“God was here before
the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to
the Corps!”
I’ll use this quote from the superegoic sergeant above to
begin this last entry covering my reading of Lacan’s Anxiety. (Since I’ll have considerable movie left after finishing
this seminar, I’ll use that to explore the first two classes of his Desire and its Interpretation seminar.
[2])
We hear the song, “Hello Vietnam” [3] before the opening
credits, the music continuing through the first scene showing the heads and shoulders
of young men as barbers remove their civilian hair. When the country singer
tells his sweetheart, “Kiss me goodbye and write me while I’m gone,” the camera
reveals the floor covered with luxuriant clippings.
{With this representation of
sacrifice, I’ll present my first offering from Anxiety. Lacan mentions a Freud article, “Inhibitions, Symptoms and
Anxiety” and reminds his students of discussions he had had about these three terms,
now promising to fill in our understanding of them. Starting with a related word,
“dismay,” our professor notes that this term does not refer to an emotion, and he
suggests a relation to an outside power, identifying it, in the obsessional’s desire
and anxiety correlation, as the o itself. Specifying that anxiety designates
“the most profound object, the Thing, he adds that it determines the
aforementioned dismay.} Anxiety finds itself suspended between what one might
call the prior form of the relationship to the cause, the “what is it?” which
is going to be formulated as cause, embarrassment, and something which cannot
hold onto this cause, since primarily it is anxiety which literally produces
this cause. {Bringing up weaning anxiety, in which a child cedes what seemed a
part of himself, Lacan discusses the “transitional object” of the bottle,
asking, “[F]or us, as for all the other objects o, do we have any other
manifest control than this emphasis I give to the possibility of replacing the
natural object by a mechanical object…?” [4 (scholarly citations removed)]
We meet Drill Instructor Sergeant Hartman as he walks,
unblinking, by a rank of his new recruits, through a large barracks. He
discusses their pre-graduation status as “maggots,” declaiming that the more
they hate him the more they will learn. Asking an African-American his name, he
replaces it with “Private Snowball.” He then asks, “Do you like that name?”
and, at the youth’s answer, “Sir, yes, sir!” replies, “Well, there's one thing
that you won't like, Private Snowball! They don't serve fried chicken and
watermelon on a daily basis in my mess hall!” We see a tall, bespectacled
recruit at the opposite corner of the long room softly ask - “Is that you John
Wayne? Is it me?” – mimicking the voice of the western icon. The Sergeant quickly
comes into view, demanding to know who had “just signed his own death warrant.”
After Hartman grabs the youth next to the culprit, insisting that it must have
been him, the speaker admits his guilt. The drill instructor turns toward the recruit,
dubbing him “Private Joker,” and briefly feigns admiration before punching him in
the gut. After Joker goes down, we get a closeup of Hartman’s disturbing stare from
the youth’s point of view as the instructor orders him back on his feet. When
the recruit complies, the Sergeant asks, “…why did you join my beloved corps?” and
Joker answers, “Sir, to kill, sir!” Hartman then demands to see the recruit’s
war face and, after Joker’s two attempts, says, “You didn't scare me! Work on
it!” He then turns back to the earlier suspect and delivers a tirade of abuse,
naming him “Private Cowboy” on finding that he is from Texas. He next
approaches a heavy recruit, Leonard Lawrence, and asks if his parents had any
children that lived. He dubs him “Gomer Pyle” and, noticing a hint of a smile,
gives him three seconds to “wipe that stupid-looking grin off your face, or I
will gouge out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you!” When Pyle fails to comply,
Hartman orders him to get on his knees and choke himself. Leonard, not seeing
that the instructor had put his own hand about a foot from his chest, grabs his
own neck, earning the exclamation, “Goddamn it, with my hand, numbnuts!!” After
Pyle tries to bring the Sergeant’s hand to himself, Hartman yells, “Don't pull
my fucking hand over there! I said choke yourself! Now lean forward and choke
yourself!” The private obeys, and his instructor strangles him until his face
turns red, then asks if he is done grinning.
{This scene can help us grasp how Lacan,
following Freud, uses an E. T. A. Hoffmann character to illustrate the uncanny
quality of the eye, the character Coppelius}, one who hollows out eye sockets,
who is going to seek down to their root what is somewhere the capital,
essential object to present itself as the beyond – and the most anxiety-
provoking – of the desire which constitutes it, the eye itself. {He then
discusses the voice and the specular image as, with the help of recording
devices, cedable objects which can also arouse} a particular conjecture of
anxiety … indeed the horror [of the thought of] where they may go afterwards. {Our
professor qualifies desire in the constitution of the subject:} In its polar relationship
to anxiety, desire[, the desire to retain,] is to be situated … at the level of
inhibition. [5]
After ordering Pyle to his feet, Hartman tells him, “…you
had best square your ass away and start shitting me Tiffany cuff links.” We then
watch a montage of the recruits running in formation and undergoing other types
of “PT” as Hartman calls cadence. In one segment, we hear the call and response,
“Up in the morning to the rising sun … Gotta run all day till the running's
done!” while Kubrick illustrates their words with a silhouette of the youths
climbing obstacles against an orange sky. This scene dissolves into one in full
daylight, where Hartman marches the platoon as they position their rifles in
sync with his orders, “To your left shoulder; hut! Left, right, left! Port;
hut!” He calls for them to halt, then, when he says, “Left shoulder, hut!” Pyle
places his gun on his right shoulder, and, although he immediately corrects
himself, the sergeant descends on him, accusing him of trying to be different.
After Hartman slaps him hard on the left, then right cheek, asking him each
time which side he had struck, we cut to Pyle with his pants down to his ankles
and thumb in his mouth as he struggles to keep up with the marching platoon.
{We can use this march to follow our
professor, as, after emphasizing the structural occultation of desire behind inhibition,
he adds a term to the pair, “inhibition” and “desire” – “act.” He places the
new word with the former of the pair, and defines it as,} … whatever share
there may still remain there of a motor effect which is expressed in this
field, the field of the real in which the movement response is exercised, which
is expressed in such a way that there is expressed in it another field, which
is not simply the one of sensory stimulation for example, as it is articulated
by considering only the reflex arc, which is not to be articulated either as a
realisation of the subject. [6]
We see the recruits in their skivvies standing at attention
next to their bunks, their guns at their sides. Hartman walks before them,
saying, “Tonight ... you pukes will sleep with your rifles! You will give your
rifle a girl's name! Because this is the only pussy you people are going to
get! Your days of finger-banging old Mary Jane Rottencrotch through her pretty
pink panties are over! You're married to this piece, this weapon of iron and
wood! And you will be faithful! Port ... hut! Prepare to mount! Mount!” After
they obey, the sergeant orders, “pray!” and they recite a “creed” declaring
themselves useless without their guns, ending, “My rifle and myself are
defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of
my life. So be it, until there is no enemy … but peace. Amen.” We next see the
recruits on the grounds with Hartman teaching them the proper ways to handle
their rifles before we cut to the barracks, the sergeant marching them while instructing
them, in cadence, on the difference between “rifle” and “gun” – “This is for
fighting! This is for fun!” They move
their genitals with their left hands as they say the latter word and identify its
use.
{With these scenes we’ll piece
together Lacan’s next points. Having defined inhibition as the introduction
into a function of a different desire to the one that the function satisfies
naturally, Lacan asserts that all subject-inaugurating o’s are cedable objects.
He then notes the value of the obsessional in bringing our attention to
something that most people overlook out of habit:} in his case desires manifest
themselves always in this dimension that I went so far as to call earlier, …
the function of defense. {Our professor elaborates:} the desire to retain
centred on a primordial object, to which it is going to give its value, it is
already here that there is situated the desire that is situated as anal. It has
no meaning for us except in the economy of the libido, namely in its liaisons
with sexual desire. {Bringing up St. Augustine’s quip about the location of the
birth canal, he remarks that, by contrast, the important thing for analysts is}
that we make love between urine and faeces. [7]
We see the recruits engage in more marching and PT, then watch
Leonard and another youth in a pugil bout surrounded by their comrades-in-arms.
The men cheer as Pyle is beaten to the ground before we cut to his attempt to
get over another obstacle. As he struggles, the sergeant harangues him, “I'll
bet you if there was some pussy up there on top of that obstacle you could get
up there! Couldn't you?!” We get a number of other scenes of Hartman berating Pyle
for failing in various exercises before ejecting him with, “Get the fuck off my
obstacle!” and vowing to “motivate” him. The segment continues with the exhausted
youth, supported by Joker, trying to complete a rapid, forced march down a dirt
road. Hartman follows close to Leonard’s left side, yelling at him to go ahead
and die and remarking, “I think you've got a hard-on!” He finally goes down as
the platoon tries to run through a mud puddle, pulling Joker with him as the
others struggle to help or go around them before we fade to black.
{This segment will help us muddle
through Lacan’s next path; describing a subject} impeded in retaining his
desire to retain{, our professor discusses the} experiences based on being
confronted with a task [to which he] does not know how to respond, … that he
allows things to happen, which are these comings and goings of the signifier,
that alternately posit and efface, which all go along this equally unknown path
of rediscovering the primal trace… [The final, abject and derisory object
threatening the] loss of the subject on the path where he is always exposed to
entering along the path of embarrassment, of embarrassment where there is
introduced as such the question of the cause, which is that through which he
enters into transference. [8]
After waking the recruits by banging on a garbage can,
Hartman says, “Drop your cocks and grab your socks! Today is Sunday! Divine
worship at zero-eight-hundred!” He then orders Joker and Cowboy to clean the “head”
so thoroughly, “the Virgin Mary herself would be proud to go in there and take
a dump!” Asking Joker if he believes in the Virgin Mary and getting a negative
reply, Hartman badgers the youth, yelling, “You make me want to vomit!” and
smacking him hard across his cheek. We see Joker’s mouth tighten into a slit and
the chords on his neck stand out as he maintains his disbelief against his
sergeant’s demand, finally answering, “Sir, the private believes that any
answer he gives will be wrong! And the Senior Drill Instructor will beat him
harder if he reverses himself, sir!” On finding that Joker’s squad leader is
Private Snowball, Hartman calls him over and tells him, “You’re fired,”
promoting Joker in his place. Calling Pyle over, he assigns Joker as his squad
leader, saying, “He'll teach you everything. He'll teach you how to pee,” remarking
that, although silly and ignorant, Joker has guts, “and guts is enough.”
{We can use these guts to digest
our next passage. Calling the o of the obsessional the “cork,” Lacan names it
as the most primitive form of the} exemplary object that I called the tap
through the discussion of the function of the cause, [and then asks,] how could
we illustrate, with respect to what determines the function of the object
stopper or tap with its consequence, the desire to close, how could there be
situated the different elements of our matrix? [9]
We see Joker help Pyle with military exercises, such as
following the Manual of Arms and overcoming his fear of the “confidence climb,”
and we watch as the new squad leader patiently teaches him the proper methods
of various tasks, from lacing his boots and making his bed to assembling an M-14
– “The bolt goes in the receiver. Operating rod handle. Operating rod guide.” We
then witness Pyle’s improvement as he navigates an obstacle and drills in
formation under Hartman’s gaze.
{With Pyle we can progress to our
next point. After discussing the transposition onto the image of everything}
that we have just said about the function of o as “analogous” object of gift,
designed to hold back the subject on the edge of the castrating hole{, Lacan
adds,} And here there intervenes this ambiguity in the obsessional subject
about the function of love which is underlined in all the observations. {Our
professor elaborates, W}hat he intends should be loved, is a certain image of
himself, that this image he gives to the other, and to such an extent that he
imagines that if this image were faulty in any way, the other would no longer
know what to hold onto. [10 (scholarly citations removed)]
The drill scene dissolves to a view of targets on a rifle range,
and we hear Hartman deliver a lecture on the importance of developing a “hard
heart” – “If your killer instincts are not clean and strong you will hesitate
at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines. And
then you will be in a world of shit. Because marines are not allowed to die
without permission!” He then double-times them to cadences regarding their love
for Uncle Sam (“lets me know just who I am”) and a rumor about “Eskimo pussy.” We
cut to the barracks, the recruits in two rows facing each other on top of their
foot lockers. They stand at attention in their skivvies, arms out and palms
down as Hartman inspects them, pointing out their flaws, such as a blister,
toejam, and long nails. Advancing toward Pyle he looks down and suddenly stops,
demanding to know why his footlocker is unlocked. Making the private get down,
he overturns the top compartment, sending its contents crashing to the ground. In
the lower level he finds a jelly donut. Holding it in front of the youth, he
interrogates him, asking if “chow” is allowed in the barracks and why Pyle is
not allowed to eat donuts. At Leonard’s reply that he is too heavy, Hartman
corrects him – “Because you are a disgusting fatbody!” Declaring that from now
on, the platoon will be punished for any of Pyle’s infractions, the instructor
has the men do pushups and, shoving the offending sweet into the disgraced
private’s mouth, barks, “They're paying for it; you eat it!”
{This segment should convey Lacan’s
discussion of the consequences of maintaining the aforementioned image:} distance
of the subject from himself with respect to which everything that he does is
never anything for him in the final term – and, without analysis, is left to
its solitude – but something that he sees as a game, when all is said and done,
which only profited this other of whom I am speaking, this image. [11]
We dissolve from Pyle obeying to Joker helping him with his
uniform, telling him he looks like “shit.” Leonard tries to make eye contact,
saying, “Everybody hates me now, even you.” Joker, buttoning him up, says that
nobody hates him, but that he keeps getting them in trouble. Finally meeting
his eyes when Pyle says that he needs help, he replies, “I'm trying to help
you, Leonard. I'm really trying – Tuck your shirt in.” We get a scene of the
recruits doing squat thrusts as Pyle sits, sucking his thumb, then the screen
goes blank. We cut to a blue-tinged night scene showing a closeup of a towel
being laid on a bed and a bar of soap placed on it. A pair of hands wrap the
towel around the soap, twisting it into a weapon and hitting the bed with it
twice before we cut to Joker in his bunk. He gets out and checks that Pyle is
asleep, then the other recruits leave their beds. Two of them put a blanket
across Leonard and pin him down while Cowboy holds a gag over his mouth, and
the rest hit him with their handmade weapons as he struggles and tries to cry
out. As the rest go back to their bunks, Cowboy tells Joker, “Do it!” Pyle’s
mentor finally moves up and savagely beats his protégé. When the squad leader
returns to his bunk, Cowboy removes the gag, saying, “Remember, it's just a bad
dream, fatboy.” Pyle sits up, bawling and gripping his stomach, and we cut to
Joker covering his ears before we again fade to black.
{We can use this scene to project
how Lacan, unlike Freud, locates the function of anxiety prior to the ceding of
the object. He notes that at the fourth level,} definable as characteristic of
the function of the constitution of the subject in his relation to the Other …
something links me to the human Other which is my quality of being his fellow. {Telling
us that at this level, the scopic,} the object o is the most masked{, our
professor says that at the second we are faced with} a paradox which connects
the starting point of this first effect of ceding, which is anxiety, with what
will be at the end something like its point of arrival: this manifestation of
anxiety coinciding with the very emergence into the world of the one who will
be the subject, is the scream, the scream whose function I have situated for a
long time as not at all an original but a terminal relationship to what we
ought to consider as being the very heart of this other, in so far as he
reaches completion for us at a moment as the neighbour. [12 (scholarly
citations removed)]
We fade in to the parade ground, where Hartman drills the
recruits. Pyle performs in perfect sync with the rest of the platoon, but when
the sergeant asks, “Do we love the Marine Corps, ladies? And the recruits reply
in unison, “Semper fi, do or die! …” he remains silent, looking blankly ahead.
Hartman asks them what makes the grass grow, and the camera slowly pulls in on Leonard’s
face as his comrades answer, “Blood! blood! blood!” We dissolve from his vacant
stare to the men sitting on bleachers as Hartman quizzes them about people,
such as Lee Harvey Oswald, who had killed from distant buildings. The sergeant
elaborates on the exact distances, timing and number of kills as we again move
in on Pyle’s now glowering face, and Hartman concludes, “Those individuals
showed what one motivated marine and his rifle can do! And before you ladies
leave my island, you will be able to do the same thing!” We then cut to two
rows of recruits standing at attention as the sergeant walks down the center,
leading them (Pyle now joining) in singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. Telling
them when the Christmas “magic show” begins – where “Chaplain Charlie will tell
you about how the free world will conquer Communism with the aid of God and a
few marines!” - Hartman discusses God’s love for the corps, and ends his
lecture by telling his recruits, To show our appreciation for so much power, we
keep heaven packed with fresh souls!” and delivering the line at the start of
this entry.
{With this speech, I’ll deliver
Lacan’s comparison of the scream of the nurseling, the “original anxiety,” to the
birth trauma of other organisms, pointing to} the most basic schema of vital
exchange … effectively created by the function of this wall, of this border, of
this osmosis between an outside milieu and an inside milieu [and] the arbitrary
character of the development of the neo-formation. {Returning to humans, he
notes that, contrary to the expression “the child is weaned,”} he weans himself.
[13]
We watch the recruits cleaning their rifles as Hartman walks
among them, looking on. The camera pans over to Leonard, softly talking to his
as he wipes, addressing it as “Charlene.” Joker, next to him, slowly lifts his
head, turning it toward the voice, and we get a closeup of his apprehensive face
before we cut to a closeup of the speaker, telling Charlene, “Nice. Everything
cleaned. Oiled. So that your action is beautiful.” We dissolve to Pyle and the
other recruits mopping the floor, then cut to Cowboy and Joker in the bathroom,
also mopping. Leonard’s mentor, his skivvies betraying arousal, tells Cowboy
what he saw, saying that he doesn’t think Pyle can “hack it,” calling him a
“Section Eight.” After his confidant, still cleaning, says, “It don't surprise
me,” Joker tells him, “I want to slip my tubesteak into your sister. What'll
you take in trade? And Cowboy mechanically replies, “What have you got?” The
next scene shows Hartman kneeling closely behind Pyle as the recruit
successfully hits distant targets, at which his instructor cries, “Outstanding,
Private Pyle! I think we've finally found something that you do well!"
{This scene can give us the thrust
of Lacan’s idea as he elaborates on the breast as a transitional object before
returning to the one that} comes to fulfill this function in a clearer fashion
at the very moment that the Other elaborates her own in the shape of the
demand. {Reminding us of the similarity between the first developmental form of
desire and inhibition -} When desire appears for the first time, it opposes
itself to the very act through which its originality as desire is introduced{,
he moves to the next stage -} Here then it is neither the object in itself, nor
the subject who autonomises himself, as it is imagined, in a vague and confused
priority of totality which is involved here, but from the first initially an
object chosen for its quality of being specially negotiable, of being
originally an object of purchase (objet d’achat). {Returning to anxiety and the
obsessional, Lacan discusses his ambivalent relationship} that we simplify,
that we abbreviate, that we even elude when we limit it to being one of
aggressivity.
This object that he cannot prevent himself from retaining as the good which makes him worthwhile, and which is also only what is expelled, what is evacuated from himself, are the two aspects by which it determines the subject even as compulsion and as doubt. [14]
This object that he cannot prevent himself from retaining as the good which makes him worthwhile, and which is also only what is expelled, what is evacuated from himself, are the two aspects by which it determines the subject even as compulsion and as doubt. [14]
On the parade deck, Hartman inspects his recruits. Grabbing
and examining Joker’s rifle, he asks what the sixth general order is. The private
starts to recite the directive but falters, finally admitting that, although he
had been instructed, he does not know. Saying, “…get on your face and give me
twenty-five!” the sergeant moves on and seizes Pyle’s rifle. After the recruit
answers all his questions perfectly, Hartman pronounces him “born again hard,”
adding, “Hell, I may even allow you to serve as a rifleman in my beloved
Corps.” We get another scene of the sergeant double-timing the recruits, this
time to the cadence, “If I die in the combat zone, box me up and ship me home…”
We then dissolve from the march on paved grounds to one, in full battle gear, through
woods and finally to a charge through fields as Joker’s voiceover tells us
that, only a few days away from the recruits’ graduation, their “drill
instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control. The
Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers.”
{Locating the overlap of the
subject’s desire and the desire of the other in the realm of aggressivity,
Lacan discusses the relation between the function of cause and the fantasy} of
a being to whom his cause would not be foreign. {Our professor links this
fantasy to the theme of vanity resounding through the Hegelian concept of “the
fight to the death of pure prestige” before returning to analytic practice:} To
make the treatment of obsession turn around aggressivity, is, in an obvious and
I might say avowed fashion – even if it is not deliberate – to introduce at its
principle the subduction of the desire of the subject to the desire of the
analyst, in so far as, like every desire, it is articulated elsewhere than in
its internal reference to o, this desire is identified to an ideal to which, in
a necessary way, the desire of the patient will be bent, in so far as this
ideal is the position that the analyst has obtained or believes he has obtained
with respect to reality. [15 (scholarly citations removed)]
The “Marines' Hymn” plays as we see Hartman telling his
recruits that they are “no longer maggots,” but part of a brotherhood. We get a
shot of a large graduation parade, then a closer view showing Hartman and his
recruits marching, the camera pulling in on Joker and Cowboy, as their
sergeant’s voice continues, saying that most of them will go to Vietnam and
some will not come back, but telling them to always remember that “the Marine
Corps lives forever. And that means you live forever!” We dissolve to a shot of
Hartman standing before his men [16] as he reads them their assignments. After reading
Joker’s – “Forty-two-twelve, Basic Military Journalism” - the instructor
shouts, “Jesus H. Christ, you're not a writer, you're a killer!” We get a closeup
of Pyle’s withdrawn expression, but, although he initially does not respond
when his name is called, we find that he has been assigned to infantry, Hartman
adding, “You made it.” Joker’s voiceover returns, as we cut to the barracks,
telling us that he has drawn “fire watch” for the last night on the island.
Hearing a noise, he enters the “head” and stops. We cut to Pyle, sitting on the
toilet with his rifle next to him. He slowly turns a deranged grin toward his
mentor, greeting him before turning back to fill his magazine. Speaking in a
strange, sluggish voice, he answers Joker’s question about the rounds –
“Seven-six-two millimeter, full metal jacket.” He replies to his comrade’s
warning that they’ll be “in a world of shit” if they are found by saying that
he already is “in a world of shit,” then stands and executes the
Manual of Arms and loudly recites his “creed.” Hartman enters, bellowing, “What
is this Mickey Mouse shit?” and demanding to know why Joker isn’t “stomping
Pyle’s guts out” before Joker tells him that the rifle is locked and loaded. Gradually
advancing on the demented youth, his instructor quietly says, “I want that
weapon, and I want it now! You will place that rifle on the deck at your feet
and step back away from it.” Pyle aims at Hartman, then answers the sergeant’s
question, “Didn't Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a
child?!!!” by shooting him through the chest. After slowly raising the gun toward
Joker, he finally responds to his mentor’s frightened advice to “go easy” by
sitting on the toilet and putting the gun into his own mouth, and we see him
fire, his blood covering the wall behind him before the screen goes black.
{With Joker’s new assignment we can
report how, discussing the connection between desire and castration anxiety, Lacan
returns to Oedipus, and identifies him as} the one who wishes to pass
authentically – and mythically also – to the fourth level … [and is punished
for wanting] to see what is beyond the most complete satisfaction of his desire
[by seeing] his own eyes, o, thrown on the ground. {Our professor reminds us of
the relation between the second level (where “not to see” is structural) and
the fourth, [the “level of dismay” (that of the ego ideal, where it is easiest
to introject) before introducing a third} at the heart of the central “symptom”
… the phantasy of omnipotence correlative to the fundamental impotence to
sustain this desire not to see. {He contrasts the fourth,} Here what we will
put at the level of acting-out, is the function of mourning, in so far as I am
going to ask you to recognise in a moment what in the course of last year I
taught you to see in it, a fundamental structure in the constitution of desire
{with the third:} Here at the level of the passage a l’acte, a phantasy of
suicide whose character and authenticity are to be put in question essentially
within [the dialectic between introjection and projection]. [17]
Nancy Sinatra’s voice begins the song “These Boots Are Made for
Walking” before we fade in to a busy Vietnamese street. We watch from behind as
a young woman in a black mini-skirt sashays into view and crosses, approaching
Joker and another journalist, Rafterman. When she solicits them, asking for
fifteen dollars each, Joker tells her, “Five dollars is all my mom allows me to
spend,” and she bargains for ten each. Joker asks Rafterman, “feel like
spending some of your hard-earned money?” and his friend tells him to wait a
minute, taking pictures of the couple in front of a large toothpaste poster. She
coughs as they pose, and Joker remarks, “…half these gook whores are serving
officers in the Viet Cong; The other half have got T.B. Make sure you only fuck
the ones that cough.” Suddenly, a teenaged boy walks up from behind Rafterman,
grabs his camera and throws it to a motorcyclist on the corner. The thief, after
running toward his partner, turns to display some kung fu moves, which Joker
mimics before the youth gets on the motorcycle and the pair ride away. The
vehicles of the busy rotary dissolve to tanks and a jeep at the Da Nang Marine
Base, where a helicopter flies past a red “Welcome Aboard” sign and lands as we
again dissolve, now to Joker and Rafterman walking through the base past some
marines playing with a basketball. Our protagonist enthuses about the thief’s
moves to his friend, and Rafterman, carrying a carton of cigarettes under his
arm, glumly replies, “We're supposed to be helping them and they shit all over
us every chance they get.” After Joker says, “Don't take it too hard,
Rafterman; it’s just business,” his comrade airs his real grievance – “A high
school girl could do my job. I want to get out into the shit. I want to get
some trigger time.” Joker, however, overrules him, saying that if he gets
killed, Rafterman’s mother will “beat the shit” out of him.
{We can use Rafterman’s camera to
picture Hamlet, a character whom Lacan portrays as representing} emergence at
the dawn of modern ethics … the relationship of the subject to his desire, what
I highlighted that it is at once the absence of mourning – and simply and
properly speaking of mourning by his mother – which made there vanish,
dissipate, collapse in the most radical way in him the possible elan of a
desire in this being. {Discussing the idolatrous veneration the Renaissance
protagonist described of his father for Gertrude, our professor notes the
result, when this ideal collapses:} what disappears in Hamlet is the power of
desire which will not, as I showed you, be restored until the vision outside of
a mourning, a true one, with which he enters into competition, that of Laertes
for his sister, for the object loved by Hamlet, and from whom he had found
himself suddenly, through lack of desire, separated. {Regarding the Freudian
work of mourning, to remember} everything that was experienced in terms of a
link with the beloved object{, Lacan tells us, i}t is this link that must be
restored with the fundamental object, the masked object, the object o, the
veritable object of the relationship, for which subsequently a substitute may
be provided... {Distinguishing the
object o at the fourth level from i(o),} through which every love, in so far as
this term implies the idealized dimension that I have spoken of, is structured
narcissistically, {Lacan notes that at this latter level,} it is the object that
triumphs. [18]
We cut to the inside of the office of the marine newspaper, Sea-Tiger. Lieutenant Lockhart, sitting
in front of a red banner that reads, “First to Go Last to Know: We Will Defend
to the Death Our Right to be Misinformed,” presides over the reporters. After asking
if there is anything new, he quickly dismisses Joker’s news of a rumor that the
Tet ceasefire will be cancelled – “The Tet holiday's like the Fourth of July,
Christmas and New Year all rolled into one. Every zipperhead in Nam, North and
South, will be banging gongs, barking at the moon and visiting his dead
relatives.” He then assigns Rafterman to cover a visit by Ann-Margret and
entourage, instructing him to get low angle shots – “Don't make it too obvious,
but I want to see fur and early morning dew.” He makes various corrections to
the correspondents’ pieces to make them more gratifying to their readers, finally
getting to Joker’s article, "Not While We're Eating--N.V.A. learn marines
on a search and destroy mission don't like to be interrupted while eating
chow." First handing down a directive to replace the phrase "search
and destroy mission" with "sweep and clear," he asks our
protagonist, “…where's the weenie?” clarifying that the story should include
news of a kill. He elaborates, “…we run two basic stories here. Grunts who give
half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants--Winning of Hearts and
Minds--okay? And combat action that results in a kill--Winning the War.” Joker,
sitting in front of a window sill housing Mickey Mouse toys, says that he saw
nothing, not even “blood trails,” but Lockheart insists on a “happy ending.”
When Joker responds sarcastically, evoking laughter from his fellows, the
Lieutenant, his handsome face registering mild annoyance, says, “…in case you
didn't know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to
report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.” At Joker’s
wry proposal that his superior go on some operations himself, the Lieutenant
replies, “I've had my ass in the grass. Can't say I liked it much. Lots of bugs
and too dangerous. As it happens, my present duties keep me where I belong. In
the rear with the gear.” We dissolve to a brief shot of the base, illustrating
the firework display that the narrator tells us the “gooks” are shooting off, as
the song, “Going to the Chapel” plays. A view of two marines walking, under an
exploding firework, into a barracks dissolves to its interior as the music softly
continues. We see Joker, on his bunk, writing before he complains of boredom – “I
ain't heard a shot fired in anger in weeks.” Another reporter, “Payback,” mocks
Joker’s pretense at being a seasoned combat correspondent – “Joker thinks the
bad bush is between old mama-san's legs.” He scoffs at our protagonist’s
attempt to humorously maintain the bluff, remarking, “You know he's never been
in the shit, 'cause he ain't got the stare,” a stare marine acquire after they
have “been in the shit for too long. It's like ... you've really seen beyond.”
{This scene can illuminate Lacan’s
explanation that} the i(o) of narcissism is there so that, at the fourth level,
the o should be masked, miscognised in its essence, {Lacan returns to the topic
of passage a l’acte - remarking that it is not coincidental that this happens
so often by (or through) a window;} it is the recourse to a structure which is
none other than the one that I emphasise as being that of the phantasy. {Our
professor notes that there is much to be said about the fifth level regarding
introjection and the “names of the father” that he hopes to discuss in a later
seminar. He ends this one by discussing the need, in overcoming anxiety, for
the Other to name himself, and comments:} This is only a trace, a trace of this
something which goes from the existence of o to its passage into history. What
makes of a psychoanalyis a unique adventure is this search for the agalma in
the field of the Other. I have often questioned you about what the desire of
the analyst should be in order that, there where we are trying to push things
beyond the limit of anxiety, work is possible.
Undoubtedly it is fitting that the analyst should be one who has been able, however little it may be, from some angle, from some tack, to make his desire sufficiently enter into this irreducible o to offer to the question of the concept of anxiety a real guarantee. [19]
Undoubtedly it is fitting that the analyst should be one who has been able, however little it may be, from some angle, from some tack, to make his desire sufficiently enter into this irreducible o to offer to the question of the concept of anxiety a real guarantee. [19]
We get a closeup of Rafterman’s baby-face as Payback
promises him that he will get the stare eventually, then another reporter,
“Stork,” makes a racist joke to African-American Payback that the way to keep
“five black dudes from raping a white chick” is to “Throw 'em a basketball.” Suddenly,
we hear mortar, and the men speculate on whether the fire is incoming or
outgoing until the barracks lights, which until then had been unnaturally
bright, blink. They go out as the men grab their gear and run, and we watch the
correspondents race through the besieged installation. Inside the bunker, our
hero prepares his weapon and half-jokingly tells Rafterman, “Hey, I hope
they're just fucking with us. I ain't ready for this shit.” A truck crashes
through the gates and explodes in flames as the marines hit it then mow down
the following Vietnamese troops with machine guns until getting the ceasefire
order. We dissolve to a day scene of Joker walking past the still-burning gates,
leashed prisoners in the foreground being led in the other direction, while we
hear a voiceover of Lockhart briefing his crew on the previous night’s “very deceitful”
attack. Inside of the Sea-Tiger
office, the lieutenant, still talking, circles the table of exhausted reporters
until he reaches his own chair. He concludes, “The civilian press are about to
wet their pants and we've heard even Cronkite's going to say the war is now
unwinnable. In other words, it's a huge
shit sandwich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite.” After a heavy pause,
Joker asks if this means that Ann-Margret is not coming.
{As promised, I’ll use the extra
film to explore a couple sessions of Lacan’s Desire seminar. Our professor discusses symptoms and inhibitions as
signs of desire, but notes that, since Freud’s day, analysts, such as Ronald
Fairbairn, have begun to describe the modern libido, the energy of desire, in
terms of object-rather than pleasure-seeking. Lacan warns of dangerous
consequences of such a trend,} since they make their appearance at the heart of
a doctrine which was precisely the first not alone to highlight, but even to
explain, what Freud has classified under the title of debasement in the sphere
of love, which means that if in effect desire seems to bring with it a certain
quantum in effect of love, it is indeed very precisely, and very often of a
love which presents itself to the personality as conflictual, of a love which
is not avowed, of a love which even refuses to avow itself. [20]
We get a closeup of Lockhart as he stares at Joker, then
turns to the men, his face silencing some giggling correspondents before he
turns back to the wisecracking private. His eyes briefly narrow, then his
expression changes into one of satisfaction as he says, “I want you to get
straight up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people.” Rafterman requests
permission to go with Joker, which the lieutenant grants and, when Joker
protests, asks, “You still here?” We then watch a helicopter carry the two
reporters and a doorgunner over the countryside. The gunman gleefully chants
“get some” as the fleeing peasants go down, then stops to laughingly tell the
other passengers, “Anyone who runs is a V.C. Anyone who stands still is a
well-disciplined V.C.” He then tells the reporters that they should do a story
about him sometime – “I've done got me one hundred and fifty-seven dead gooks
killed. And fifty water buffaloes, too.” At Joker’s questions, he acknowledges
that he has killed women and children, a deed he considers easy - “You just
don't lead 'em so much.”
{The helicopter can turn us to the
meaning of the word, “desire.” Our professor says that sufficient exploration
of} a certain relationship of the subject to the signifier {will reveal its
function in poetry. He then discusses the word as used in moral philosophy,
noting that such philosophy is based on} what could be called the hedonistic
tradition which consists in establishing a sort of equivalence between [the]
two terms of pleasure and object, in the sense that the object is the natural
object of libido, in the sense that it is a benefit, when all is said and done,
to admit pleasure to the rank of the goods sought by the subject, even indeed
to refuse it once one has the same criterion of it, to the rank of sovereign
good. {Noting the contradictions of the convergence of pleasure and the good,
our professor discusses Aristotle’s “ethic of mastery,” saying that even that
philosopher had to admit,} the desires … appear very quickly beyond a certain
limit which is precisely the limit of mastery and of the ego in the domain of
what he calls precisely bestiality. [21]
After exiting the helicopter, Joker and Rafterman pass
medics carrying wounded soldiers before our protagonist approaches a sergeant,
“Top,” saying, “We want to get in the shit.” After getting directions, the two
journalists move on, and we dissolve to marines going into the city of Hue and
refugees walking the other way. Joker
and Rafterman meet a lieutenant, “Touchdown,” who, as it happens, is Cowboy’s platoon
commander. After giving the reporters permission to “tag along,” Touchdown confirms
a rumored incident in which the N.V.A. executed “a lot of gook civilians,”
directing the pair to the scene.
{We can use this scene to
investigate Lacan’s further thoughts on desire. Elaborating on Aristotle, who,
Lacan notes, exiled desires from} the proper field of man, if it is a fact that
man is identified with the reality of the master{, our professor contrasts him
with Spinoza, quoting him that} “desire is the very essence of man.” {Lacan
then discusses an entry on desire in André Lalande’s Vocabulaire de la philosophie, and the confusions that arise from
it:} After all is desire the psychological reality, resistant to every organisation,
and when all is said and done is it by the subtraction of the characteristics
that are indicated as being those of the will that we can manage to approach
what the reality of desire is? [22]
Joker and Touchdown’s conversation dissolves into a closeup
of our protagonist’s head and shoulders as minimalist, foreboding music plays. The
camera slowly pulls back to reveal a trench full of lime-covered bodies, a
trench surrounded by people, many of them, like Rafterman, taking pictures. Our
narrator comments, “The dead know only one thing; It is better to be alive.” After
asking one of the men, Lieutenant Cleves, what the body count is, Joker asks
how it happened. Cleves, between smiling poses for the camera, says that the N.V.A.
went to their victims’ houses “real polite and asked them to report the next
day for political re-education. Everybody who turned up got shot. Some they
buried alive.” Suddenly, a colonel shouts “Marine!” and advances on Joker, badgering
him about his uniform – “You write ‘Born to Kill’ on your helmet and you wear a
peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?!” We get a low-angle shot of the inquisitor (our
protagonist to the left of the screen,) who demands the meaning of the
conflicting signals. Joker, standing at attention, says that he thinks he “was
trying to suggest something about the duality of man,” and, at the colonel’s
query, elaborates – “the Jungian thing, sir.” The officer admonishes him to “jump
on the team and come on in for the big win,” tells him, “all I've ever asked of
my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God,” and
concludes, “…inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It's a
hardball world, son. We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows
over.”
{With the colonel’s observations,
we can examine our professor’s discussion of the role of} phantasy in so far as
it introduces an essential articulation, or more exactly an altogether
characteristic species within this vague determination of the non-opposition of
the subject to the object{, noting in regard to} the final terms of idealism,
of pragmatism, which are implied here … how difficult it seems to situate
desire and to analyse it in function of purely objectal references. {Lacan
points out the complexity of the link between} man’s capture in the components
of the signifying chain {and his reality due to his need to enter into language
and its pre-existing discourse in order to speak:} I would say that this law of
subjectivity which analysis especially highlights, its fundamental dependence
on language is something which is so essential that it brings all the
psychologies together. {Our lecturer gives us the following reason why subjectivity,
in so far as the subject} is captured away beyond the knowledge that he has of
it, is a subjectivity which is not immanent to a sensibility in so far as here
the term sensibility means the couple stimulus-response…: the stimulus here is
given in function of a code which imposes its order, if needs be must be
translated into it. {Discussing} a sign which from the external milieu forces
the organism to respond, to defend itself, {Lacan tells us,} in so far as
subjectivity is captured in language, there is the emission, not of a sign, but
of a signifier, namely be sure to remember the following which appears simple:
that something, the signifier which takes on value not as is said when one
speaks in communications theory of something, which takes on its value in
relation to a third thing, that this sign still represents quite recently, this
can be read with three terms{: subject, signifier, and sign. He warns, however,
that the idea that} it is enough to have a sign and to say that this sign
signifies a third thing, that it simply represents, {is a false construction.
Showing three diagrams he had drawn[*] he adds,} the subject must after all
take his place here, but you should not see here a stage in the sense that it
would be a question of a typical stage, of a stage of development, it is rather
a question of a generating, and to be more explicit, of a logical anteriority
of each one of these schemas with respect to the one which follows. [23 (scholarly
citations removed)]
As Joker and his captain salute,
they dissolve to our protagonist walking with his alter ego through a windswept
landscape to a pagoda courtyard where his friend’s squad is stationed. “Wooly Bully”
[24] plays as we see them approach a shaving Cowboy before Joker addresses him
- “Hey Lone Ranger.” They laugh and hug, overcome with emotion, before Cowboy playfully
asks his friend if he has been “getting any.” When Joker mimics his friend’s confiding
pose, answering, “only your sister,” Cowboy rejoins, “Well, better my sister
than my mom, though my mom's not bad,” and they again laugh. Clapping Joker on
the back, his friend introduces the reporters to the First Platoon (the “Lusthog
squad,”) - “We're life-takers and heartbreakers.” A large marine walks up to
Joker, challenging his self-identification of “combat correspondent” – “Oh, you
seen much combat?” As the music plays
on, the “grunt” continues to provoke the newcomer, who tries to lighten the
mood, reminding the soldier of his nickname. Not to be deterred, the grunt
says, “Well, I got a joke for you. I'm gonna tear you a new asshole.” Summoning
his John Wayne voice, our protagonist replies, “Well, pilgrim ... only after
you ... eat the peanuts out of my sheeat!” After glaring at Joker, his
antagonist smirks – “You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?” As Cowboy holds the
journalist back, another marine, “Eightball,” steps up - “Now you might not
believe it but under fire Animal Mother is one of the finest human beings in
the world. All he needs is somebody to throw hand grenades at him the rest of
his life.” After he leads his friend away, we cut to another soldier, “Crazy
Earl” who calls Rafterman to him. Indicating a figure next to him with a hat
over his face, Earl introduces his “brother.” He pulls the hat away, and the
singer screams as we realize that we are looking at a corpse. Rafterman takes
pictures as Earl says that it is the dead N.V.A. soldier’s “birthday.” His
“brother” praises “the little Commie bastards” – “as hard as slant-eyed drill
instructors,” and tells his comrades, “After we rotate back to the world, we're
gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting.”
{We can use these scenes to focus
on the diagram Lacan uses when he says that the capital “D” represents the signifying
battery.} This basic fundamental structure, subjects every manifestation of
language to the condition of being ruled by a succession, in other words by a
diachrony, by something which unfolds over time. {Describing this battery,} concerning
which one can pose the value with respect to a third thing that it represents,
but it takes on its value with respect to another signifier which it is not{. He notes,} The important thing is the following which is indicated by the
dotted line which has come to intersect from the front to the back the line
representing the signifying chain, by cutting it at two points, namely the way
in which the subject has to enter into the operation of the signifying chain.
The thing that is represented by the dotted line represents the first encounter
at the synchronic level, at the level of the simultaneity of signifiers. {Indicating
“the point of encounter with the code,” our professor brings up the child’s
communication with the mother:} it is in so far as there is something which
operates as the operation of the signifier, as the word-mill, that the subject
has to learn very early on that there is here a path, a defile through which
essentially the manifestations of his needs must stoop in order to be
satisfied. {Lacan proceeds to the second point of intersection, in which it} is
retroactively that the message takes shape from the signifier which is there
ahead of it, from the code which is ahead of it, and which inversely it, the
message, while it is being formulated at every instant, anticipates, draws on.
{Our lecturer reminds his students of the result of this process:} what is at
the origin in the form of the birth of need, of the tendency, as the
psychologists call it, which is represented here on the schema, here at the
level of this Id which does not know what it is, which being captured in
language, does not reflect itself by (de) this innocent contribution of
language in which the subject at first becomes discourse. [25]
Watching the squad move toward Hue City in tanks and on
foot, we get various closeups of the men looking warily around them before we
see the burning ruins of its buildings, one of which still decorated with a
large toothpaste billboard identical to the one in Da Nang. Suddenly, among
several mortar explosions, Lieutenant Touchdown gets shot, and, after a call from
a squad member, Sergeant Murphy, to “Delta Six,” Earl takes command. The Squad reaches
the remains of the city, a firefight ensues, and one of the men, “Handjob,” is killed.
We see Earl loading his gun, thus missing a group of N.V.A. soldiers, but, after
a short time, shooting down a couple of stragglers. Looking up from his weapon,
he gradually relaxes and smiles, and the song "Surfin' Bird"
[26] plays. It continues as we get a montage of the marines engaging in various
activities, such as bringing their tanks in, guiding a helicopter landing, and
posing for a television camera. As they hunker down behind a low wall, the
cameramen passing them, Joker repeats the “John Wayne” question he asked in
basic training. Cowboy yells out, “…this is Vietnam, The Movie!” and the
others, as the lens turns on each marine, call out their roles: one saying
he’ll be a horse, another, Ann-Margaret. A third, “Doc Jay,” says, “Animal
Mother can be a rabid buffalo,” and the identified marine says, “…we'll let the
gooks play the Indians!”
{Here we can direct our attention
to the second stage of Lacan’s schema, where he notes that} something else is
going to appear which is linked to the fact that it is in the experience of
language that there is founded his apprehension of the other as such, of this
other who can give him the answer, the answer to his appeal, this other to whom
fundamentally he poses the question which we see in Cazotte’s Le diable
amoureux, as being the roar of the terrifying form which represents the
apparition of the super-ego, in response to the one who has evoked him in a
Neapolitan tavern: “Che vuoi? What do you want?” {Beyond the simple principle
of succession, our professor infers,} We now have a principle of substitution,
because – and this is essential – it is this commutativity from which there is
established for the subject what I call, between the signifier and the
signified, the bar, namely that there is between the signifier and the
signified this co-existence, this simultaneity which is at the same time marked
by a certain inpenetrability, I mean the maintenance of the difference, of the
distance between the signifier and the signified. {Bringing up that another
term, “similarity,” emerges, Lacan adds,} one of the signifying terms will be
or not similar to another, … there also operates a certain dimension of things
which is properly speaking the metonymical dimension{, that of poetry. Lacan
promises to return to the topic, for now saying,} I told you, that it is in the
experience of the other qua other having a desire, that this second stage of
experience is produced. Desire, starting with its apparition, its origin, is
manifested in this interval, this gap which separates the pure and simple
linguistic articulation of the word, from the thing which marks that the
subject realises in it something of himself which only has import, meaning in
relation to this production of the word and which is properly speaking what
language calls his being. [27]
We see a helicopter fly away before cutting to the two dead
soldiers surrounded by their squad. The camera gives us closeups of each of the
men, from the corpses’ point of view, as they solemnly react to the deaths –
one (“The Rock”) saying, “You’re going home, now,” another (Earl,) “Semper fi”
- before Animal Mother remarks, “Better you than me.” Rafterman proclaims that
they at least “died for a good cause … freedom,” and Animal Mother tells him to
flush out his headgear – “You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a
slaughter. If I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word ... my word is ‘poontang’."
Cowboy then says, “Tough break for Hand Job. He was all set to get shipped out
on a medical” - a “section eight” - for masturbating “at least ten times a day.”
We then cut to the cameramen as they prepare for Hue City Interviews, and we
see each soldier in turn giving his thoughts on the war. Animal Mother
describes their job – “…to make sure that there are no little Vietnamese
waiting with, like, B-40 rockets that blow the tanks away. So we clear it out
and we roll the tanks in and ... basically, blow the place to hell.” Cowboy,
somewhat confusedly, says that the recent battle is “…like a war. You know like
what I thought about a war, what I thought a war was, was supposed to be.
There's the enemy, kill 'em.” Rafterman boasts about the marines “…we're the
best … When the shit really hits the fan, who do they call? They call Mother
Green and her killing machine!”
{Rafterman can give us a boost to
Lacan’s third stage, where he points out a gap between} the avatars of [a
subject’s] demand and what these avatars have made him become, and on the other
hand this exigency for recognition by the other which can be called exigency
for love on this occasion, that there is situated a horizon of being for the
subject of whom there is question, namely of knowing whether the subject can
reach it or not. {This stage is constituted by the} presence of the desire of
the other as opaque, as obscure{, producing a feeling of helplessness from
which the ego defends himself}, and with this means that the imaginary experience
of the relationship to the other gives him, he constructs something which is
the difference between the flexible specular experience with the other, because
what the subject reflects, are not simply games of prestige, it is not his
opposition to the other in prestige and in pretence, it is himself as speaking
subject, and this is why what I designate for you here as being this way out,
this locus of reference by means of which desire is going to learn to situate
itself, is the phantasy. [28 (scholarly citations removed)]
The interviews continue, some marines expressing their views
with enthusiasm, some with dismay, and some with humor. Eightball poignantly
comments that he doesn’t “think the Vietnamese want to be involved in this war.
I mean ...they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the
gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I
guess. Poor dumb bastards.” Joker has the last word - Standing in front of a
cinema displaying a movie poster of a cowboy whose arms are raised in the
process of throwing an “Indian” to the ground - he remarks, “I wanted to see
exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and
stimulating people of an ancient culture and ... kill them. I wanted to be the
first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.” We cut to an ARVN soldier on a
motor scooter conveying a teenage girl past the rubble. We hear admiring exclamations
from the Lusthog Squad as she gets off the vehicle and moves toward them, then
we cut to the men as Cowboy says, “Good morning, little schoolgirl, I’m a
little schoolboy, too.”
{Defining phantasy as an activity
that can be} articulated in terms of the subject speaking to the imaginary
other, {Lacan explains,} This is why human desire is adjusted (coapte) not to
an object, but to a phantasy. {He adds,} Perversion, deviation, even delusion
are articulated in an objectification which ties the imaginary and the symbolic
together, {and provides an example. Referring to a book by Darwin on expression,
our professor recounts an anecdote from it, in which the author} heard Sydney
Smith at a soiree, saying quite calmly the following sentence “I hear that dear
old Lady Cock has been overlooked”. In reality overlook means that the
supervisor did not spot her, the etymological meaning. Overlook is commonly
used in the English language. … Darwin marvels at the fact that it was
absolutely perfectly clear to everyone, without the slightest doubt that that
meant that the devil had forgotten her [a connotation that sent the devil’s
“shadow” through the company], I mean that he had forgotten to carry her into
the tomb, which seems to have been at that moment in the mind of the listener
her natural, even wished-for place. And Darwin really leaves the question open:
How did he achieve this effect, says Darwin? You know, I am really unable to
say. {Lacan speculates that most conversations about the lady in question were
along the lines of,} “I heard it being said all the same that things are not
going too well”, therefore that the substitution of something which appears
that what is expected is news about the health of the old woman, because when
one is talking about old ladies it is always with their health that one is
concerned, is replaced by something different, indeed by something which from a
certain point of view is irreverent. {Our professor continues that, due to this
choice of words, i}f this unexpected had not precisely been characterised as
unexpected, it is something original which in a certain way had to be realised
in the mind of each person according to his own angles of refraction. In any
case there is the fact that there is an opening up of a new signified by this
something which ensures for example that Sydney Smith is on the whole thought
to be a wit, namely does not express himself in cliches. But why the devil? [29]
Cowboy asks, “What you got there, chief?!” and the soldier
answers that the girl “will give you everything you want, long time” for
fifteen dollars each. When the men complain about the price, the pimp asks for
ten, but Cowboy insists on five, finally offering to add “some ARVN rifles.
Never been fired and only dropped once.” The “chief” complies, and Eightball approaches
with his money. After the prostitute argues in Vietnamese with her pimp, he
tells Eightball that she won’t have sex with “soul brotha” and, placing his
hands as if to measure, adds, “Too beaucoup.” Eightball cries, “Hey, what the
mother fuck?” but Cowboy says, “I think what he's trying to tell you is that
you black boys pack too much meat.” Laughing, “This baby-san looks like she
could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch,” Eightball says, “Now what we have
here, little yellow sister, is a magnificent...[takes out his dick] specimen of
pure Alabama blacksnake. But it ain't too goddamn boo-coo.” The teen agrees to go
with him, and Eightball takes her arm, when Animal Mother suddenly stands up
and takes her other one, saying, “I'm going first.” Eightball objects, “…back
off, white bread. Don't get between a dog and his meat,” but his rival slaps
his wrist off her and pulls her away, “joking,” “All fucking niggers must
fucking hang.” The pair walk into the theater, and the screen goes black. We
then get a view, almost colorless except for the vestigial fires, of the
remains of the city. The men walk through the debris as the narrator tells us
that his squad has been sent to check out a report that the enemy had vacated
the city. We then see Crazy Earl walk through a gutted building before he
triggers an explosion by picking up a booby-trapped toy bunny.
{This lure can help us catch what Lacan
means in his explanation of Smith’s assertion as a kind of phantasy. He points
to his chart as demonstrating the mechanisms behind it - The anecdote
demonstrates } that if there is here a dimension in which death, or the fact
that there is no more, can be both directly evoked, and at the same time
veiled, but in any case incarnated, become immanent in an act, it is indeed
that of signifying articulation. [Smith here] poses himself as someone who does
not fear to meet on equal terms the one he is talking about, to put himself at
the same level, under the influence of the same fault, of the same terminal
legislation by the absolute master who is here made present. {Lacan contrasts
the first schema on his chart - the “innocent image” - with the second and
third, which symbolize a more conscious use of knowledge, yet where what Freud
called the unconscious is to be found} And why? Because at the level at which
the subject is himself engaged, himself inserted into the word and because of
that into the relationship to the other as such, as locus of the word, there is
a signifier which is always lacking. Why? Because it is a signifier, and the
signifier is specially assigned to the relationship of the subject with the
signifier. This signifier has a name, it is the phallus. {Elaborating on this
concept and the intimate connection between language and the castration complex,
Lacan concludes that a metaphorical unveiling such as Smith’s} challenges what
is always veiled by language, and what it always veils at the final term, is
death.
This always tends to give rise to, to make emerge this enigmatic figure of the missing signifier, of the phallus which appears here, and as always of course under the form that is called diabolical, the ear, the skin even the phallus itself, and if in this usage of the wager, the tradition of English wit, of this something contained which none the less does not dissimulate the most violent desire, but this usage is enough in itself to make appear in the imaginary, in the other who is there as a spectator in the small o, this image of the subject in so far as he is marked by this relationship to the special signifier which is called prohibition, here on this occasion in so far as it violates a prohibition, in so far as it shows that beyond the prohibitions which make up the law of languages, this is not the way to talk about old ladies. [30]
This always tends to give rise to, to make emerge this enigmatic figure of the missing signifier, of the phallus which appears here, and as always of course under the form that is called diabolical, the ear, the skin even the phallus itself, and if in this usage of the wager, the tradition of English wit, of this something contained which none the less does not dissimulate the most violent desire, but this usage is enough in itself to make appear in the imaginary, in the other who is there as a spectator in the small o, this image of the subject in so far as he is marked by this relationship to the special signifier which is called prohibition, here on this occasion in so far as it violates a prohibition, in so far as it shows that beyond the prohibitions which make up the law of languages, this is not the way to talk about old ladies. [30]
After calling “Hotel One Actual,” saying that Earl is down, Cowboy,
looking scared, turns to Joker, telling him, “I'm squad leader.” Joker attempts
to reassure him, and Doc says that Earl is dead. A shot of the men walking past
a burning, felled building dissolves into one of Cowboy walking alone before we
see Eightball signal the squad to crouch down and for their leader to follow
him. The two squat behind a barrier, then Eightball takes out a map, telling Cowboy
that he thinks they made a mistake at the last checkpoint. They confer,
Eightball doubtfully saying he thinks they should change direction. The squad
leader signals the men to come forward. When Joker reaches Cowboy, his friend conveys
Eightball’s message and, to our protagonist’s asking, “What, are we lost?” whispers,
“Joker, shut the fuck up!”
{Lacan maps out his next class proposing
to elaborate on his graph, and, though warning that “comprehension” is a
problematical term, says that it will help us find our bearings on} three
things which I should say, one very frequently finds confused to the point that
one slips without warning between one and the other … The repressed, desire and
the unconscious. {Noting a perplexity that often arises between the term “the
repressed” and the other two, he returns to his graph} to show the
relationships which are essential for us, even though we are analysts, of the
speaking subject with the signifier.
When all is said and done, the question around which these two stages are divided, is the same for the speaking subject – it is a good sign – is the same for him and for us. I was saying just now: do we know what we are doing? Well in his case too does he know or not what he is doing when he speaks? Which means: can he effectively signify for himself his action of signification? {Elaborating on the second and third schema, he says that both stages} function at the same time in the smallest act of speech, and you will see what I mean, and how far I extend the term act of speech (acte de parole). [31 (scholarly citations removed)]
When all is said and done, the question around which these two stages are divided, is the same for the speaking subject – it is a good sign – is the same for him and for us. I was saying just now: do we know what we are doing? Well in his case too does he know or not what he is doing when he speaks? Which means: can he effectively signify for himself his action of signification? {Elaborating on the second and third schema, he says that both stages} function at the same time in the smallest act of speech, and you will see what I mean, and how far I extend the term act of speech (acte de parole). [31 (scholarly citations removed)]
Announcing the change to his men, Cowboy says, “Eightball's
gonna go out and see if he can find a way.” Jumping the barrier, Eightball
crosses to some nearby buildings, and we cut to a point of view from inside one
of the ruins. The camera slowly rises from the darkness to an opening that
reveals the scout motioning the others to join him. We then get a closeup of
Eightball getting hit and falling, then we cut to his comrades as they open
fire. They shoot wildly until Cowboy orders a ceasefire, and, when they finally
comply, he asks if anyone saw a sniper. After a negative reply, the squad
leader tells them to save their ammo until he orders them to shoot. The sniper
again hits Eightball and we get a slow motion shot of him writhing, then of
Animal Mother firing until another marine, Donlon, brings the radio to Cowboy. Telling
Sergeant Murphy that he believes there is a strong enemy force occupying the buildings
in front of them, the squad leader requests immediate tank support.
{With this speculation we can look at
Lacan’s theory as he re-states himself in terms of the graph:} that the
processes in question start at the same time from the four points, delta, 0, d
and D … in this relationship respectively the intention of the subject, the
subject qua speaking, the act of demanding {and that they} therefore are simultaneous
along these four paths: d-delta-I-S(, )
{implying} two stages in the fact that the subject does something which is in
relation to the dominant action, the dominant structure of the signifier. At
the lower stage he receives, he undergoes this structure. {Our professor then
warns against thinking that the foregoing will allow us to see the process in}
all its generality, namely that this engenders a certain lack of
understanding{, adding that} every time that you understand, that is where the
danger begins. {He advises us that} in the context of the subject in so far as
he is here at this level, at this stage, the line of the intentionality of the
subject, of what we supposed to be the subject, a subject in so far as he has
not become the speaking subject, in so far as he is the subject of whom one
always speaks, of whom I would say, he is still spoken about, because I do not
know that anyone has ever really properly made the distinction as I am trying
here to introduce it to you, the subject of knowledge, to speak plainly the
subject correlative to the object, the subject around whom turns the eternal
question of idealism, and who is himself an ideal subject, has always something
problematical namely that after all as has been pointed out, and as his name
indicates, he is only supposed.
It is not the same thing, as you will see, for the subject who speaks, who imposes himself with complete necessity. [The first subject is] the subject of need … demand of [this] subject is at the same time profoundly modified by the fact that need must pass through the defiles of the signifier. [32 (scholarly citations removed)]
It is not the same thing, as you will see, for the subject who speaks, who imposes himself with complete necessity. [The first subject is] the subject of need … demand of [this] subject is at the same time profoundly modified by the fact that need must pass through the defiles of the signifier. [32 (scholarly citations removed)]
Doc J protests that Eightball can’t wait until the tank
arrives, but Cowboy insists, “That sniper's just trying to suck us in one at a
time!” After Eightball gets hit a fourth time, the doctor cries, “Man, fuck
this, fuck this shit! I'm going out to bring him in!” The squad covers him as
he goes out to help Eightball, then stops as he reaches him. We watch from the
sniper’s point of view as the new target starts to drag his fellow marine to
the barrier, then we get a closeup of Doc J as the sniper hits him. We then cut
from Cowboy, telling the reacting troops to ceasefire, to the doctor as he is
hit again, then back to Cowboy as he tells Donlon, “Gimme that fucking radio.”
Murphy then informs then that he has had no luck so far with the tank.
{We can turn at this hinderance to
follow Lacan as he continues,} it is precisely in this exchange which is produced
between the primitive unconstituted position of the subject of need and the
structural conditions imposed by the signifier, that there resides what is
produced and what is represented here on this schema by the fact that the line
D – S is unbroken up to 0, while further on it remains fragmented; that
inversely it is in so far as it is anterior to s(0) that the so-called line of
intentionality, on this occasion of the subject, is fragmented and that it is
only unbroken afterwards, let us say especially in this segment, and even
provisionally because it is secondarily that I will have to insist on that in
this case, in so far as you do not have to take into account the line O – O ^ d
– S ( O ) -s(0).(?) {Our professor then asks} what is represented by this
continuity of the line up to this point 0 which you know is the locus of the
code, the locus where there lies the treasury of the tongue in its synchrony, I
mean the sum of the thematic or taxematic elements, without which there is no
means of communication between beings who are submitted to the conditions of
language. [33]
Believing that the enemy is just about to attack, Cowboy tells
the men to pull out while they still can. Animal Mother objects, however, saying
there is only one sniper, and that they can’t leave their comrades-in-arms. Cowboy
responds, “I know it's a shitty thing to do, but we can't refuse to accept the
situation.” Animal Mother fails to get his fellow marines to follow his lead
after Cowboy issues a direct order for him to step down, but, when the sniper
again hits Doc J, the rebellious marine yells, “Fuck you, Cowboy! Fuck all you
assholes!” and charges into the open. We get a view of him running towards us sporting
his war face, shooting his machine gun as his squad try to cover him.
{Continuing his argument, Lacan
elaborates that the aforementioned line represents} that it is this synchrony
of the systematic organisation of the tongue, I mean that synchronically, and
it is given here as a system, as a set within which each of these elements has
its value qua distinct from the others, from the other signifiers, from the
other elements of the system. {He repeats that this is} the starting point of
everything that we articulate about communication. This is what is always forgotten
in theories of communication, it is that what is communicated is not the sign
of something else, and it is simply the sign of what is in the place where
another signifier is not. {Our professor elaborates on the process of learning
to speak in its synchronic and diachronic aspects:} it is in function of the
synchronic solidity of the code from which these successive elements are
borrowed that there is conceived this solidity of diachronic affirmation and
the constitution of what is called in the articulation of the demand, the time
of the formulation. {Contrasting the solid, continuous line of the signifier
with the broken one of the subject, he adds,} You know that the problem of the
continuity of the subject has been posed to the psychologists for a long time,
namely why a being essentially given over to what one can call intermittency,
not just of the heart as has been said, but of many other things, can pose
itself and affirm itself as ego. [34 (scholarly citations removed)]
Squatting beside a building a few yards away from the downed
men, Animal Mother asks Doc J where the sniper is. The doctor weakly tries to
raise his pointing hand before the sniper riddles him with bullets. We get a
closeup of Animal Mother’s horrified face before he cautiously looks around the
corner of the building. He pulls back as the sniper fires, then scouts other
areas before calling to the others – “Doc Jay and Eightball are wasted! There's
only one sniper, nothing else. Move up the squad! You're clear up to here! Come
on!”
{I’ll summon Lacan back here as he puts
into question the aforementioned problem, adding that} already the putting into
play of a need in the demand is already something which simplifies this subject
with respect to the more or less chaotic, … random interferences between the
different needs. {Emphasizing the retroactive changeableness of the line delta,
our professor notes,} it is on this side not of the code, but of the message
itself that the line appears in its fragmented form. {Beyond this line, Lacan
adds,} is the identification which results from it of the subject to the other
of the demand in so far as she is all-powerful. {Stressing this sense of
omnipotence, he proposes to} designate what I mean by that in the evolution, in
the development, in the acquisition of language, in the child-mother
relationships, to finally come to it, it is very precisely this: that this
something that is in question and on which there reposes this primary
identification that I designate by the segment s(0), the signified of 0, and
which culminates in the first nucleus, as this is currently expressed in
analysis in the writings of Mr. Glover, you will see this articulated: the
first nucleus of the formation of the ego, the kernel of the identification in
which this process here culminates, is a question of what is produced in so far
as the mother is not simply the one who gives the breast (sein) – as I told you
– she is also the one who gives the sign (seing) of signifying articulation,
and not only in so far as she speaks to the child as she obviously does, and
well before she can presume that he understands anything of it, just as he
understands things well before she imagines he does, but in so far as all sorts
of the mother’s games, the games of hide-and-seek for example which so quickly
give rise in the infant to a smile, even to a laugh, are properly speaking already
a symbolic action in the course of which what she reveals to him, is precisely
the function of the symbol qua revelatory. [35 (scholarly citations removed)]
Cowboy curses under his breath, then orders No-Doze,
Stutten, Donlon, and Rock to come with him, and the rest to “cover their ass.”
Joker says, “I’m coming with you,” and Rafterman follows suit. [36] The squad
leader consents, and after calling to his men, “You all set?” leads them past
the burning wreckage toward Animal Mother.
{Cowboy’s choices can help us as we
pick through our next passages, where Lacan attributes the confusion his
students have had with his chart to Cartesian philosophy. He distinguishes
between the “I” as} the one who is the support of the message, namely someone
who varies from instant to instant{, which} can never be referred to something
which can be defined in function of other elements of the code therefore as a
semanteme{, and} the true subject of the act of speaking as such, and this is
even what gives to the simplest I-discourse, I would say always a presumption
of indirect discourse… The I in question is particularly tangible, precisely,
because of the structure that I am evoking, where it is fully hidden and where
it is fully hidden is in these forms of discourse which realise what I shall
call the vocative function, namely those which only cause the addressee to
appear in their signifying structure and absolutely not the I. {Referring to a
previous seminar of his, Lacan adds,} it is the I underlying the “You are the
one who will follow me” (tu es celui qui me suivra), on which I insisted to
such an extent, and which you see moreover to be part of the whole problem of a
certain future within the vocative properly speaking, the vocatives of
vocation. {Elaborating on two forms of the quoted sentence, our professor
explains,} This difference of the performative power of the tu in this case is
effectively a real difference of the I in so far as it operates in this act of
speaking which it represents and which is a question of showing once again and
at this level that the subject always receives his own message, namely what is
here to be avowed, namely the I in an inverted form, namely through the
mediation of the form that it gives to the tu. [37]
After the men join the audacious marine, he whispers,
motioning with his head, “Cowboy .. . top of the black building, around the corner.
[38] After studying the hiding-place, Cowboy gets the radio from Donlon, and we
see the sniper’s point-of-view revealing him through a hole in the wall. As Cowboy
falls the camera zooms in on the Texas-shaped hole in the My Toan building. We
cut back to the men as they realize the source of the bullets. Joker and three
others carry their squad leader behind the building, [39] where they apply
first aid and offer encouragement. Joker tells his friend that he will be all
right, Cowboy says, “Don't shit me!” and the journalist rejoins, “I wouldn't
shit you, man. You're my favorite turd.” As the squad leader starts to lose consciousness,
Donlon tells him to hang on, and Cowboy, blood coming out of his mouth,
whispers, “I can hack it.”
{We could use Cowboy’s
determination to understand Lacan’s discussion as he emphasizes that at both
stages, the discourse is the discourse of the other – Our professor points out
another French homophonique equivocation in the fiat,} a fiat which is the
source and the root of what beginning from the tendency, becomes and is
inscribed for the speaking being in the register of willing, or again of the I,
in so far as it is divided into the two terms that have been studied of the one
and the other, of the imperative, of the “take up thy bed and walk” which I
spoke about above, or in relation to the subject, of the setting up of his own
ego. {Our professor stresses the symbolic nature of actions and returns to his
earlier question of whether the subject knows what he is doing when he is
speaking; Lacan, following Freud, says no:} It is nothing else that is
expressed by the second stage of my graph, namely that this second stage only
takes on its importance from the question of the other, namely Che vuoi?, what
do you want, that up to the time of that question we remain of course in a
state of innocence and foolishness. {Pointing to where, on his chart,} are
placed the points of intersection between the true discourse which is
maintained by the subject and what manifests itself as willing (youloir) in the
articulation of the word{, our professor explains,} at the level of the act of
the word, the code is given by something which is not the primitive demand,
which is a certain relationship of the subject to this demand in so far as the
subject has remained marked by its avatars. {Discussing} the admission of the
premises that we situate here at the level of the code, {Lacan maintains that
the message the subject receives is itself the problem of the analytic
perspective. He symbolizes this message, “a purely hypothetical form,” with an
X, Then, after summing up, he says,} I have told you, I want to express it all
the same, why this signifier was the phallus. I would ask even those who are
hearing it for the first time, to accept this provisionally. [40 (scholarly
citations removed)]
We see Animal Mother shoot the My Toan sign off the black
building before we cut back to the squad leader as he convulses, repeats “I can
hack it,” then goes limp. Joker embraces him, tries to achieve eye contact, then
lays him down, still holding him and weeping. He sits back up and the other men
rise before we cut to Animal Mother. Coming around the side of the building,
the large marine looks at Joker, and we get a closeup of his stony demeanor as he
says, “Let's go get some payback.” Joker, the burning “monolith” behind him,
raises his head, his own face turning hard as he says, “OK.” The men scuttle
toward the courtyard, and Animal Mother and Joker throw smoke grenades before
crossing to the My Toan building. We cut to the Inside and hear music (the
music from when Joker had seen the body-filled trenches) as we view the men
walk in and out of the shadows.
{At this nightmarish scene we can
glimpse Lacan’s point as he emphasizes,} this is the reason why he cannot have
the response because since the only possible response is the signifier which designates
the relationships with the signifier, namely if it were already in question in
the very measure that he articulates this response, he, the subject is
abolished and disappears. It is precisely this which ensures that the only
thing about it that he can be aware of, is this threat directly aimed at the
phallus. {Acknowledging that he has been “juggling a bit too much with being
and having,” he justifies this juggling, which} allows there to be produced
within my teaching something with all the characteristics of what I would call
the medical stamp. {Getting back to his graph, he indicates where desire fits:}
you have here a dotted line which goes from the code of the second stage to its
message through the intermediary of two elements, d signifies the place from
which the subject descends and $ in front of o signifies … the phantasy.
This has a form, a disposition homologous to the line which, from 0, includes in the discourse of the ego, the e in the discourse, let us say the person filled out with the image of the other, namely this specular relationship which I posed for you as being fundamental for the establishment of the ego. {Lacan promises to later articulate the “relationship between the two stages,” a reproduction of a} relationship at the level of the field of the gap determined between the two discourses, in so far as this imaginary relationship reproduces homologously the game of prestige which is established in the relationship with the other{. He then turns back to} the term desire, situated, planted within this economy. {Noting that Freud first used the term} in connection with dreams and in the form of the Wunsch, … a formulated desire, it is an articulated desire. {Proposing to elaborate on the distinction between Wunsch and desire, Lacan refers to The Interpretation of Dreams, where} from the first pages, and to the very end, that if you think of desire in the form as I might say that you have to deal with it all the time in analytic experience, namely one that gives you a lot of work to do because of its excesses, its deviations, because, after all let us say it, most often because of its deficiencies, I mean sexual desire, that which by turns, even though in the whole analytic field there has always been brought to play on it a quite remarkable pressure to put it in the shade… [41]
This has a form, a disposition homologous to the line which, from 0, includes in the discourse of the ego, the e in the discourse, let us say the person filled out with the image of the other, namely this specular relationship which I posed for you as being fundamental for the establishment of the ego. {Lacan promises to later articulate the “relationship between the two stages,” a reproduction of a} relationship at the level of the field of the gap determined between the two discourses, in so far as this imaginary relationship reproduces homologously the game of prestige which is established in the relationship with the other{. He then turns back to} the term desire, situated, planted within this economy. {Noting that Freud first used the term} in connection with dreams and in the form of the Wunsch, … a formulated desire, it is an articulated desire. {Proposing to elaborate on the distinction between Wunsch and desire, Lacan refers to The Interpretation of Dreams, where} from the first pages, and to the very end, that if you think of desire in the form as I might say that you have to deal with it all the time in analytic experience, namely one that gives you a lot of work to do because of its excesses, its deviations, because, after all let us say it, most often because of its deficiencies, I mean sexual desire, that which by turns, even though in the whole analytic field there has always been brought to play on it a quite remarkable pressure to put it in the shade… [41]
Animal Mother sends Rock and Donlon one way and has the two
reporters follow him, then sends Joker through one door and walks with
Rafterman through another. Our protagonist explores what had once been a
stately room, passing numerous small fires, an upside-down Viet Cong flag, and
a flier with graphic of a descending fist. Peeking around a square pillar, he sees
the enemy at the window, silhouetted against the firelight. Joker tries to shoot,
but his rifle jams. We then get a slow-motion closeup of the sniper as she
whirls around - a girl of about fifteen years old.
{This disclosure can open us to our
next segment. Remarking on the difficulty of grasping} this famous desire,
which is supposed to be found everywhere in each dream, {Lacan discusses a
dream of Freud’s known as “Irma’s injection” [*], He then asks:
W}hat does it mean when one says to a woman: “I desire you”? {After considering
some options, he answers,} To say to someone: “I desire you”, is very precisely
to say to her – but this is not always obvious in experience, except for the
courageous and instructive little perverts, big and little ones – is to say: “I
am implicating you in my fundamental phantasy”. {Our professor then refers to
his graph,} designating this [essential] point of the phantasy … around which I
will show you the next day therefore how to situate the decisive point at which
there must appear, if this term of desire has a meaning different to that of
wish in the dream, where there must appear the interpretation of desire.
This point then is here, and you can see that it forms part of the dotted circuit the one with this sort of little tail which is found at the second stage of the graph. {Lacan adds, T}his little dotted line, is nothing other than the circuit within which we can consider that there turn – this is why it is constructed like that – it is because it turns, once it is fed at the beginning it turns within indefinitely – that there turn the elements of the repressed. {He promises in his next class to demonstrate, through Freud’s articles, “The Unconscious” and “Repression,” how this means that} nothing can ever be repressed except signifying elements. [42]
This point then is here, and you can see that it forms part of the dotted circuit the one with this sort of little tail which is found at the second stage of the graph. {Lacan adds, T}his little dotted line, is nothing other than the circuit within which we can consider that there turn – this is why it is constructed like that – it is because it turns, once it is fed at the beginning it turns within indefinitely – that there turn the elements of the repressed. {He promises in his next class to demonstrate, through Freud’s articles, “The Unconscious” and “Repression,” how this means that} nothing can ever be repressed except signifying elements. [42]
The teen fires, hits the pillar, and runs around to get a better
aim. Joker throws his malfunctioning rifle in the air and tries to duck for
cover as the sniper, wearing a terrifying war face, continues to pursue him. The
reporter takes out a pistol, and we get numerous cuts between her shooting and
him fumbling with his weapon before we get a closeup of her as she is hit from
behind and falls. We briefly see the gunman – Rafterman, then we get a medium
shot of the two journalists, then again one of Rafterman as he motions Joker to
stay where he is. He checks for others, then calls out the window - “We got the
sniper!” before we get a closeup of the girl lying on the floor. The men enter
and look down silently as the boyish photographer crows, kissing his rifle, “Am
I a life-taker? Am I a heart- breaker?” We get more closeups of the sniper between
shots of the marines commenting. To Donlon’s question, Joker says that she is
praying. The Rock remarks, “No more boom-boom for this baby-san” and pronounces
her “dead meat” Animal Mother says that they should go, but Joker objects,
saying, “…we can't leave her like this.” We get another closeup of the girl
saying, “shoot me,” and Animal Mother, his angry face yet revealing a hint of a
smirk, invites Joker to “waste” her. There is an excruciating pause as we see
closeups of each of the men (Rafterman seems to be salivating) and the teen,
repeating her appeal before Joker, turning until his “peace” button is hidden, fires.
Joker looks up, revealing what Payback had called “the stare.” We then cut to
the platoon walking through the dark, burning landscape as our narrator reports
that they are heading towards the Perfume River. The men start singing, “Boys
and Girls from far and near, you’re welcome as can be. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,” [43]
and we see Joker walking in step and singing with his squad as his narration concludes,
“My thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch
and the Great Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one
piece and short. I'm in a world of shit . . . yes. But I am alive. And I am not
afraid.” The men continue to sing, their voices fading as the light dims until
we get a blank screen before the music, “Paint it Black” plays and the credits
roll.
{With Joker’s acceptance we can close
here as Lacan further promises that in his next class he will discuss two
opposed systems, one of which} is in question, it is the locus of the
unconscious and the locus where the repressed turns round and round up to the
point that it makes itself felt, namely when something of the message at the
level of the discourse of being, comes to upset the message at the level of
demand, which is the whole problem of the analytic symptom {and another} which
prepares what I call here the little platform, namely the discovery of the
avatar, a discovery that because there had already been so much trouble getting
used to the first system Freud gave us the fatal benefit of making the
following step himself before his death, namely that Freud in his second
topology had discovered the register of the other system in dots: a little
platform this is precisely what the second topology corresponds to. {He sums
up,} In other words, it is concerning what happens, it is in the measure that
he is interested in what happens, at the level of the pre-discourse subject,
but in function of this very fact that the subject who speaks did not know what
he was doing when he spoke, namely from the moment that the unconscious is
discovered as such, that Freud had, if you wish, to schematise things, sought out
here at what level of this original place from where it speaks, at what level
and in function of what, precisely in relation to an aim which is that of the
culmination of the process in I, at what moment the ego is constituted, namely
the ego in so far as it has to locate itself with reference to the first
formulation, the first capturing of the Id in demand. It is also there that
Freud discovered this primitive discourse qua purely imposed, and at the same
time qua marked by its fundamental arbitrariness, that it continues to speak,
namely the super-ego. It is there also of course that he left something open,
it is there, namely in this fundamentally metaphorical function of language,
that he left us something to discover, to articulate, which completes his
second topology, and which permits to restore it, to re-establish it, to
re-situate it in the totality of his discovery. [44 (scholarly citations
removed)]
To end this piece, I thought the history
[45] of how one “Chaplain Charlie” and a few military leaders, media moguls and
business giants had performed the magic of inducting “the prince of peace” and
defender of the poor into the cause of unrestrained Capitalism would be
appropriate.
1. Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford. Full Metal Jacket (1987.) in: indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com. (Jan., 2014.) Based on the book: The Short-Timers by Gustav
Hasford (1979.)
2. Jacques Lacan. “Desire
and its Interpretation.” from The
Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VI. (1958 – 59.) pp. 1 – 17. in:
springhero.wordpress.com. (February 12 - 21, 2011.)
3. Tom T. Hall. “Hello Vietnam.” (1965.)
4. Jacques Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[271-3] from The Seminar of Jacques
Lacan, Book X. (1962-63.) pp. 271 - 287. in: springhero.wordpress.com. (February
5 – 11, 2011.)
5. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[274]
6. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[275]
7. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[274-276]
8. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[276-277]
9. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[277]
10. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[278]
11. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[279]
12. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[280]
13. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[281]
14. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[282]
15. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[283]
16. In what might be foreshadowing, during this dissolve,
Hartman and Pyle appear between Joker and Cowboy’s shoulders.
17. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[284-285]
18. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[285-286]
19. Lacan. “Anxiety.”
[287]
20. Lacan. “Desire.”
[1]
21. Lacan. “Desire.”
[1-2]
22. Lacan. “Desire.”
[3]
23. Lacan. “Desire.”
[4]
*D10: For an elaboration of this graph over time, see http://return.jls.missouri.edu/Lacan/ReturnVol6/Kozicki_GraphofDesire.pdf
*D10: For an elaboration of this graph over time, see http://return.jls.missouri.edu/Lacan/ReturnVol6/Kozicki_GraphofDesire.pdf
24. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. “Wooly Bully” (1965) in:
Youtube.com. (January 14, 2011.)
25. Lacan. “Desire.”
[5]
26. The Trashmen. “Surfin' Bird” (1963) in: Youtube.com. (February
4, 2015.)
27. Lacan. “Desire.”
[6]
28. Lacan. “Desire.”
[7]
29. Lacan. “Desire.”
[8]
30. Lacan. “Desire.”
[9]
31. Lacan. “Desire.”
[10]
32-33. Lacan. “Desire.”
[11]
34. Lacan. “Desire.”
[11-12]
35. Lacan. “Desire.”
[12]
36. There has been discussion about the variable number of
marines following Cowboy.
This variability can feed a reading of Rafterman as Joker’s alter ego.
37. Lacan. “Desire.”
[13]
38 Here’s an interesting discussion about a Texas-shaped hole in and letters reading “My
Toan” above this hiding place.
39. A couple minor observations: Kubrick spends a great deal
of camera time on a burning monolith-like skyscraper, if as part of the background;
also, this is the second time Rock has told someone he is “Going home,” the
first was to the already-deceased Handjob.
40. Lacan. “Desire.”
[14]
41. Lacan. “Desire.”
[15]
42. Lacan. “Desire.”
[15-16]
* “Irma’s injection.” in: Wikipedia.org. (June 9, 2015.)
Most of the transcription of the discussion itself is missing, perhaps appropriate, given that Lacan starts by pointing out the uncertainty of the dream’s meaning.
* “Irma’s injection.” in: Wikipedia.org. (June 9, 2015.)
Most of the transcription of the discussion itself is missing, perhaps appropriate, given that Lacan starts by pointing out the uncertainty of the dream’s meaning.
43. Funnily, in the actual Disney series the song had a
dissenting voice, “Donald Duck,” a name that is replaced in the marines’
version with another reiteration of the host’s.
44. Lacan. “Desire.”
[17]
45. Kevin M. Kruse. “How Corporate America Invented
Christian America.” in: Politico Magazine.
(April 16, 2015.)
