The Pervert's Guide To Cinema Page #3

that with music, we cannot ever be sure.

Insofar as it externalises our inner passion,

music is potentially always a threat.

There is a short scene

in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.,

which takes place in the theatre

where we are now,

where behind the microphone

a woman is singing,

then out of exhaustion or whatever,

she drops down.

Surprisingly, the singing goes on.

Immediately afterwards, it is explained.

It was a playback.

But for that couple of seconds

when we are confused,

we confront this nightmarish dimension

of an autonomous partial object.

Like in the well-known adventure

of Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland,

where the cat disappears, the smile remains.

You may have noticed

that I'm not all there myself.

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The fascinating thing about partial objects,

in the sense of organs without bodies,

is that they embody

what Freud called "death drive."

Here, we have to be very careful.

Death drive is not kind of a Buddhist

striving for annihilation.

"I want to find eternal peace. I want..."

No. Death drive is almost the opposite.

Death drive is the dimension of what

in the Stephen King-like horror fiction

is called the dimension of the undead,

of living dead,

of something which remains alive

even after it is dead.

And it's, in a way, immortal in its deadness itself.

It goes on, insists. You cannot destroy it.

The more you cut it,

the more it insists, it goes on.

This dimension,

of a kind of diabolical undeadness,

is what partial objects are about.

The nicest example here for me,

I think, is Michael Powell's Red Shoes,

about a ballerina.

Her passion for dancing

is materialised in her shoes taking over.

The shoes are literally the undead object.

Perhaps the ultimate bodily part

which fits this role

of the autonomous partial object

is the fist, or rather, the hand.

This hand, raising up,

that's the whole point of the film.

It's not simply something foreign to him.

It's the very core of his personality out there.

Security?

I am Jack's smirking revenge.

What the hell are you doing?

That hurt.

Far from standing

for some kind of perverted masochism

or reactionary fantasy of violence,

this scene is deeply liberating.

I am here, as it were, on the side of the fist.

I think this is what liberation means.

In order to attack the enemy, you first

have to beat the sh*t out of yourself.

To get rid, in yourself, of that which

in yourself attaches you to the leader,

to the conditions of slavery, and so on and so on.

No, please stop!

What are you doing?

Oh, God, no, please! No!

For some reason,

I thought of my first fight, with Tyler.

There is always this conflict

between me and my double.

Motherf***er!

- You hit me in the ear.

- Well, Jesus. I'm sorry.

- Christ! Why the ear, man?

- I f***ed it up, kind of.

No, that was perfect.

It is as if the double embodies myself,

but without the castrated dimension of myself.

There is an episode

in the wonderful British horror classic,

Dead of Night...

I knew you wouldn't leave me, Hugo.

I knew you'd come back.

...in which Michael Redgrave plays a ventriloquist

who gets jealous of his puppet.

Now don't get excited, I was only joking.

You know me. Maxwell!

Maxwell.

Maxwell! Take your hands off me!

- Stop playing!

- Maxwell!

Here, you fool!

Officer, quickly, open this door.

Quickly.

In an outburst of violence,

he destroys the puppet, breaks down,

then in the very last scene of the film

we see him in the hospital,

slowly regaining consciousness,

coming back to himself.

First his voice is stuck in the throat.

Then, with great difficulty, finally,

he is able to talk,

but he talks

with the distorted voice of the dummy.

Why, hello, Sylvester.

I've been waiting for you.

And the lesson is clear.

The only way for me

to get rid of this autonomous partial object

is to become this object.

- Any time you are ready, tell me.

- Okay, I'm ready.

Wait a minute. So that I don't confuse them...

Where is my key? My key is here.

This one is here.

Okay, any... You shout when.

I'm standing on the very balcony

where the murder,

the traumatic murder scene,

occurs in Conversation.

The murder of the husband,

observed through the stained glass in front of me

by the private detective, Gene Hackman.

The detective is in the nearby room.

Significantly, just before he sees the murder,

he observes the balcony

through a crack in the glass wall.

Whenever we have this famous,

proverbial peeping Tom scene

of somebody observing traumatic events

through a crack,

it's never as if we are dealing with two parts

on both sides of the wall of the same reality.

Before seeing anything

or imagining to see something,

he tries to listen. He behaves as an eavesdropper,

with all his private detective gadgets.

What does this make him?

Potentially, at least,

it makes him into a fantasised, imagined entity.

I can't stand it.

I can't stand it anymore.

You're going to make me cry.

I know, honey. I know. Me, too.

- No, don't.

- I have no idea what you're talking about.

He doesn't fantasise the scene of the murder.

He fantasises himself as a witness to the murder.

I love you.

What he sees on that blurred window glass,

which effectively functions

as a kind of elementary screen,

cinematic screen even, that should be perceived

as a desperate attempt to visualise,

hallucinate even,

the bodily, material support of what he hears.

- Hello, baby.

- Shut up!

It's "Daddy", you shithead! Where's my bourbon?

Dorothy's apartment

is one of those hellish places

which abound in David Lynch's films.

A places where all moral or social inhibitions

seem to be suspended,

where everything is possible.

The lowest, masochistic sex, obscenities,

the deepest level of our desires

that we are not even ready to admit to ourselves,

we are confronted with them in such places.

Spread your legs.

Wider.

Now show it to me.

Don't you f***ing look at me.

From what perspective

should we observe this scene?

Imagine the scene as that of a small child,

hidden in a closet or behind a door...

Mommy.

...witnessing the parental intercourse.

He doesn't yet know what sexuality is,

how we do it.

All he knows is what he hears,

this strange deep breathing sound,

and then he tries to imagine what goes on.

At the very beginning of Blue Velvet,

we see Jeffrey's father

having a heart attack, falling down.

We have the eclipse of the normal,

paternal authority.

Mommy.

- Mommy loves you.

- Baby wants to f***!

It is as if Jeffrey fantasises

this wild parental couple of Dorothy and Frank

as kind of a phantasmatic supplement

to the lack of the real paternal authority.

Get ready to f***, you f***er's f***er! You f***er!

Don't you f***ing look at me!

Frank, not only obviously acts, but even overacts.

It is as if his ridiculously excessive gesticulating,

shouting and so on,

are here to cover up something.

The point is, of course, the elementary one,

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