The Record Store Can Read My Desire

Damon Krukowksi's great book (and podcast) Ways of Hearing explores how digital media have transformed the way we hear. 

In the chapter on "power," he considers the difference between Spotify's "Discovery Weekly" and visiting a record store. Spotify's algorithm considers what you listen to, adapting to your tastes and likes. He notes, "At Spotify, the dream is to provide you with music without your participation-the algorithm will know what you want" (111).

 

 

But when we visit a record store, one has to navigate its space. As Krukowski states, "You adapt to it" (11). If you ever been to Amoeba in Los Angeles--clearly the case!

 

(Me at Amoeba Music)

By adapting to the store's layout, you might come across a surprise, maybe a record you hadn't thought about purchasing. This process involves your unconscious desire. As I explained in an earlier posting, the logic of desire operates on absence. The object cause of desire (what Jacques Lacan terms objet a) can never be satisfied.

 

 

At the same time, the object cause of desire sustains the psychical force of desire because it is unattainable. It is sometimes described as the real of one's desire. Real - meaning the impossible, or in this case, the stumbling block of desire. 

In a previous post on the gaze, I noted how cinematic forms can elicit our desire. Like the narrative and formal construction of a movie, the design and layout of a record store considers your desire. A record store is already designed for you to engage with it.

Not all stores will elicit your desire. But in my recent journey to Amoeba, the store reads my desire in how it displays its merchandise. It is not adapting to me (as Spotify does with Discovery Weekly), but is trying to elicit my unconscious desire in anticipating a surprise purchase.

 

 

But this raises a question: can algorithms such as Discover Weekly read your desire? In a podcast on the Lacanian Real with Todd McGowan, he argues they can't because they repeatedly tell you what you want.

I think McGowan's claim lines up with Slavoj Zizek's critique of technological singularity. For Zizek, singularity can't account for the unconscious. Likewise, algorithms don't know how to read our unconscious desire. 

Instead of a "surprise," (something unexpected which emerges from your encounter at a record store), you discover something new with Discover Weekly, which is based on your tastes. As Krukowski writes, "You find the answers you want to the questions you already know to ask. . . . This makes an ideal experience if all you want is what you want. But what if you're looking for something else?" (112). That "something else" is what Lacan call objet a which algorithms can not provide. 

Another way to think about algorithms is they operate on mastery. By contrast, a record store operates on both absence ("something else") and mastery ("all"). As you navigate the story, you try to master it. At the same time, what draws you into the store is absence (unconscious desire).

The Lacanian Gaze and Psycho

The Lacanian gaze is one of the hardest concepts I teach for my Film Theory course. The way we commonly think of the gaze (to look) is not what Jacques Lacan argues. Rather, he argues that when we encounter the gaze, we encounter an impasse, a blind spot within the field of vision. But more importantly, in order to encounter the gaze, you must be invested in the film. When we encounter the gaze in cinema it demonstrates the activity of our unconscious desire. So what does that mean? And why is the gaze is not defined as the look?

One of the best examples of the gaze (from Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan) can be found in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). After Marion (Janet Leigh) has been murdered by "mother" in the shower, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cleans up the mess. Notice how long it takes for Norman to clean the bathroom. This is important because Hitchcock is a laying a trap for our encounter with the gaze.

After Norman cleans the bathroom, he place Marion's body in the trunk of her car and drives out to the swamp near his motel. Norman pushes Marion's car into the swamp. Norman anxiously watches the car as it begins to sink. Suddenly, for a brief moment the car stop sinking. I always ask my students what their reaction was when the car stops sinking. Their response: they want the car to sink. How does this happen? Why are we suddenly complicit in Norman's cover up of the murder?

This is the moment when we encounter the gaze. The gaze demonstrates your unconscious desire at work in the film. This is why film form is so important to understand in studying the gaze in cinema. In my book Cinema of Confinement, I explain how directors set up these types of cinematic moments such as the swamp scene in Psycho. They are designed so that we encounter the shocking impact of the gaze.

An example I use is the final sequence in Alien (1979) when Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) learns that the alien sneaked aboard the escape shuttle. The way in which director Ridley Scott films this scene sets up the viewer for an encounter with the gaze--namely, when Ripley shockingly discovers the alien. We think Ripley has defeated the alien, which is emphasized when she says: "I got you, you son of a bitch." Even the soothing musical score suggests that Ripley is safe. But as we know, she is far from safe. Alien's final scene is so scary because of the way Scott lays a trap for us to encounter the gaze. This is why it is important that Hitchcock show us all the details of Norman cleaning up the murder in Psycho. He is a laying a trap for the gaze: when the car stops sinking in the swamp. That's when we all go "Oh shit!" You're now siding with Norman's cover up of Marion's death.

 

What does the gaze tells about how we watch movies? First, it demonstrates how our unconscious desire is at work when we watch a movie. And we can locate the activity of desire through cinematic form. Second, you must be invested to look in the movie, otherwise you are less likely to encounter the emotional impact of the gaze. Lacan's example of Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors explains this point.

As you observed the painting, you see the riches that surround the men. But when looking  toward the bottom of the painting, there is a stain. When looking awry, you see that the stain is a skull that looks back at you.

 

The skull embodies the gaze. But you have to be invested in looking at the painting in order to discover the skull. When we encounter the skull, it takes our desire into consideration. Likewise, when Marion's car stops sinking in the swamp in Psycho, we have a visceral reaction, demonstrating that we are complicit in Norman covering up the murder. It illustrates how our desire is at work in the film.  

The gaze is the moment when our seeing falls apart. Yet it is these moments in cinema, such as Ripley seeing the alien aboard the ship and Marion's car that temporarily stop sinking in the swamp, that draws us to the movies.

Some Excellent Books on Jacques Lacan

Over the winter I read a number of great academic books on Jacques Lacan. If you are interested in reading about the intersection of Lacanian thought and cinema, check out Matthew Flisfeder's book The Symbolic, The Sublime, and Slavoj Zizek's Theory of Film. Flisfeder's book offers an excellent introduction to a number of key Lacanian terms and concepts and how they are employed in a number of Zizek's writings on cinema. 

 

Todd McGowan's Capitalism and Desire is also worth checking out. McGowan examines the intimate relationship between the logic of desire and the logic of capitalism. Also, see my post on desire for introduction on this concept.

Another book worth checking out is Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film by Fabio Vighi.  This book examines the unconscious in relation to film language in Italian cinema. Vighi considers a variety of Italian films from filmmakers such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, and Rossellini. Vighi's reading of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura is indeed one of the film's many highlights.