The Pervert's Guide To Cinema Page #6

of human personality, and so on.

To see what is lacking in reality,

to see it as that, there you see subjectivity.

To confront subjectivity means

to confront femininity.

Woman is the subject. Masculinity is a fake.

Masculinity is an escape from the most radical,

nightmarish dimension of subjectivity.

- Scottie, what are you doing?

- I'm trying to buy you a suit.

But I love the second one she wore.

- And this one, it's beautiful.

- No, no. They're none of them right.

I think I know the suit you mean.

We had it some time ago.

Let me go and see. We may still have that model.

Thank you.

You're looking for the suit that she wore, for me.

- You want me to be dressed like her.

- Judy, I just want you to look nice.

I know the kind of suit

that would look well on you.

No, I won't do it!

Judy.

It can't make that much difference

to you. I just want to see what...

No, I don't want any clothes.

I don't want anything.

- I want to get out of here.

- Judy, do this for me.

Here we are.

- Yes, that's it.

- I thought so.

When Judy, refashioned as Madeleine,

steps out of the door, it's like fantasy realised.

And, of course, we have

a perfect name for fantasy realised.

It's called "nightmare."

Fantasy realised. What does this mean?

Of course, it is always sustained

by an extreme violence.

The violence in this case of Scottie's

brutal refashioning of Judy,

a real, common girl, into Madeleine.

It's truly a process of mortification,

which also is the mortification of woman's desire.

It is as if in order to have her, to desire her,

to have sexual intercourse with her,

with the woman,

Scottie has to mortify her,

to change her into a dead woman.

It's as if, again, for the male libidinal economy,

to paraphrase a well-known old saying,

the only good woman is a dead woman.

Scottie is not really fascinated by her,

but by the entire scene, the staging.

He is looking around, checking up,

are the phantasmatic co-ordinates really here?

At that point when the reality fully fits fantasy,

Scottie is finally able to realise

the long-postponed sexual intercourse.

So the result of this violence

is a perfect co-ordination

between fantasy and reality.

A kind of direct short-circuit.

In Lynch's films, darkness is really dark.

Light is really unbearable, blinding light.

Fire really hurts, it's so hot.

At those moments of sensual over-intensity,

it is as if events on screen itself,

threatens to overflow the screen

and to grab us into it,

to reach towards us.

It's again as if the fantasy-space,

the fictional, narrative space, gets too intense

and reaches out towards us spectators

so that we lose our safe distance.

This is the proper tension

of the Lynchian universe.

The beauty of Lynch, if you look closely,

it's never clear.

Is it really the brutal real out there

which disturbs us, or is it our fantasy?

At the very beginning

of David Lynch's Blue Velvet,

we see an idyllic, American small town.

What can be more normal

than father of the family,

in front of a white clean house,

watering the lawn?

But all of a sudden, father has a heart seizure,

falls down to the grass.

And then, instead of showing

the family confused,

calling for an ambulance, whatever,

Lynch does something typically Lynchian.

The camera moves extremely close to the grass,

even penetrates the grass,

and we see what is the real

of this idyllic green lawn.

We should not forget this,

how this happens precisely

when father has a seizure.

That is to say when, symbolically,

the paternal authority breaks down.

I'll send you straight to hell, f***er!

In dreams, I walk with you.

In dreams, I talk to you.

The logic here is strictly Freudian,

that is to say we escape into dream

to avoid a deadlock in our real life.

But then, what we encounter in the dream

is even more horrible,

so that at the end,

we literally escape from the dream,

back into reality.

It starts with, dreams are for those

who cannot endure,

who are not strong enough for reality.

It ends with, reality is for those

who are not strong enough to endure,

to confront their dreams.

Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr.

are two versions of the same film.

What makes both films,

especially Lost Highway, so interesting

is how they posit the two dimensions,

reality and fantasy, side by side,

horizontally, as it were.

It must be from a real estate agent.

What we get in Lost Highway

is the drab, grey,

upper-middle-class suburban reality.

Hero, married to Patricia Arquette,

obviously terrorised by the enigma of his wife,

who doesn't respond properly to his advances.

When they have sexual intercourse,

he miserably fails.

What he gets from her is a kind

of a patronising pat on the shoulder.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Total humiliation.

It's okay.

After killing her in an act of frustration,

the hero enters his fantasy-space,

where he, as it were, reinvents not only himself,

but his entire social environs.

Captain, this is some spooky sh*t we got here.

In what? In a kind of a universe

which we usually found in film noir.

The hero's wife, who is a brunette,

becomes a blonde.

In reality, she's restrained.

Here, she praises the hero

within the fantasy-space all the time

for his sexual capacities and so on.

So it seems as if the dream

is the realisation of what he was looking for.

In reality, the obstacle was inherent.

Their sexual liaison simply didn't function.

Within the fantasy-space,

the obstacle is externalised.

It's a beautiful day.

Mr Eddy is the master of Patricia Arquette

within the fantasy-space.

He is the obstacle to sexual intercourse.

If I ever found out

somebody was making out with her,

I'd take this and I'd shove it so far up his ass,

it would come out his mouth.

The properly uncanny moments

are those when the second shift occurs,

when the fantasy-space, the dreamscape,

as it were, is already disintegrating,

but we are not yet back into reality.

This intermediate space,

neither fantasy-space nor reality,

this space of a kind of primordial violence,

dispersion, ontological confusion...

This is the most subversive moment,

the true horror of these films.

Towards the end of this fantasy episode,

when we get the sexual act,

there the woman also avoids the hero.

You'll never have me.

Whispering, "You will never have me."

And at that traumatic point,

we are drawn back to reality,

when the hero encounters

exactly the same deadlock.

What the film truly is about, its focal point,

it's not the hero, it's of course

the enigma of feminine desire.

I'm involved in a mystery,

I'm in the middle of a mystery.

And it's all secret.

- You like mysteries that much?

- Yeah.

You're a mystery.

I like you

very much.

The enigma of feminine subjectivity

in David Lynch's films,

it's a gap between cause and effect.

You do something to a woman,

but you never know what the reaction will be.

Jeffrey, don't, please.

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