the zone where anxiety is
produced. Although not denying that desire in its status [“being” aspect]
concerns the other that is involved in the jouissance, he claims} that in its normative
[“doing” aspect,]
* desire does not concern this other, that the law which constitutes it as
desire does not manage to concern it in its centre, that it only concerns it
eccentrically and to one side, o substitute for O … This lack, this “minus”
sign, with which the phallic function is marked for man, which means that for
him his liaison to the object must pass by this negativing of the phallus by
the castration complex, this necessity which is the status of the (-(p) at the
centre at man’s desire, is something which for the woman is not a necessary
knot. [35]
The narrator tells us that Redmond’s bid for peerage was one
of his most unlucky dealings before we cut to a large banquet, the camera slowly
moving down the table, showing the many glittering guests dining with the
family members, and the numerous servants waiting on them. The narrator then discusses
the sacrifices our protagonist made to bribe and impress those who could help
him attain it, and we see Barry and his two mentors strolling through a gallery.
The owner shows them Alessandro Allori’s "Adoration of The Magi," and
Redmond, saying that he “loves the use of the color blue” in it, asks its
price. The owner demurs that it is one of his best pictures before saying that
if Barry likes it they “can come to some arrangement.” The next scene, in a
grand hall, shows Redmond standing in line with Lord Wendover. King George III,
being introduced to each person in turn, stops to converse with Wendover,
asking after his wife and “excellent boys.” On meeting Redmond, he asks after
his lady, commenting, “We were very fond of Sir Charles Lyndon.” As the King turns to the next man, his attendant
delays him, saying that Barry has raised a company of troops to fight in
America against the rebels. The King replies without hesitation - “Good, that’s
right, Mr. Lyndon. Raise another company and go with them, too,” and moves on. We
get a closeup of a feminine hand signing a bill, then a shot of Honoria,
Redmond, and their bookeeper, Graham, seated at a long table covered with
papers and ledgers. The narrator says essentially that those same qualities that
had helped Barry gain a fortune would lead to his losing it, and we get a
closeup of Lady Lyndon calmly signing more bills, then one of him riffling
through a stack as the narrator continues, “his life now seemed to consist
mostly of drafts of letters to lawyers and money-brokers and endless
correspondence with decorators and cooks.”
{We’ll use Her Ladyship’s hand to
signify Lacan’s claim that women, as “in a way affronted” with the desire of
the Other, see the phallic object as secondary, important for the part it plays
in the Other’s desire. Since women’s relation to the object is thus not
essential, women have the “freedom” to see past it, giving female analysts a
better understanding of counter-transference. He supports this claim through
the Greek myth of Tiresias, ironically referring to the myth’s establishment of
women’s traditional sexual role as the subject supposed to enjoy (i.e., experience
jouissance) and contrasting it with the male role and the “limitation his
relationship to desire imposes on man.”} [36]
We cut to Reverend Runt in the Lyndons’ private schoolroom
as he tells his two students that he will be gone for a few minutes. As he
leaves, we see the eight-year-old sit back and start to fidget [37], asking his
stepbrother the meaning of some words from his book. Intent on his own lesson,
Bullingdon tries to put him off, but, at the boy’s insistence, answers both
questions before politely asking him to let him get on with his work. Bryan,
looking for something on his desk, knocks a slate to the ground, then shuffles loudly
through his drawer, provoking further irritated requests for quiet. Looking at
Bullingdon, the child accuses him of having taken his pencil and tries to grab
it away. Thoroughly annoyed, his older brother shakes him briefly, and Bryan
slaps him, continuing to shout that he has his pencil. Bullingdon grabs and
begins to spank him over his knee. Hearing the boy scream, Redmond enters, and
his son runs to him, grabs him around his legs and cries theatrically. We see a
frightened Bullingdon as his stepfather says, “I told you never to lay a hand
on this child!” We cut to Redmond, in front of a large mirror and clock, again caning
his stepson. We then get a closeup of the youth fighting back tears as he vows that
he “will submit to no further chastisement” from Barry, promising to kill him
if he lays hands on him again. After he asks if Redmond understands, we get a
closeup of his stepfather’s face, rigid with anger, as he whispers, “Get out of
here.” We cut to a chamber orchestra playing a stately Bach Concerto [38]. The
camera pans past Lady Lyndon on harpsichord then Runt on flute to their polite audience*
The back door opens, and Bullingdon enters in stocking feet leading his
stepbrother wearing his shoes. As the young men walk past them, members of the
aristocratic audience turn and smile. Approaching his mother, Bullingdon asks
her if Bryan fits his shoes well, then kneels, holding his brother gently by
the arms, and says, “Dear child, what a pity it is I'm not dead, for your sake.
The Lyndons would then have a worthy representative and enjoy all the benefits
of the illustrious blood of the Barrys of Barryville. Would they not Mr.
Redmond Barry?” After a speech declaiming against the “insolent lrish upstart” whom
his mother had “taken to her bed,” his “brutal and ungentlemanlike behavior”
and “open infidelity” to her and his “shameless robberies and swindling” of
family property, the young lord declares his intent to leave. Honoria flees the
room crying, pulling her younger son with her. Raymond then attacks his stepson
from behind, pounding him ferociously and horrifying the ladies and gentlemen
he has been trying to impress. Hearing the commotion, Lady Lyndon briefly
re-enters the room, screams, and runs back out, yanking a fascinated Bryan away.
As our hero continues to batter the youth [39], the younger aristocrats run
forward, finally subduing him.
{With this beating we can hammer
out Lacan’s meaning as he argues against Hegel’s belief that man makes his hole
in the real (or “negativity”,) then attacks Sartre’s image of an Orphan child sticking
his finger in sand on the beach, an image meant to illustrate “the fundamental
act” (of negation,) an illustration which, although philosophically
objectionable, resonates in the unconscious as} the engulfment into the womb of
mother earth desired by his whole body. {Remarking that Freud had revealed in} one
of the chapters of Hemmung, Symptom und
Angst that the return to the maternal womb is the phantasy of someone who
is impotent, {Lacan says that, contrary to Hegel and Sartre’s belief,} the hole
begins at the bottom of [man’s] belly, at least if we want to remount to the
source of what constitutes for him the status of desire. {Lacan points out
that, on the beach, one cannot make a hole without water rising up in it, then,
comparing ceramic vases to the relationship between man and the object and
desire, contradicts some people’s beliefs about his own theory of the real – He
did not say that it is always full, but} that it does not lack anything, which
is quite different. [40]
We get a closeup of Redmond alone on the balcony, the
mournful “Vivaldi's Cello Concerto in E-Minor” playing as the camera pulls back
until he’s almost lost in the grand architecture and grounds. The sorrowful music
continues as we cut to Lord Wendover entering a tapestry-hung restaurant and
telling the maître-ď that he will dine alone. Redmond watches from a table in
the background while the host seats his former patron by a fireplace (the
architectural piece flanked by burdened-looking caryatids) and removes the
place setting across from Wendover. Barry approaches, invites the elder
gentleman to sit at his table, and receives the reply, “I'm expecting someone
to join me,” and his invitation to a future card-game is similarly dismissed.
We see a lilac-strewn misty landscape, with Castle Hackton barely visible in the
distance, as the narrator tells of the consequences of our protagonist’s
outburst. We then cut to another scene of Redmond, his Lady and Graham, and the
narrator continues, “all the bills came down on him together,” bills that
hampered Honoria’s income almost irretrievably. Kubrick gives us a slow montage
of scenes showing moments of intimacy between Barry and his son, the warmth of the
scenes undermined in each case - some by the camera’s pulling back in a manner
similar to the balcony scene, and others by the narrator’s words, telling us
that “fate had determined that he should leave none of his race behind him.”
{We’ll use this prophecy to divine
meaning in Lacan’s discussion of the work of his student, Piera Aulagnier, contrasting
acting out against passage l’acte. Acknowledging her originality in
distinguishing the cases of acting out as being “transference in act,” he notes
that she is still referring to his table, since she invokes the embarrassment
that her subject found himself in. Lacan relates Ms. Aulangier’s story, that
her} patient had been impeded by the midwife from attending the birth of his
offspring, outside the maternal gates, and it is the dismay of being incapable
of overcoming a new impediment of this order which threatens him, which
precipitates him to throw the police into anxiety by the written claim of the
right of the father to what I would call illiophagia, to specify the notion
which is there to represent the image of the devouring of Saturn: because after
all it is written in this observation that this gentleman presents himself at
the police station to say that there is nothing in the law which impedes him
from eating his baby who had just died.
On the contrary it is obviously the embarrassment into which he is plunged on this occasion by the calmness of the policeman – who did not come down in the last shower – and the shock of the dismay that he wanted to provoke which makes him act impulsively (passer a l’acte), with acts of a kind that have him put in prison. [41]
On the contrary it is obviously the embarrassment into which he is plunged on this occasion by the calmness of the policeman – who did not come down in the last shower – and the shock of the dismay that he wanted to provoke which makes him act impulsively (passer a l’acte), with acts of a kind that have him put in prison. [41]
The “Sarabande” returns as Bryan’s family watches him learn
to play croquet, his father and grandmother applauding, and we hear how Redmond
“denied him nothing” and “indulged in a thousand fond anticipations as to his
future success and figure in the world.” We cut to the boy, riding a pony, asking
his father for a horse instead. When Redmond prevaricates, Brian coaxes him,
saying, “There’s nothing I want in the whole world more than a horse.” Redmond
says that he’ll think about it, and we cut to a man leading a horse around
stable grounds as the owner and our protagonist bargain, Redmond finally saying,
“five guineas should never keep two gentlemen from their drink.” We see the
family eating dinner when Bryan asks about a rumor that he had bought a horse
and is keeping at Doolan's farm. Redmond asks Bryan when his birthday is and,
when his son says, “Next Tuesday,” says that he will have to wait until then to
see. Bryan throws his arms around his father and kisses him, and his mother
makes him promise not to ride it except with his father. Barry adds, “and I
promise you a good flogging if you even go to Doolan's farm to see him before
your birthday.”
{The change of a horse can represent
what Lacan means when he discusses, in illustrating the “feminine” relationship
to jouissance and to desire, an analysand of his, who had told him that it did
not matter to her whether her husband desired her or not, “provided he does not
desire someone else.” In relation to her analyst, she wanted to be as truthful
as possible, in contrast to her other relationships, in which she “writes
novels,” constructing an identity out of “a tissue of lies,” for Lacan, she is
writing the novel when she is not with him. Our lecturer elaborates that she
wants} not so much that I should look at her, it is that my look should come to
substitute for her own: “It is the help of yourself that I summon. My own look
is not enough to capture everything that is to be absorbed from the outside. It
is not a matter of watching me doing something, it is a matter of doing
something for me.” “[A]ny object whatsoever obliges me to evoke you as a
witness, not even to have the approval of what I see. No, simply the look…” [42]
Redmond is shaving in his bedroom when the door knocks. The
Reverend Runt enters, saying that Bryan is not to be found in the castle, and
that one of the cooks saw him cross the yard at daybreak toward Doolan's farm. We
cut to Barry riding, then approaching a group of men carrying Bryan on a stretcher.
After Redmond dismounts and runs to his son, one of the men explains as we see
his recollection in a flashback: “I noticed the lad riding across the field,
sir and having trouble with the horse, which was playing up. Suddenly the
animal plunged and reared, and the poor lad was thrown.” As his father cries,
the boy asks, “You won't whip me, will you?” Barry sends a servant to get a
doctor, and the narrator asks, “what does a doctor avail in a contest with the
grim, invincible enemy?” We cut to the father’s hand holding his son’s, then to
a shot showing the boy in bed, his head swathed in bandages, as the voice adds,
“Such as came could only confirm the hopelessness of the poor child's case.” The
camera holds the shot of Bryan with his parents on either side of his bed (his
anxious mother bareheaded) as he concludes here that the boy remained with his
parents for two days, “and a sad comfort it was to know that he was in no
pain.”
{With the boy’s injury we can dredge
up the story in Genesis of God’s taking a rib from Adam to create his partner.
The} myth of the rib what is involved precisely is this lost object, that woman
for man is an object who is made with that. [43]
Bryan asks if he will go to heaven if he dies, and Redmond
answers, “Of course, my darling, but you’re not going to die.” Telling his
parents to join hands with him, their son has them promise not to quarrel, “but
to love each other, so that we may meet again in heaven, where Bullingdon said
quarrelsome people will never go.” Redmond, sitting in front of one of the
caryatids supporting a fireplace mantel in the background, answers, “We promise.”
Bryan asks Redmond to tell him the story about the fort, and his father begins,
struggling not to cry, and then finally breaks down. We cut to a small white
coffin, and as the camera pulls back we see it is in a sheep-drawn carriage
similar to the one the boy had ridden in on his eighth birthday. His former
tutor, walking alongside, reads aloud, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away,” and we see Redmond, Lady Lyndon, Belle and other mourners walking behind.
We then cut to the room where the brawl had taken place, the religious pictures
on either side of the door lit by candelabras. Barry’s Mother enters with
servants and has them carry a shoeless, passed-out Redmond to bed while the narrator
comments, “His mother was the only person who would remain faithful to him in
his misfortune.” We then see Runt and Honoria in a chapel kneeling side by side,
and get a closeup of her as a tear runs down her pale face and the reverend
reads a prayer asking God’s mercy from making his employer “possess her former
iniquities.” The narrator tells us that she “plunged into devotion with so much
fervor, that you would have imagined her distracted at times.” After an
exterior view of the castle we again get a closeup of female hands holding
bills. We hear a clock ticking as the camera pulls away to show that the hands
belong to Mrs. Barry, then the narrator tells us that the responsibilities of
attending to establishment fell to her.
{We can use the bills to register
Lacan’s claim (referring to how little was required for Eve to tempt Adam) that}
It is the desire of the other which interests her. … [I]t is on the price that
one gives to desire on the market that there depends at every moment the style
and the level of love. [44]
As the camera continues to pull back, we see the library
table with Belle at the head, Graham to her left and an empty chair to her
right. At Mrs. Barry’s request, Runt enters. Sending Graham to have Honoria
sign some papers, her mother-in-law, noting the estate’s financial problems and
that the chaplain’s tutoring services are no longer necessary, says that she
must reluctantly let him go. Acknowledging her predicament, Runt says that he
does not require pay, but that he cannot leave Lady Lyndon in her present state.
We get a closeup of Belle as her face betrays a touch of a sneer. “I'm sorry to
say this to you, but I believe you are largely responsible for her present
state of mind. The sooner you leave, the better she will be.” We cut to the
reverend, somewhat appalled, saying, “Madam, with the greatest respect I take
my instructions only from Her Ladyship.” Her eyes narrowing, Redmond’s mother
asserts her authority, declaring Her Ladyship’s unfitness to give instructions
and her son’s having charged her with managing Castle Hackton’s affairs until
he recovers from his grief, concluding, “My only concern is for Lady Lyndon.” The
chaplain rises, his face a mask of righteous indignation, and exclaims, “Madam,
your only concern is for Her Ladyship's signature. You and your son have almost
succeeded in destroying a fine family fortune. And what little remains for you
depends on keeping Her Ladyship prisoner in her own house!” Belle, through
gritted teeth, says that the matter bears no further discussion and orders him
out, and he complies, slamming the door behind him. We get a shot of Honoria, screaming
and in convulsions, and the narrator tells us that he has taken poison. Seeming
almost dismissive of her plight, he concludes that her act “nevertheless caused
an intervention from a certain quarter which was long overdue,” and we see Graham
enter the room and gasp, “Oh, my God.” We watch as his carriage rides toward Lord
Bullingdon’s castle, and after a brief shot of the building we watch Runt and
Graham seated on either side of a small table while the youth paces in front of
a clock and mirror in the background. Hands clasped behind his back, he speaks
slowly and deliberately, blaming his own cowardice in allowing the Barrys “to
establish a brutal and ignorant tyranny over our lives which has left my mother
a broken woman and to squander and ruin a fine family fortune.”
{Using the consensus on Redmond’s
influence on Honoria, we can summon Lacan’s claim that “feminine”} desire of
the other is the means for … her jouissance to have … an appropriate object. [45]
Bullington continues, “My friends profess sympathy, but
behind my back, I know I am despised, and quite justifiably so.” Stopping in
front of the mirror, between cleric and bookkeeper, he concludes, “However, I
know now what I must do, and what I shall do - whatever be the cost.” We cut to
the lobby of a gentleman’s club, and Bullingdon asks for Redmond. The Host
tells him that he is inside, and the “Sarabande” returns as the young lord
walks by a cleaning woman and a number of unconscious gentlemen into a gaming
room. From his point of view, we see his insensible stepfather in the middle of
what looks like a (barely) moving painting of Hogarthian dissipation. Bullingdon
taps on the floor in front of Barry with his cane to no effect, then uses it to
lift Redmond’s head while the tableau of gamblers watch. After Barry’s eyes
open, we cut to his stepson slowly and disdainfully recite his challenge: “The
last occasion on which we met you wantonly caused me injury and dishonour in
such a manner, and to such an extent no gentleman can willingly suffer without
demanding satisfaction … I have now come to claim that satisfaction.” To the
funereal piece and the sound of doves cooing, we get a closeup of hands loading
a pistol, then see a group of men, Bullingdon and Redmond among them, in an abandoned
church-turned-warehouse. The excruciatingly ritualized process of the duel
begins with the young lord’s second offering Barry the choice of one of Bullingdon’s
pistols. The second, explaining that the youth, as the “offended party,” will
call the coin-toss for who gets to fire first, asks if the parties agree. A
pale Bullingdon calls heads, and after the coin falls we get a closeup of it
showing a roman emperor’s profile surrounded by a Latin inscription. The
youth’s second asks him to take his ground, and we get a long shot of the
interior of the former church as he walks ten paces from Bullingdon’s spot to mark
Redmond’s. After Barry takes his ground we get closeups of the antagonist’s
faces, the stepson’s fearful, the stepfather’s melancholy but firm. At the
second’s request, Redmond prepares to receive Bullingdon’s fire, and the young
lord shakily preparing to shoot, fires into the ground. Wide-eyed, he turns to
an onlooker and says, “Sir Richard, this pistol must be faulty - I must have
another one.” The gentleman solemnly replies that the youth must allow Mr.
Lyndon his turn to fire, and, at Bullingdon’s disbelieving face, the second
concurs. We get a brief view of the youth, his arms having frozen in a shooting
position, looking back at his empty pistol before the second confirms that
Redmond understands the rules of firing and asks Bullingdon if he is ready. The
young lord struggles to maintain composure as he hears his second telling
Redmond to cock his pistol, but finally, regurgitating, runs to a wall. We get
a shot of the observers, either looking down or sideways at each other, then a
closeup of Redmond’s subtly melancholic expression as they wait for Bullingdon
to return to his position. The second asks if the young lord is ready and, when
Bullingdon nods, tells his stepfather to prepare to fire.
{This ritual can symbolize our next
passage, that in “masculinity”} there is always some imposture present. {Lacan
then contrasts this orientation with “feminity,” in which} it is the
masquerade; but it is something quite different {Saying he will finally tell us
the story from the Lucia Tower article about her two analysands/bonshommes, our
lecturer says that he can find no better preamble than the image of Don Juan, a
“feminine” fantasy of “a man to whom nothing is lacking.” Our lecturer then
gets to the Tower story, in which the wives of both analysands “were frustrated
for lack of sufficient uninhibited masculine assertiveness from their husbands,”
in other words}, men who don’t pretend enough. {Lacan discusses various details
of both cases and Ms. Tower’s analysis, noting that for a considerable time, no
progress was made.} [46]
As the second is counting, Redmond fires into the ground,
sending the startled doves behind him flying. The second consults with Sir Richard,
then asks Bullingdon if he is satisfied, and the young lord’s fearful face
turns bitter as he shakes his head, saying, “I have not received satisfaction.”
We see the light coming through the cross-shaped windows before the second
gives the youth another pistol and asks Redmond if he is ready. Looking calmly
into the panting boy’s eyes, the man says, “yes.” The young lord fires before
the count of three, having an almost orgasmic reaction when he finds he has hit
Redmond in the leg and continuing to hold his pistol outward, rubbing it as the
observers run to his fallen stepfather. We cut to the outside of a Tudor-style
inn, then to an interior of a surgeon examining the bloody leg. He regretfully
tells our protagonist that, to save his life, he has to amputate, and Redmond
turns his head away, holding back tears. We see a carriage in the countryside
and cut to its interior, where Bullingdon is riding with his bookkeeper and
chaplain. The young lord instructs Graham to tell Mrs. Barry what has happened
– that her son has been wounded. “She will naturally want to go to him. See
that she is out of the house and on her way to London as soon as possible.” We
cut to Runt, faintly smiling as his employer continues “that in no event is she
to be allowed the opportunity to see my mother or create any disturbance at the
house…”
{With these separations we can
return to Tower’s story, where we find that a dream allowed her to make
progress, a dream in which one of her patients’ wives shows a cooperative disposition
toward the therapy. Then, after experiencing difficulties as her analysand’s
now genuine transference brought forth an uncomfortable countertransference in
her, she went on vacation during one of the annual breaks and noticed that} this
business is of absolutely no interest to her, namely that she is really
incarnating in the freest and most airy mythical position Don Juan as he leaves
the room where he has committed his usual idiocies… [This realization allowing
her to become effective]… in the measure that a relationship which for once is
only a relationship to a desire as such…[her relationship with her client]
never when all is said and done anything but a relationship with which she can
keep her distance. [47]
We cut to a carriage riding in the twilight, then to Belle holding
a hand of cards. The camera pulls out to reveal Redmond, with a bandaged stump,
playing with her. Hearing a knock, she answers the door to an out-of-breath Graham.
They exchange pleasantries, Mrs. Barry having him sit down and asking if he
wants some tea, and the group inquire after each others’ health and comfort
before the bookkeeper asks, stammering a bit, if they can get down to “the
matter at hand.” We watch him as, his eyes mostly on the ground and pausing
uncomfortably several times, he conveys Lord Bullingdon’s message, offering Redmond
an annuity of 500 guineas a year for life, “specifically on the condition of
your [looking sideways at Barry] leaving England and to be stopped the instant
of your return.” We cut to Barry as Graham brings up his enormous,
long-outstanding debts and the loss of his powerful friends and delivers the
young lord’s veiled threat of jail, as his stepfather “could not hope to raise
a shilling.” The “Piano Trio” (Lady Lyndon’s “theme”) plays, and the narrator,
describing Redmond as “utterly baffled and beaten” says that he returned to
Ireland with his mother to complete his recovery.
{Redmond’s mother can aid our
understanding as Lacan credits Tower for helping him formulate the idea of the}
“facilities of the feminine position” – this term facility (facilite) having an
ambiguous import – as regards its relationship to desire. {He quotes her that} the
patient’s own desire is much less deprived of a hold on his analyst than he
believed, that effectively it is not ruled out that up to a certain point he
can make something of this woman who is his analyst, bend her … to his desire. {Telling us that the patient’s
response} is not the search for her own desire, it is the search for o, for the
object, for the true object, for what is involved in desire which is not the
Other, 0, which is this remainder, this o, the true object. {The distancing
effect of her vacation allows her to see what she already knows:} that he can
always search, that there has never been any question of him finding.
This is precisely what is involved: for him to realise that there is nothing to find. There is nothing to be found there, because that which for the man, for male desire in this case, is the object of the search only concerns, as I might say, himself. What he searches for, is the (-0) … a sadistic search: to make sprout up what ought to be at the place, in the partner, at the supposed place of the lack…. what he has to give up as lost. I am saying that because in the text she articulates extremely well that what they did together, is this work of mourning. [48]
This is precisely what is involved: for him to realise that there is nothing to find. There is nothing to be found there, because that which for the man, for male desire in this case, is the object of the search only concerns, as I might say, himself. What he searches for, is the (-0) … a sadistic search: to make sprout up what ought to be at the place, in the partner, at the supposed place of the lack…. what he has to give up as lost. I am saying that because in the text she articulates extremely well that what they did together, is this work of mourning. [48]
As Redmond, on crutches, and Belle exit the inn and approach
the carriage, the narrator adds that he lacks the means to follow Redmond’s
story any further, but that his subject “appears to have resumed his former
profession of a gambler without his former success.” The camera freezes on Redmond
entering the carriage and handing his crutches to an attendant behind him as
the narrator tells us that he never saw Lady Lyndon again. We get a final shot
of Castle Hackton, then cut to the enormous room where Redmond had read to his
little boy. The reverend stands on one side and the bookkeeper sits at the other
of a table that seems too small for the group working there. In the middle are
Honoria and Bullingdon, the son passing checks to his mother to sign. We see him
looking sideways apprehensively at her as he passes one of them to her, and we
see her looking down at it before getting a closeup of the document, dated 1789
- a check for Redmond’s 500 Guineas. After a brief pause, Lady Lyndon signs it.
The “Trio,” nearing the end, trills, and we get a closeup of Honoria lifting
her head and gazing into space. We cut to Bullingdon as he turns his head
towards hers, then cut back and forth once more as the young lord passes her
another check. We watch her reach for the inkwell before cutting to the distant
view of the group as they carry on their business. The screen goes black and we
read the epilogue: “It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid
personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor:
They are all equal now.” The Sarabande returns as the credits play.
{With the funereal piece, I’ll
bring this entry to a close. Lacan reminds us that the level that Tower’s
patient has reached, where he is allowed enjoyment, is the level of the law. He
adds that, as a result of the work of mourning:} What was there before, was
properly speaking transgression (la faute): he carried all the burden, all the
weight of his (-^>). He was – remember the use that I made at one time of
the passage of St Paul – he was “a sinner beyond all measure.” The professor
then turns to the constructed differences between the “masculine” object of
desire - “at the beginning for the man it is what he is not, it is where he
fails,” - and the “feminine”, which we will approach in our next entry.} [49]
This post being about transference, I thought an article
about the TPP
[50] would be appropriate here, an agreement for which congress is transferring
their power over financial transactions to the administrative branch.
1. Stanley Kubrick. Barry
Lyndon (1975.) in: Script-o-Rama. Based on the novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. (1844.)
2. Jacques Lacan. “Anxiety.”
from The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book
X. (1962-63.) pp. 77 – 205 in:
springhero.wordpress.com. (My source seems to mis-number the pages, skipping
from page 109 to “200,” but, since we began with this source, I think it would
be easier for everyone to keep my references consistent with it than to change
to another one.)
3. For an analysis of the use of music in the film, see
“Narrative and Discourse in Kubrick's Modern Tragedy” by Michael Klein in Kubrick’s Korner in: . in:
kubrickfilms.tripod.com. (Undated.)
4. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [77-78 (For greater clarity [or just
ease of reading,] I present some of these quotes in a different order than in
the Seminar – in this case, the “further” is from page 77.)]
5. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [78]
* Margaret I. Little. Women Psychoanalysts in Great Britain. in: psychoanalytikerinnen.de. (© 2007-2015 Brigitte Nölleke.)
* Margaret I. Little. Women Psychoanalysts in Great Britain. in: psychoanalytikerinnen.de. (© 2007-2015 Brigitte Nölleke.)
6. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [79-80]
7. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [80-81]
8. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [82-84]
9. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [85]
10. See Mark Crispin Miller’s essay, “Barry Lyndon
Reconsidered”
for an interesting connection regarding Feeny and his son and a relationship Barry
forms later in the film) in: visual-memory.co.uk. (1976.)
11. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [86]
* Aporia. in:
Wikipedia. (February 9, 2015.)
12. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [86]
13. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [87]
14. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [88]
15. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [87-88]
16. Now might be a good time to point out Kubrick’s
groundbreaking use of NASA cameras to get the realistic effect of candlelight
for this movie. See Stanley Kubrick.
in: Wikipedia. (February 25, 2015.)
17. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [88-89]
18. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [90]
19. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [91]
20. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [92]
* St. Lucy. (c.
1625-30.) in: wikiart.org. (Undated.)
** St. Agatha (1630-33) in: Web Gallery of Art. (Undated.)
** St. Agatha (1630-33) in: Web Gallery of Art. (Undated.)
21. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [92-93]
22. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [93-94]
23. Kubrick uses a number of Schubert works in this movie from
this point on - an anachronism, since they were composed in the nineteenth
century https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0810885646
Christine Lee Gengaroin. Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films. (2013.) in: Google Books. (accessed February 26, 2015.)
Christine Lee Gengaroin. Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films. (2013.) in: Google Books. (accessed February 26, 2015.)
24. Bullingdon is here played by a boy of about twelve years
old, but who looks somewhat younger.
25. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [95]
26. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [96]
27. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [96-97]
28. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [98-99]
29. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [100]
30. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [101]
31. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [102-103]
* Endocentric and
exocentric. in: Wikipedia (May 22, 2013.)
32. Bullingdon is now played by a redhead several years
older than his character - and looks it
33. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [103]
34. One of the royal portraits conspicuously adorning the
wall is of the notoriously fickle Henry VIII.
35. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [104]
* Normative ethics. in: Wikipedia. (February 25, 2015.)
* Normative ethics. in: Wikipedia. (February 25, 2015.)
36. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [105]
37. In a touch of perhaps unintentional symbolism, we see a
map of Africa behind Bryan and one of Europe behind Bullingdon. When Redmond
enters the room Bullingdon is standing in front of one of the New World.
38. Concerto for Two Harpsichords and Orchestra -
* Belle seems to be the only one truly enjoying herself.
* Belle seems to be the only one truly enjoying herself.
39. Kubrick uses a shaky hand-held camera here, as he had in
Redmond’s fight with Toole, perhaps to contrast the onlookers’ reactions.
40. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [105-106]
41. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [107]
42. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [107-108]
43-45. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [109]
46. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [109-“201” {See? :-}]
47. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [202]
48. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [203-204]
49. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [204-205]
50.
Dave Johnson. “Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership Promises Echo Clinton’s On
NAFTA.” (Published February 25, 2015 by Campaign for America's Future Blog.) in:
CommonDreams. (February 25, 2015.)
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