Misdirected VII

 “…It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard core commie works.”

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper explaining his theory about fluoridation in Dr. Strangelove (1964). [1]

The famous character quoted above makes a good spokesman for the topic of the next part of our Anxiety study – obsession.

Before the black and white film starts, we get a disclaimer that the U.S. Air Force has safeguards to prevent the events in our movie from taking place, then the camera stealthily advances, over a puffy cloudscape, toward some protruding mountaintops. A narrator tells us of rumors about an ultimate weapon being developed in the “perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the arctic peaks of the Zokov islands,” and dulcet strains of “Try a Little Tenderness” play as we see one plane fueling another mid-air, then gently letting it go.

{These planes can help us engage in our new class, where Lacan promises to discuss the relationship of object o to the desire of the subject, noting that he has been led to treat desire} as by an articulation in which the function appears in a sort of gap, of residue of the signifying function as such; but I also did it piece by piece, this is the path that I will take today. {He further reminds us that} o is not the object, but the cause of desire, {and he discusses the “veiled fashion” in this causes’ function. He then brings up the symptoms of obsessionals:  I}t is the symptom which takes in its most exemplary form, implies as I might say, that not following the line awakens anxiety…[Without constituting the symptom,] there is no means of getting out of it and not simply because there is no way of speaking about it, but because there is no way of catching it by the ear. What is this ear in question? It is this something of the symptom that we can say is unassimilated by the subject. [2]

We get a night scene of Burpleson Air Force Base, then cut to the interior, where we see Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an English exchange officer, looking at some computer printouts. He interrupts his examination to answer a call from the Base commander quoted above. The General asks if Mandrake recognizes his voice, which the Captain acknowledges, adding, “Why do you ask?” Answering, “You don't think I'd ask if you recognized my voice unless it was pretty damned important do you, Mandrake,” Ripper tells his executive officer to try to “stay on the ball.” Saying, “It looks like we’re in a shooting war,” he orders Mandrake to put the base on condition red, transmit “Plan R” to the wing, and seal the Base tight. Lastly (and “most importantly,”) he commands the Group Captain to impound all radios and report to him. We hear the sirens begin and see Ripper closing the blinds in his office before we cut to an exterior shot of airborne B-52’s.

{We’ll use this scene to warn us of the need to articulate} the relationship between the function of o, the cause of desire, and the mental dimension of cause as such{, a topic Lacan had covered in a journal article, “Kant with Sade.” To mark this dimension, he notes the need to examine} the whole analysis of the transference, a phenomenon which long predates Freud,} for the transference neurosis is there in each and every one, even in Alcibiades: it is Agathon that he loves. But in a being as free as Alcibiades, the transference is obvious. Even though this love is what is called a real love, what we too often call a lateral transference, this is where the transference is. [3]

The narrator tells us of the large force of bombers that America’s Strategic Air Command maintains, each of which can deliver a nuclear bombload of 50 megatons, and each two hours from its target inside Russia. We then cut to the interior of one of these planes, in which we see its pilot, Major “King” Kong, and his men engaged in various activities, such as reading paperbacks, playing solitaire, and looking at Playboy magazine. We hear an alarm sound and see codes change on a display panel, and communications officer Lieutenant Goldberg (“Goldie”) informs the pilot of the message. Kong at first tells Goldie to stop “horsing around,” then to make sure that he has the right code for the day, before coming down to check for himself. Finally, opening a safe and putting on some earphones, he tells Goldie to get confirmation from base, saying, “Ripper wouldn't be giving us plan R unless them Russkies had already clobbered Washington and alot of other towns with a sneak attack.” On getting confirmation, the major also removes a cowboy hat from the safe, and we hear the music to “Battle Hymn of the Republic” play before he returns to the cockpit. When he gets there he delivers a speech - the “Hymn” playing throughout [4], during which we get close-ups of his men’s worried faces - a speech in which he professes to empathize with how they must feel about nuclear combat, but telling them they can’t let the folks back home down and that they will all likely get “some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with … regardless of your race, color or your creed.” We get an outside shot of their plane before cutting to a large hotel room, two of its walls covered with mirrors. We hear a phone ring, and watch a beautiful woman, lying on the bed in a bikini and black heels, turn and raise up on one elbow – It is the centerfold, "Miss Foreign Affairs," from the Playboy Kong had been perusing. The woman calls to “Buck,” off-screen, asking if she should get it and, at his reply, turns off her sunlamp and answers. In a professional tone, she says that General Turgidson is unavailable at the moment and identifies herself as his secretary, Miss Scott. At the caller’s reply, her demeanor softens as she tells “Freddie” that she and the General were catching up on paperwork. She says that Turgidson is currently “tied up,” but, at the caller’s insistence, shouts to her employer, “a General Puntridge calling.” She then mediates a dialogue between the two generals, softening her employer’s replies for Freddie, until Buck, in boxer shorts and an open Hawaiian shirt, emerges from the “powder room.” Taking the phone, he says, “What's it look like? Yeah. Waa... are you sure it's plan R? Huh. What's cookin' on the threat board? Nothin? Nothin at all? I don't like the look of this, Fred. Alright, I tell you what you better do, old buddy [slapping his belly] … You better give Elmo and Charlie a blast, and bump everything up to condition red and stand by the blower; I'll get back to you.” Hanging up, he tells Miss Scott that he “might mosey over to the War Room for a few minutes.” She lies back down seductively, saying that she’s not tired either, and he conveys sympathy. Saying that he knows “how it is,” and crawling over the extra bed toward her, he advises her to just start her “countdown, and old Bucky’ll be back here before you can say, [here, he has reached her, and she has her arms over his shoulders] ‘Blast Off!’”

{With the coincidences of Scott’s published image and business/intimate acquaintances, we can reflect on Lacan’s proposal to transfer the category of the cause from what Kant called the transcendental aesthetic} to that which - if you are willing to agree to it - I would call my "transcendental ethics." {He reminds us of his discussion of the scopic field of desire, adding} that space is not at all an a priori category of sensible intuition … that space is not a feature of our subjective constitution beyond which the thing in itself would find, as one might say, a free field, namely that space forms part of the real … [and that the] topological dimension, in the sense that its symbolic handling transcends space, evoked for many, not only for some, so many shapes which are presentified for us by the schemas of the development of the embryo… {He contrasts Kant’s idea of “good shape” with the Freudian idea of the sublime “uncanny,”} something which is everywhere reproduced, and regarding which, in an impressionistic notation, I would say that it is tangible in a sort of torsion to which the organisation of life seems to be obligated in order to lodge itself in real space. [5]

We get different views of the men at the base listening to Ripper’s voice tell them, “Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own,” before giving them “three simple rules” over the intercom. We see men who have collected a truckload of radios as he delivers the first: “…trust no one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally.” We cut to Ripper himself delivering the second: “…anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be fired upon.” We then see Mandrake shutting computers and lights off as we hear the third: “…if in doubt, shoot first, and ask questions afterwards.” As Ripper tells the men that it has been a privilege to command them, we watch his executive officer opening a printer to turn it off and finding a transistor radio beneath. Switching it on and hearing soft jazz play, he rushes toward Ripper’s office. We cut first to an exterior shot of the B-52, then to the interior, where one of Kong’s men opens a safe [6]. In it are various envelopes, each designated by one letter and carrying the words, “Top Secret.” He selects Profile “R” and brings it to Kong, who first has Goldie set and lock code prefix, “OPE,” then identifies primary and secondary targets. We cut back to Mandrake, walking briskly into Ripper’s office, carrying the radio. Playing the music, he says cheerfully that the Pentagon must be testing them, adding that he thinks “it’s taking it a bit too far; our fellows will be inside Russian radar cover in about twenty minutes.” Ripper responds gruffly and walks to the door, saying, “…the officer exchange program does not give you any special prerogatives to question my orders.” Mandrake, not noticing his commanding officer locking up, replies, “I thought you'd be rather pleased to hear the news. I mean after all, well let's face it we... we don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, do we?” After Ripper returns to his desk, telling Mandrake to sit down and turn the radio off, the Group Captain checks his watch, asking about the planes – “Surely you must issue the recall code immediately.” His smile fading as Ripper tells him that his orders stand, Mandrake starts to fidget, assuring the Base commander that the music would not be playing if a Russian attack was in progress. To Ripper’s question, “What if that’s true?” his executive officer answers, “Well I'm afraid I'm still not with you, sir. Because, I mean, if a Russian attack was not in progress then your use of plan R, in fact your orders to the entire wing...[looking down and dropping his voice] oh. Well I would say, sir, that there was something dreadfully wrong somewhere.” When Ripper tells him, “…please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rain water, and help yourself to whatever you'd like,” Mandrake salutes him, saying, “General Ripper, sir, as an officer in Her Majesty's Air Force, it is my clear duty, under the present circumstances, to issue the recall code, upon my own authority, and bring back the wing. If you'll excuse me sir.” Trying the door, he turns – “I'm afraid sir, I must ask you for the key and the recall code. Have you got them handy sir?” Ripper informs his executive officer that there is nothing anyone can do (reinforcing his message by uncovering a pistol on his desk,) and we get a low closeup of his face as he puffs his large cigar and informs Mandrake that “war is too important to be left to politicians,” declaring his commitment to stop “the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

{This may be a good time to enter our next passage, where Lacan, connecting the aforementioned topology and points of torsion to the points of rupture he has been discussing throughout the seminar, discusses the role of desire in the paradox of history:} The less the cause is graspable, the more everything appears caused, and up to the final term, the one that has been called the meaning of history.

One can say nothing other than that "everything is caused", except for the fact that everything that happens there presides and always begins from a "sufficiently caused", in the name of which there is reproduced in history a beginning, an un-caused which I would not dare to call absolute, but which was certainly unexpected and which classically leaves lots of work to be done nachträglich by the … professional interpreters of the meaning of history.

{Reminding us that o is} the remainder of the constitution of the subject at the locus of the Other in so far as it has to constitute itself as a speaking subject, a barred subject, ${, he returns to the symptom:} entirely implicatable in this process of the constitution of the subject…,[it] is a legitimate part of this becoming. {He names a question as the cause implicated in the question of the symptom}, but one of which the symptom is not the effect. It is the result of it. The effect is the desire … an effect which has nothing effected about it. {Saying that every phenomenology rediscovers that the} cause is thus constituted as supposing the effects of the fact that primordially the effect is lacking there … The gap between cause and effect, in the measure that it is filled - this indeed is what is called in a certain perspective the progress of science - makes the function of the cause vanish… {Lacan then returns to Piaget’s research, which, in overlooking this function, he calls naive.} [7 (scholarly citations removed)]

We get one overhead view of the Pentagon, then another of the War Room inside, where the President, Merkin Muffley, and a large group of high ranking officials [8] has convened. A gum-chewing General Turgidson tells him that Ripper has ordered his planes to attack their targets inside Russia, and shows a large electronic graphic of these targets on “the Big Board.” To Muffley’s protest that the President is the only one authorized to issue such an order, Turgidson reminds him of Plan R, a plan in which a lower echelon commander may order nuclear retaliation after a sneak attack if the normal chain of command is disrupted (a plan meant as a safeguard, although Turgidson admits “the human element seems to have failed us here.”) To Muffley’s further questioning, Turgidson reveals that they cannot recall the planes without a three letter code group prefix, a prefix of which there are seventeen thousand possible permutations. Turgidson adds that it would require two and a half days to transmit them all. The President, on being reminded that the planes would penetrate Russian radar cover in about eighteen minutes, asks Turgidson if he is in contact with Ripper, and his general replies that the commander has sealed off the base and cut off all communications. Muffley, trying to hide his growing agitation, asks where Turgidson got his information, and the General reads a transcript of Ripper’s last communication with Strategic Air Command headquarters. The call, confirming that the planes are on their way, advises “for the sake of our country and our way of life” that the rest of the airforce also mobilize. After Turgidson reads the end of the message – “God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural… [pulling the corners of his mouth down] fluids” - he comments, “We're still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, Sir.”

{Urging his students to read Piaget’s book, The Language and Thought of the Child, Lacan returns to the idea of “egocentric language,” a concept Piaget developed from his belief that children at this stage do not understand each other. Our professor identifies where he disagrees with Piaget, who} clings to a position of the question which is precisely the one which veils the phenomenon which, as a matter of fact, is very clearly displayed, and the essential of it is essentially the fact that it is a different thing to say that the word has essentially for effect to communicate, while the effect of the word, the effect of the signifier is to give rise in the subject to the dimension of the signified essentially. [9 (scholarly citations removed)]

The President answers, “There's nothing to figure out General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic,” but Turgidson expresses reluctance to make such a judgement. Muffley then scolds him for, when the plan was being developed, having denied the possibility of the kind of scenario that they are now facing. After his general reproaches him for condemning the whole program “because of a single slip up,” and telling him that getting Ripper on the line is impossible, the President turns away from Turgidson, asking an army general, Faceman, if there are any units near Burpleson. Meanwhile, Turgidson’s line rings, and he answers, then whispers, “I told you never to call me here…” The General then assures his caller that he deeply respects her as a human being, tells her to say her prayers and go back to sleep, and hangs up. Muffley tells Faceman to have his men enter Burpleson and put Ripper on the phone to him, and Turgidson asks if he can make “one or two points.” He stretches the number to six as he makes the argument to do as Ripper had suggested. He dismisses the President’s objections that this would be mass murder, first with the words, “I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed,” then by admonishing the President to be more concerned with the American people than with his image in the history books. Muffley’s aide, Mr. Staines, then says that the Russian ambassador is upstairs, and Turgidson protests that the “enemy’s” representative would be able to see everything, including (gesturing theatrically toward it,) “the Big Board.”

{These scenes can point us to Lacan’s discussion of Piaget’s illustration of his belief that children cannot communicate with each other. In his study, the developmental psychologist explains the function of a tap to a small child in seven points, and the child faithfully repeats the explanation back to him. However, when the child is told to convey what he has learned to another child, the message is drastically transformed. Lacan brings up the flaws in Piaget’s narrative: “the explanation of the tap is not well done, if what is involved is the tap as cause, by saying that it operates sometimes on and sometimes off. A tap is made to be turned off,” and discusses how a child would understand the process of a tap in accordance to how the child could use it. Lacan remarks that the study actually illustrates “that the explainer explains badly, the one to whom he is explaining understands much better than the explainer, by his inadequate explanations, bears witness to having understood.” [10 (scholarly citations removed)]

We cut to the airborne B-52, as Kong reviews the contents of the survival kits. These contents include “one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills,” money in both rubles and gold, an issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, and three pairs of nylon stockings. Kong comments, “Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.” We return to the War Room to see the ambassador, DeSadeski, putting his glass on and looking over the contents of the buffet table, then ordering Havana cigars and poached eggs. When Staines tells Muffley that he is unable to reach Premier Kissov, DeSadeski gives him another number to try, commenting that, although a “man of the people,” the Premier is “also a man.” Turgidson and DeSadeski spat over some remarks the General makes about Kissov’s “degeneracy,” and Muffley tries to get the two to act with more dignity. Learning that Staines is trying the number, the President walks away, but turns back on hearing a scuffle, and sees Turgidson pulling DeSadeski backwards, away from the Big Board. The General, holding up a camouflaged camera, accuses the ambassador of trying to take pictures of the War Room. DeSadeski scoffs, “This clumsy fool tried to plant that ridiculous camera on me,” and Muffley rebukes both men - “Gentlemen, this is outrageous. I have never heard of such behavior in the War Room before.”

{We can use this scrap to hash out Lacan’s further thoughts on Piaget’s illustration, noting that the third-party child’s lay in} the effect of the tap as something which can be turned off and the result, namely that thanks to a tap one can fill a basin without it overflowing, the emergence as such of the dimension of the tap as cause. {Our professor comments:} If man had a tendency to forget that in the presence of water he is a communicating vessel, there is in the childhood of most the washtub to remind him that effectively, what happens in a child of the age of those that Piaget designates for us, in the presence of a tap, is this irresistible type of acting-out which consists in doing something which runs the greatest risk of upsetting it, and thus the tap finds itself once again in the place of the cause, namely at the level also of the phallic dimension, as that which necessarily introduces the fact that the little tap is something which can have a relationship with the plumber, that one can unscrew, dismantle, replace… etc: it is (-^). [11 (scholarly citations removed)]

We get a look through a Burpleson soldier’s binoculars as Faceman’s troops approach, then see the watcher and two companions discuss how authentically American the equipment looks. When one asks where “those commies” could have gotten it, another answers, “Probably bought them from the army as war surplus.” They open fire before we cut to Ripper’s office, where the General sits, staring blankly out the window while Mandrake fidgets with a piece of foil-wrapped gum and looks at his watch. We return to the War Room, where Muffley’s aids have reached Kissov. The President asks DeSadeski to tell his premier where he is and that he will enter the conversation if Muffley says anything untrue, but not to say anything more. When the ambassador seems unresponsive, the President says, “Alexiy, please, …I beg you,” and DeSadeski replies, “I don’t have a phone.” After getting one, the ambassador speaks briefly, then covers the speaker, telling Muffley, “I've done as you asked. Be careful Mr. President. I think he's drunk.”

{Passing from the first stage of the definition of the o, the nipple as the “need in the other,” [*] to the second, the anal object as} the demand in the Other, the educative demand par excellence, {Lacan continues:} The whole dialectic of what I have taught you to recognise in the function of ( – ɸ) a function unique compared to all the other functions of o in so far as it is defined by a lack, by the lack of an object, this lack manifests itself as such in this effectively central relationship – and this is what justifies the whole axing of analysis on sexuality – that we will call here jouissance in the Other. [12]

After asking the Premier to turn the music down a little, the President gives him the bad news. He adds that he wants to give the Soviet air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes, and finds that he can get the number for The People's Central Air Defense Headquarters through Omsk Information. Replying to Dimitri, “I’m sorry too,” Muffley quarrels briefly with the Premier about who is sorrier, then, at Kissov’s request, gives the phone back to DeSadeski. Hearing the alarm in the ambassador’s voice, Muffley asks, after DeSadeski hangs up, what Kissov had said. The ambassador replies, “The doomsday machine … A device which will destroy all human and animal life on earth.” We cut from Turgidson’s skeptical face to Mandrake, still fidgeting in Ripper’s office, as the commander sits beside him, putting a comforting arm around his shoulder. After asking him if he has ever seen a "commie" drink a glass of water, Ripper discusses the importance of the liquid, noting that communists never drink the life-sustaining fluid. When he asks if Mandrake had wondered why he never drinks it unless it is distilled or rain water, his executive officer, sweating and quietly going to pieces, says that it had occurred to him. The General then asks if Mandrake knows what fluoridation is, finally denouncing the process as “the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.” Seeing bullets come through the window, Ripper compliments the “nice shooting,” and pulls a gun out of his golf bag. He then sets it on his desk, ordering the Group Captain, “Come help me with this belt.”

{On this command we can follow Lacan as he moves to the fifth stage, telling us} that there ought to emerge in a pure form -I am saying that this is only a provisional formulation – something which is of course present at all the stages, namely the desire in the Other. {He uses the example of the obsessional, noting that in his symptoms, specifically} where the dimension of the cause is glimpsed as anxiety-provoking … The solution is known: to cover the desire of the Other, the obsessional has one way: it is to have recourse to his demand. [13]

Mandrake first says that he hasn’t had much experience with “those … sort of machines,” then that the “string” in his leg is gone - “I've got a gammy leg. Oh dear. Gone. Shot off.” However, at his general’s insistence, he finally relents. We cut to the War Room, DeSadeski exclaiming that, after the Doomsday machine is detonated, “it will produce enough lethal radioactive fallout so that within ten months, the surface of the earth will be as dead as the moon!” To Turgidson’s skepticism, the ambassador explains that the H-bombs that are set to explode are coated with “Cobalt thorium G,” which has a radioactive half-life of ninety-three years, and the explosions will release a lethal cloud of radioactivity that will encircle the earth for that period. At Muffley’s questioning, DeSadeski tells him that, not only is the doomsday device triggered automatically, but is set to explode if any attempt is ever made to un-trigger it. Turgidson, growing impatient with what he sees as a “commie trick,” steps back and trips, but summersaults back to his feet and points at the Big Board, yelling, “They're getting ready to clobber us!” The President, ignoring the display, asks why the Soviets should build such a thing, and the ambassador replies, “There are those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race.” Describing his people’s desire for more luxuries, he notes how much less a doomsday scheme costs than the Soviets’ other defense systems. “But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.” The President, objecting that he had not authorized this work, calls out to Dr. Strangelove, director of weapons research and development, and the wheelchair-bound doctor approaches. In a heavy German accent, he admits that he had commissioned a study of the project, but had decided against it “for reasons which, at this moment, must be all too obvious.” He then explains the value of such a device, which is “within the means of even the smallest nuclear power. It requires only the will to do so.” At Muffley’s question about the triggering of the murderous device, Strangelove, through his characteristic faintly deranged rictus, answers, “…because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying; it's simple to understand, and completely credible and convincing.” While the doctor continues his explanation, we see Turgidson, aside to Staines [14], marvel, “Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines…” The two continue to comment on Strangelove as he, speaking in an almost dreamy fashion, remarks that the point of the device “is lost … [then, his voice becoming harshly interrogatory,] if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?!” The ambassador replies, “It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.”

{With this secret, we can reveal Lacan’s discussion of the circular constitution of the function of o, noting that, after the “negative” phallic stage, stages 4 and 5} are in a return position which brings them into correlation with stage 1 and stage 2. {Focusing on stages 2 and 4, he quips, I}t is the privilege of analysis to have made emerge in the history of thought the determining function of this unpleasant object in the economy of desire. {Remarking on the primordial form of the cause of desire, he infers the need} to make a veil subsist over the tight determinism. [15]

Back at the Base, we see the men engaging in “friendly fire” before a sign that says, “Peace Is our profession,” then cut to Ripper’s office. The commander elaborates on his theory, listing various foods for which there are studies underway to fluoridate, ending with ice cream – “Children’s ice cream”! Ripper expounds on the plot, using the words that started this entry, before Mandrake asks, “Jack... Jack, listen, tell me, ah... when did you first become, well, develop this theory?” Ripper answers that he had become aware of it “during the physical act of love,” describing a “profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness” that followed before he interpreted the symptoms as “loss of essence.” The commander assures his subordinate that the symptoms have not recurred, since he denies women his essence. We cut to an exterior shot of the building from which soldiers emerge with a white flag. At the cessation of hostilities, Ripper ignores Mandrake’s entreaty to recall the wing and comments, “Those boys were like my children, Mandrake. Now they let me down.” His subordinate tries to comfort him - “I'm sure they all gave you their very best. And I'm equally sure they all died thinking of you, every man jack of them…” then says that, although a “water man,” there is nothing wrong with his own fluids. We get a closeup of Ripper’s glum face as he continues to smoke, glancing sullenly at Mandrake during the speech. Then, still looking straight ahead, he asks if his executive officer had ever been a prisoner of war. The Group Captain, who had returned to the subject of recalling the wing, looks up, asking, “huh?” After the commander repeats the question, Mandrake says that he was, and, at Ripper’s next question, says that he had been tortured by the Japanese “swines,” remarking, “Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.” The General expresses concern that the invaders will torture him for the code, and that he won’t be able to stand up under the pain. Staring blankly while puffing away at his cigar, Ripper barely responds to his executive officer’s attempt to seize on this idea to convince him to give Mandrake the code. The General then says that he believes in an afterlife in which he will have to answer for what he did, adding, “And I think I can.”

{These interactions can help us relate to Lacan’s distinction between the cause of desire at stage 5 from the effect, describing the mode of the object o for the obsessional, a mode in which} the subjectifying constitution … results from the dominance of the subject who speaks over the subject who understands, over the subject of insight whose limits we know in the shape of the chimpanzee. {He remarks that this very process of subjectifying leads to a new critique of reason which} is not psychological or developmental. It shows what joins to the accidents of development – those which I first of all enumerated just now by reminding you of the list of them, the anatomical particularities that are involved in the case of man – joining therefore to these accidents of development the effect of a signifier whose transcendence is henceforth evident with respect to the aforesaid development. {Our lecturer specifies that t}his transcendence is neither more nor less marked, at this level, than any other incidence of the real, this real that in biology is called on this occasion the Umwelt as a way of taming it. [16]

Ripper walks despondently toward the bathroom, dropping his weapon and jacket as he goes, and Mandrake follows, trying to coax the code out of him. Entering the washroom as Mandrake proposes a “little guessing game,” the General shuts the door. We then hear a gunshot from within, and Mandrake finds that the door will only open a few inches. We cut to the B-52, then get a closeup of the radar display showing a blip on the lower left that we soon discover to be a missile. Despite sustained evasive action, the plane is hit, and we watch as the men tend to the fires and struggle to get the aircraft under control. We finally see the B-52 steady and lift before we get a closeup of the phrases, “Peace on Earth” and “Purity of Essence” written crossword-style on a piece of notepaper. We pull out and hear Mandrake reading the phrases, then saying, “POE,” before we cut to the office door. Two shots suddenly blow the handle off, and it opens, revealing Colonel “Bat” Guano.

{These bullets can help us penetrate further into Lacan’s discussion. Pointing to the animal anxiety involved when “something has shaken this Umwelt to its foundations,” such as during a meteoric accident our professor notes, “For them as for us, it is the manifestation of a locus of the Other,” and denies} that there is anywhere … that this locus in the Other cannot lodge itself outside real space.” {He then drives home his point on the need to look for the domain of causes in} the most disagreeable aspects of life. [17]

Guano tells Mandrake to put his hands over his head, and, ignoring the executive officer’s demand that he identify himself, asks him about his “suit.” Mandrake, deeply offended, identifies it as an R.A.F. uniform and himself as Group Captain. To the Colonel’s question, Mandrake says Ripper is dead in the bathroom, then tells him that he has a very good idea what the recall code is, trying to convey the urgency of communicating with SAC headquarters. Guano continues to ignore Mandrake’s demands, ordering him to keep his hands over his head and asking for witnesses to the General’s death. The executive officer, finding that the Colonel is ignorant of Ripper’s attack order, gets him to let him try the phones on Ripper’s desk, but discovers that they have both been shot away. Guano, deciding that he has “wasted too much time” on Mandrake, tells him, “Start walking.” We cut to the plane as Kong’s men assess the damage, finding that the radio is out and that though, at the rate of fuel loss, they can reach their primary and secondary targets, they cannot return to any base or neutral country. Kong repeats this information over the intercom, adding that their low flying at least gives them the advantage of being untraceable by radar. We return to the Base as Mandrake and Guano exit the office. Suddenly, the Group Captain stops and, pumping the air with his fists, says, “Colonel! Colonel, I must know what you think has been going on here!” Guano replies, “I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. And I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.” As he resumes walking, keeping the R.A.F. officer at gunpoint, the Colonel adds, “All I was told to do was get General Ripper on the phone to the President of the United States.” The Group Captain again stops, pointing out that the President, being unable to speak to Ripper, would need to speak to him as the General’s executive officer. He gestures toward a phone booth and says he will try to reach Muffley, and, to Guano’s skepticism, says, “I can assure you, if you don't put that gun away and stop this stupid nonsense, the court of inquiry on this'll give you such a pranging, you'll be lucky if you end up wearing the uniform of a bloody toilet attendant!” The Colonel allows Mandrake to use the booth, but threatens to “blow his head off” if he tries any preversions in it. The executive officer, after reaching the operator, finds he doesn’t have enough change and that SAC will not accept a collect call. After trying various options, he tells the Colonel to shoot the lock off a nearby Coca-Cola machine to get some change. When Guano protests, “That’s private property,” Mandrake finally barks out, “Colonel, can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With the gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit! Guano complies, after warning Mandrake that, if he cannot reach the President, he will have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company. The Colonel then kneels down to collect the coins, and the product sprays out of one of the bullet holes onto his face.

{With these scenes we’ll confront Lacan’s next issue - how the anal object takes on its “subjectified importance,” it being} observable that at the level of what one could call the living economy, excrement continues to have its importance in the milieu that it can manage also in certain conditions to saturate, to saturate sometimes to the point of rendering it incompatible with life [* Our professor later points to the atrocious historic case of reduction of entire human masses to its function.]; other times, when it saturates it in a fashion which at least for other organisms only takes on a function of support in the external milieu. There is a whole economy, of course, of the function of excrement, an intra-living and an inter-living economy. [18]

We dissolve from the Colonel’s face to the Big Board, on which we see the planes’ retreat as we hear through an intercom that the recall code is being acknowledged. The men, gathered in front of it, shake each others’ hands and clap each other on the back, and Turgidson, still chewing gum, leads them in prayer. While he speaks, we cut to Dr. Strangelove watching from the shadows, then Staines interrupts to tell Muffley that Premier Kissov is on the line, “and he’s hopping mad.” We then cut to the B-52 to find that the plane’s fuel leakage has increased. Back in the War Room, the President tells the Premier that there must be some mistake. Asking Kissov to hold “a second,” he informs his men that the Soviet leader says that one of the planes, according to information forwarded by the US air staff, is headed for the missile complex at Lapuda. At Turgidson’s incredulity, he resumes his conversation with Kissov, and finds that their air staff, which had earlier claimed that they had shot down four of the planes, now only claims three - the fourth may only be damaged. Over Turgidson’s suspicion that the “commies” are tricking them, Muffley asks if the renegade plane’s success will set off the Doomsday machine. On receiving confirmation, he tells Kissov, “Well, I.. I guess you're just going to have to get that plane, Dimitri! Dimitri, I'm sorry they're jamming your radar and flying so low, but they're trained to do it. You know, it's it's initiative!”

{With apologies, I’ll return to the question of subjectification. Lacan notes that through the Big Other’s mediation, the object} for at least a certain time must be considered as not to be alienated, then after that [the subject must] release it, always on demand. {Such a demand} is destined to valorise this thing recognized for a moment and henceforth elevated to the function, all the same, of a part which the subject has some apprehension he is taking on, this part becoming at least valorised by the fact that it gives its satisfaction to the demand of the Other… {Lacan notes certain cases which intensify this valorization before proposing} that we can understand nothing about the phenomenology – which is so fundamental for all our speculation – of obsession, if we do not grasp at the same time in a much more intimate, motivated, regular way than we habitually do, this link between excrement and, not just the (-<p) of the phallus, but with the other forms evoked here in what we could call the classification of stages, the other forms of o{, then says that what} is involved is grounded at the level of the oral stage. [19]

Muffley tries to calm the Soviet leader (although betraying his own hysteria in the process,) and concludes, “Look, now if our air staff say it's primary target is Lapuda and it's secondary target it Bordkov, I mean it's it's true, Dimitri! You gotta believe it. … Put everything you’ve got into those two sectors and you can’t miss.” Cutting back to the B-52, we watch the navigator discuss the new rate of leakage with Kong. At first denying that the fuel won’t let him reach even the primary, the pilot finally asks where the nearest target opportunity is, and his bombardier answers, “That’s the ICBM complex at Kodlosk,” and Kong designates the location as the new target. We cut back to Muffly, telling Kissov, “We’re all in this together” before he hangs up and asks Turgidson if the aircraft has a chance to succeed. Telling his president that “you just can't expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys,” Turgidson, after apologizing to the ambassador, enthuses about his pilots, spreading his arms to mime a plane and saying that if one is “really... sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low - you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane, like a '52, vroom! There's jet exhaust, flyin' chickens in the barnyard!” Muffley, exasperated, repeats, “Has he got a chance?” and Turgidson, carried away, starts, “Hell ye…..” then, looking around, puts his hand over his mouth.

{Now would be a good place to uncover Lacan’s discussion of the meaning of the nipple to the infant,} that in dealing with o, he is dealing with the Other, with the big Other, the mother{, and notes that the next stage is the first one in which a child} has occasion to recognize himself in something … around which [the demand of the mother turns.] {Our professor reminds his students of the ensuing sublimated satisfactions, then notes that in the order of causality he is describing, the symptom is a result and, as to desire, w}e have there a certain relationship of the constitution of the subject as divided, as ambivalent, in relation to a demand of the Other. [20]

We hear the B-52’s dogged theme as Kong’s plane approaches its target, and we see the men cooperate in preparing to complete their mission. At Kong’s request, the bombardier, Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, flicks a switch to check the bomb door circuits, but the display for the door indicator lights up the word, “closed.” We get a closeup of Zogg’s worried face as he flicks another switch several times with no success. He reports, “negative function,” then, at Kong’s suggestions, he attempts other ways to get the door open. After he tries emergency power, we get a closeup of the “closed” light flashing, then we cut to the pilot’s exasperated face as he barks, “operate manual override!” When that doesn’t work, he orders, “Fire the explosive bolts!” but the “closed” light continues to flash. Finally, removing his earphones, Kong tells his co-pilot to take over while he goes below. We watch the pilot make his way down [21] into the bomb bay [22], carrying a flashlight. Seeing some hanging wires shooting sparks above one of the weapons, the pilot climbs on top of it, waving at the sparks with his cowboy hat. We get close-ups of him, laboring with the wires, interspersed with exterior shots of the plane as well as shots of the men announcing their increasing proximity to the target. Finally, the navigator says, “Target in sight - Where in hell is Major Kong?” We cut back to Kong as the doors start to open, his scared expression changing to one of ecstasy as he grabs his hat and lets out an “Aaaaaa hoooo!” We briefly cut back to the bombardier, also asking where Kong is before we see the Major, riding the missile as if it were a bronco, yelling, “Waaaaa hooooo!” The camera slowly pulls back as the bomb goes from a horizontal to a vertical position, and we see the ground come toward us before the screen goes white and the sound cuts out - We then hear the explosion and see the mushroom cloud.

{This scene can help us retain our next segment, where our professor reminds us of the formula of castration, and that} the moment of the advance of jouissance, of the jouissance of the Other and towards the jouissance of the Other, involves the constitution of castration as a pledge of this encounter{, and he describes female jouissance as} crushed in phallic nostalgia and henceforth is required, I would say almost condemned to only love the male other at a point situated beyond the one at which, she also, stops him as desire{. He then relates the formula to obsession, repeating} that the metaphors of gift here are only metaphors. And as is only too obvious, he gives nothing. The woman neither. And nevertheless the symbol of the gift is essential for the relationship to the Other; it is the supreme act, we are told, and even the total social act. {Restating the borrowing of this metaphor, “the gift of love,” from the anal sphere, our professor turns to the link between} possession, in the world, of territory and of security for sexual union. [23 (scholarly citations removed)]

We get a shot from a low point of view of the shadowed figure of Dr. Strangelove spinning his wheelchair away from the Big Board to face Muffley. Pulling into the light, he advises using mine shafts, where radioactivity couldn’t penetrate, “to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.” Trying to answer the President’s query, he pulls out a circular slide rule to calculate how long the specimens would need to stay there. He responds, “possibly uh…one hundred years,” and, after some difficulty with his gloved right hand, returns the slide rule to within his blazer. To Muffley’s skepticism, the doctor says, “It would not be difficult mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh... I'm sorry. Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plantlife. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess... that ah, dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.” He then eases Muffley’s worries about deciding on who would live and die, saying that a computer could make these decisions based on various factors, such as youth, health, and fertility. We get a shot of the President and Turgidson together, the latter’s interest aroused as the doctor, with a cunning smile, explains the need for top government and military men “to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition.” We then see Strangelove’s uncooperative hand shoot out in a Nazi salute, and his other fight it to get it back into his lap. While Turgidson, eyes wide open and breathing through his mouth, listens, the doctor describes the need for ten females to each male to return to the present gross national product within twenty years. Continuing to struggle with his right hand, he then answers Muffley’s concerns about the survivors being too grief stricken to want to go on, saying that, since everyone would still be alive when the specimens leave, “the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!” After he beats down another salute, his gloved hand attempts revenge, gripping his own neck, and we cut back to the President and Turgidson. The General asks if the 10-to-1 ratio would not necessitate the abandonment of the “monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned.” The doctor, although regretting the “sacrifice,” adds that, “since each man will be required to do prodigious … [here he looks down at his (off-camera) lap and strikes the now unseen right hand with his (also unseen) left] service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.” We cut to the ambassador complimenting him on his “astonishingly good idea,” then see him walk away as Turgidson and another general advise Muffley to prepare for the risk of a foreign threat to the survivors and their mine shaft space. Turgidson continues to pontificate as we follow DeSadeski and watch him kneel down and take pictures of the Big Board with a camera disguised as a pocket watch. We cut back to the General as he rises, concluding, “Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!” Strangelove also rises and says, “I have a plan,” taking a couple steps before exclaiming, “Mein Fuhrer - I can walk!” We hear Vera Lynn lead a chorus in the song, “We’ll Meet Again” as we see numerous shots of nuclear bombs exploding, then we fade to black.

{At the end of our current lecture, Lacan points out that animals, including birds, feel invincible within the limits of their territory but become timid when outside of it, but that} up to the present nothing explains to us the very particular relationships of the obsessional to his desire. {Up to this level, although the divided subject and the impossible union are symbolized, desire is not. Our professor identifies the link in the} relationship between the specular reflection of the narcissistic support of the mastery of self and the field, the locus, of the Other{, then repeats,} the degree of luxuriance reached by [an obsessive’s] phantasies, which are ordinarily never carried out, but after all it can happen that through all sorts of conditions which postpone more or less indefinitely the putting into action, he gets there, he gets there better, it even happens that others overcome for him the space of the obstacle, a subject who develops very early as a magnificent obsessional may happen to be in a family of dissolute people. {Pointing out the prevalence of Christ associations for western obsessionals, he then relates gods to} The ego-ideal, when at this level what it is a matter of covering over, is anxiety, takes the omnipotent form. The phantasy of ubiquity in the obsessional, the phantasy which is also the support on which there come and go the multiplicity of his desires, which are always to be rejected further away, it is there that he seeks and finds the complement of what is necessary for him to constitute himself in desire. {Alluding to Plato and the different ways people manifest belief in god(s,) Lacan promises for next class to} highlight the relationship between the obsessional phantasy, posed as a structure of his desire, and the anxiety which determines it. [24 (scholarly citations removed)]

After such a bleak ending, I thought this article  [25] might offer some encouragement.

1. Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964.) in: visual-memory.co.uk. (Undated.) Based on the book: Red Alert by Peter George (1958.)

2. Jacques Lacan. “Anxiety.” [252] from The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X. (1962-63.) pp. 252 - 270. in: springhero.wordpress.com. (January 27 – February 5, 2011.)

3. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [253]

4. In fact, for the rest of the movie, this theme plays through every scene of the B-52 and its passengers.

5. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [253-254]

6. Inside the door is a page from Playboy or a similar magazine, a page with a number of pictures of women with most or all of their faces cropped.

7. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [254-255]

8. The President’s aide, Staines, tells him that the Secretary of State is in Vietnam, the Secretary of Defense is in Laos, and the Vice President is in Mexico City.

9. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [255-256]

10. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [256-258]

11. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [258]

12. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [259]
*…whose import one is only “able to perceive if, as I very sufficiently indicated to you, you see that the nipple forms part of the inner world of the subject and not of the body of the mother.”

13. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [260]

14. Interestingly, in the first shot of Strangelove, he appears to have ashes and a large stain on his jacket; when we see him near the end, his suit looks as if it has just been cleaned. Also, that latter scene has Staines sitting on Muffley’s right and Turgidson on his left, but as we near the end and hear the details of Strangelove’s plan, the frame shows only the President and the General.

15. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [261]

16. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [262]

17. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [263]

18. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [263-264]

19. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [265]

20. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [266]

21. Oddly, as Kong checks in on the bombardier and DSO, the ladder is positioned sideways from how it was when he had in the early scene, and the trapdoor is much closer to the men.

22. We see nicknames in painted scrawls on the back of each bomb; one is “Dear John,” the other, “Hi There!” Kong climbs on top of the latter.

23. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [267]

24. Lacan. “Anxiety.” [267-270]

25. Maude Barlow, Meera Karunananthan. “Letting Corporations Sue Governments Protecting the Environment is No Way to Solve the Water Crisis: El Salvador fights to protect its water and people from ‘free trade.’” in: Common Dreams. (May 31, 2015)