Review - Todd McGowan's Introduction to Lacan

Todd McGowan's new book is an excellent read and important book for those who are interested in Lacan. Over the years, I have read a lot of Lacan, along with Zizek, McGowan, Copjec, etc, and this by far is one of the best introductory books with lots of great examples. 

 

I love McGowan’s interpretation of Kant and Hegel in contextualizing Lacan’s three stages. The connection between Kant’s sensibility, understanding, and reason nicely line up with Lacan’s imaginary, symbolic and the Real in the first stage of Lacan’s work. But Lacan’s middle period turns to Hegel’s dialectic with his introduction of objet a (object cause of desire). McGowan claims that objet a, which is linked to the Real, is the fundamental object and perhaps one of Lacan’s greatest contributions. 

 

 

An example is Lacan’s concept of the gaze (which should not be confused with the look). The gaze (as the visual drive) demonstrates how our unconscious desire distorts the visual plane, something we don’t recognize in the everyday, but something movies can make apparent. McGowan offers Spielberg’s Duel as a great example. Lacan's examples are paintings, such as Las Meninas (see image below). The painter is painting a couple who we think are in the mirror image, located in the far background. For Lacan, the canvas is too big to be the mirror image. The canvas embodies the gaze because it does not fit within the representational world of the painting. As McGowan explains, the canvas demonstrates a resistance toward representation. 

  

Another example is The Ambassadors (see my blog post). When we encounter the gaze, we realize how our desire distorts the visual plane. The gaze is objet a within the field of vision. Encountering the gaze exemplifies that our spectatorship is not from a transcendent standpoint but within the painting or movie itself. That's where we locate the dialectic component of Lacan's work on desire.

I agree with McGowan that Lacan is the philosopher of the subject. The subject is always a split subject, a subject that is never at home with itself because of the unconscious. Lastly, it was great to read how many of Lacan’s concepts changed throughout his three periods, particularly the Real and jouissance. Highly recommend!

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. As Todd McGowan states, "the gaze is a distortion within the visual field" (72). 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 reveals your spectatorship. This is why 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. It is the point where the viewer's vision breaks down. 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.

 

References:

Todd McGowan,  Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Rules of the Game (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015).

Slavoj Zizek, "In his Bold Gaze"  in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan. . . .  But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, ed. Slavoj Žižek (London: Verso, 1992).