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The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway
The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime is first of all the detailed reading of David Lynch's The Lost Highway, based on the premises of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lynch's unique universe of the "ridiculous sublime" is interpreted as a simultaneous playful staging and traversing of the fundamental ideological fantasies that sustain our late capitalist society.
A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse―and as closely linked―as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.
A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse―and as closely linked―as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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1484 people want to read
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
642 books7,578 followersSlavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
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July 20, 2019
در این مقاله، ژیژک تفسیری لکانی از فیلم "بزرگراه گمشده" دیوید لینچ ارائه میدهد، اما تنها در محدوده بزرگراه گمشده باقی نمیماند و صحنههای مختلفی از فیلمهای دیگر را نیز برای پیشبرد بحث احضار میکند.
برای درک بهتر کتاب، خوب است حداقل آشنایی اولیهای با تقسیمبندی لکانی "امر واقعی"، "امر نمادین" و "امر خیالی" داشته باشید. از دیدگاه لکان، ما واقعیت را از خلال خیالپردازیهای خود درک میکنیم. درک ما از واقعیت بر پایه خیالپردازیهای بنیادین قرار دارد. ژیژک مدعی است که لینچ در فیلمهایش این دو سطح امر واقعی و خیالی را که رابطهای عمودی با یکدیگر دارند، بصورت افقی در کنار هم قرار میدهد. به عبارت دیگر، لینچ مخاطب را با خیالپردازی بنیادین سرکوبشدهاش مواجه میکند.
اگر به نقد فیلم و روانکاوی لکانی علاقه دارید، تماشای فیلم بزرگراه گمشده و مطالعه این کتاب کوچک، خالی از لطف نخواهد بود.
برای درک بهتر کتاب، خوب است حداقل آشنایی اولیهای با تقسیمبندی لکانی "امر واقعی"، "امر نمادین" و "امر خیالی" داشته باشید. از دیدگاه لکان، ما واقعیت را از خلال خیالپردازیهای خود درک میکنیم. درک ما از واقعیت بر پایه خیالپردازیهای بنیادین قرار دارد. ژیژک مدعی است که لینچ در فیلمهایش این دو سطح امر واقعی و خیالی را که رابطهای عمودی با یکدیگر دارند، بصورت افقی در کنار هم قرار میدهد. به عبارت دیگر، لینچ مخاطب را با خیالپردازی بنیادین سرکوبشدهاش مواجه میکند.
اگر به نقد فیلم و روانکاوی لکانی علاقه دارید، تماشای فیلم بزرگراه گمشده و مطالعه این کتاب کوچک، خالی از لطف نخواهد بود.
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October 24, 2014Žižek confronts me with some interesting ideas and insights. At heart, I'm very uncomfortable with theory-based criticism, philosophy also intrigues me while it irks me... I can't say Žižek is explicitly wrong about the things he says here. At the same time, he relies a lot on assertion and suggestion without really demonstrating the validity of some of his ideas. But don't let me be too argumentative here, I generally appreciate his reflections. He happened to be writing about one of my favorite movies from a lifetime of movie viewing, and what he said made a lot of sense as one way of approaching this complex and ambiguous work.
I think he and I would argue quite a bit if we met (not just about Lynch, but everything), but I'd come away thinking he's clever and he's got some good points. Since this is a book, I can't talk back, but the ideas are now circulating in my head so that I can hold an inner debate on the topic. No doubt Žižek also conducts many inner debates, and the fruit of these debates winds up in books, as he seems to enjoy getting those notions out on paper, really articulating them... whether it's important to him that there will be another person at the other side of the communication, I'm not sure. But hey, that's an idealistic approach to writing. The work is what matters and the audience can take care of itself.
I think he and I would argue quite a bit if we met (not just about Lynch, but everything), but I'd come away thinking he's clever and he's got some good points. Since this is a book, I can't talk back, but the ideas are now circulating in my head so that I can hold an inner debate on the topic. No doubt Žižek also conducts many inner debates, and the fruit of these debates winds up in books, as he seems to enjoy getting those notions out on paper, really articulating them... whether it's important to him that there will be another person at the other side of the communication, I'm not sure. But hey, that's an idealistic approach to writing. The work is what matters and the audience can take care of itself.
December 17, 2008
Three Stars for book
Five Stars for his theory concerning "Lost Highway"
Stand forewarned! Are you familiar with Lacanian psychoanalysis? If not, then what you are going to get out of this tome will be limited. Unfortunately, I think Zizek's exegesis of Lynch's film is one of the best and most interesting- so you may have to study up to get anything out of this...
For instance, Zizek talks frequently about The Real, The Imaginary, The Symbolic, The Fantasy, Transversing the Fantasy, Perversion, The Name of the Father, etc. If you don't know what these terms are, you will not be able to just "figure it out" on the fly, because even "pervert" and "fantasy" are being used in technical ways which are different from their popular uses. For instance, a "pervert" is not someone who is horny all the time (though they may be, but that's beside the point), they are people who went through the stage of "alientation" but did not fully complete "seperation," and therefore have to supplement their lack of a fully completed "symbolic castration" by a bolstered "Imaginary." When this Imaginary loses its cohesion and begins to fail, the subject resorts to other strategies such as fetishism, masochism, or sadism.
The point here is this is really a book for Lacanians, and not for people who are just interested in Lynch. If you are the latter, you will probably just going to get disgusted and frustrated because Zizek is assuming a basic knowledege in this field. That being said, Zizek is still one of the most entertaining and popular writers of Non-Essentialist Hegelian Lacanian Post-Marxism, and I found this book typical of his output.
To use a warfare simile (I am an American, after all), I would suggest that Zizek is less like a surgical strike, and more like a cluster bomb. In this book, which is forty odd pages, he only really writes about Lynch and the movie for a handful, talking about all kinds of other stuff as well, such as cyberspace, mexican soap operas, Spielberg, film Noir, Stalinism, Ideology, Totalitarianism. Zizek has mastered the art of the interesting digression like no other, except for perhaps Trstram Shandy from the Laurence Sterne novel. If you are familiar with Zizek, then you know the routine and probably love it- but for others wanting a clear and focused account of Lost Highway will be frustrated.
For a easier account of the same theory, watch the Zizek film The Pervert's Guide to Cinema where Zizek talks at length about Lynch and Lost Highway and gives an even clearer and more popular explanation of his idea(s). Its a great film and a good place to start with Zizek and even Lacanian psychoanalysis.
I have felt that sometimes Zizek's publishers (I am guessing it is his publishers), give his books misleading titles. For instance, the Zizek book Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Using Popular Culture, I feel to be a terrible introduction to Lacan and Lacanian theory. Its a good book, but not as an intrduction to Lacan. Likewise with this book, I feel like Zizek just wrote a book which had a sizable chunk dedicated to Lynch and therefore they decided to name Lynch in the title. It is a bit misleading, but if you already read Zizek you won't care.
Really, the best thing about the book and Lacan's theory about the movie is how it makes clear a "part" of Lacanian theory, namely how "fantasy" functions. There is some other good stuff here which I have found really useful, such as a discussion of how "systems" usually function on two levels- an ego ideal level and a superego level, which mean that they simultaneously give contradictory "orders" and therefore the best way to bring a system down is to follow it to the letter of the law. I spent some time with a friend coming up with all kinds of examples and the model seems to work very well.
In any case, if you are a Zizek fan and a Lynch fan, check this out. Otherwise perhaps read The Impossible David Lynch by Todd McGowan which is also Lacanian but much clearer and more concise, and also film The Pervert's Guide to Cinema which can be bought online.
February 27, 2015
Zizek does a Lacanian reading of the noir-universe, especially David Lynch's Lost Highway and the results are sometimes shocking/revealing and often incomprehensible.
I will stick to the observations that I liked, especially his off-hand remarks on the role-reversal of Femme Fatales in the Hollywood films of the 90s. One noteworthy example is John Dahl's brutal film The Last Seduction. Zizek writes: "In contrast to the classic noir femme fatale of the 40s who remains an elusive spectral presence, the new femme fatale is characterized by direct, outspoken, sexual aggressiveness, verbal and physical...Linda Fiorentino directly opens up her partner's fly, reaches into it, and inspects his merchandise... before accepting him as a lover ('I never buy anything sight unseen')"
The above is in total contrast with the elusive Kim Novak character who is followed by James Stewart in Hitchcock's Vertigo (a film that appeals to me on a mystic level - an ideal one-person love story where the other is forever elusive). Novak remains a spectre throughout the film. And the impossibility to know her results in our hero's doom. There is an unknowability to the femme fatate in Lost Highway too, but here she is abused in a manner which is ultimately shocking, the way Dorothy Valance is abused in Blue Velvet. It is a common Lynchian method. Following passage from the book "Looking Awry" by Zizek may shed some light on it: "The destiny of the femme fatale in film noir, her final hysterical breakdown, exemplifies perfectly the Lacanian proposition that 'Woman does not exist.' She is nothing but 'the symptom of man.' Her power of fascination masks the void of her nonexistence, so when she is finally rejected, her whole ontological consistency is dissolved."
And that is not restricted to Lynch alone. Roger Ebert writing about Hitchcock's 39 Steps provides some valuable observations: "The female characters in his films reflected the same qualities over and over again: They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerized the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated".
Having seen the movie twice, the most intriguing sequence I found in Lost Highway was the Mystery Man's bi-location - his cold and creepy gaze and that ominous laughter. It was fun to know what Zizek has to say about him: "one should conceive of the Mystery Alan as the ultimate horror of the Other who has a direct access to our (the subject’s) fundamental fantasy; his impossible/real gaze is not the gaze of the scientist who fully knows what I am objectively (like the scientist who knows my genome), but the gaze able to discern the most intimate, subjective kernel inaccessible to the subject himself. This is what his grotesquely pale death-mask signals: we are dealing with a being in whom Evil coincides with the uttermost innocence of a cold, disinterested gaze. As a being of asexualized, childishly neutral Knowledge, the Mystery Man belongs to the same category as Mr. Memory in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps."
Interesting. There are many more such observations, where Zizek bravely employs Lacanian motifs of "the big Other", "phallus" and the like to film characters. Along the way, he dives into films ranging from "As good as it gets" to "Shindler's List". What he prominently wants to say is that David Lynch's art is "ridiculous sublime". This write-up (I dare not call it a review) appears center-less because the strange book it attempts to make sense of is one, using Lost Highway as a launch pad to take off into zones beyond the grasp of this humble reader.
I will stick to the observations that I liked, especially his off-hand remarks on the role-reversal of Femme Fatales in the Hollywood films of the 90s. One noteworthy example is John Dahl's brutal film The Last Seduction. Zizek writes: "In contrast to the classic noir femme fatale of the 40s who remains an elusive spectral presence, the new femme fatale is characterized by direct, outspoken, sexual aggressiveness, verbal and physical...Linda Fiorentino directly opens up her partner's fly, reaches into it, and inspects his merchandise... before accepting him as a lover ('I never buy anything sight unseen')"
The above is in total contrast with the elusive Kim Novak character who is followed by James Stewart in Hitchcock's Vertigo (a film that appeals to me on a mystic level - an ideal one-person love story where the other is forever elusive). Novak remains a spectre throughout the film. And the impossibility to know her results in our hero's doom. There is an unknowability to the femme fatate in Lost Highway too, but here she is abused in a manner which is ultimately shocking, the way Dorothy Valance is abused in Blue Velvet. It is a common Lynchian method. Following passage from the book "Looking Awry" by Zizek may shed some light on it: "The destiny of the femme fatale in film noir, her final hysterical breakdown, exemplifies perfectly the Lacanian proposition that 'Woman does not exist.' She is nothing but 'the symptom of man.' Her power of fascination masks the void of her nonexistence, so when she is finally rejected, her whole ontological consistency is dissolved."
And that is not restricted to Lynch alone. Roger Ebert writing about Hitchcock's 39 Steps provides some valuable observations: "The female characters in his films reflected the same qualities over and over again: They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerized the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated".
Having seen the movie twice, the most intriguing sequence I found in Lost Highway was the Mystery Man's bi-location - his cold and creepy gaze and that ominous laughter. It was fun to know what Zizek has to say about him: "one should conceive of the Mystery Alan as the ultimate horror of the Other who has a direct access to our (the subject’s) fundamental fantasy; his impossible/real gaze is not the gaze of the scientist who fully knows what I am objectively (like the scientist who knows my genome), but the gaze able to discern the most intimate, subjective kernel inaccessible to the subject himself. This is what his grotesquely pale death-mask signals: we are dealing with a being in whom Evil coincides with the uttermost innocence of a cold, disinterested gaze. As a being of asexualized, childishly neutral Knowledge, the Mystery Man belongs to the same category as Mr. Memory in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps."
Interesting. There are many more such observations, where Zizek bravely employs Lacanian motifs of "the big Other", "phallus" and the like to film characters. Along the way, he dives into films ranging from "As good as it gets" to "Shindler's List". What he prominently wants to say is that David Lynch's art is "ridiculous sublime". This write-up (I dare not call it a review) appears center-less because the strange book it attempts to make sense of is one, using Lost Highway as a launch pad to take off into zones beyond the grasp of this humble reader.
August 17, 2018
کتاب را خیلی پیشترها خواندم و بر خلاف بدگوییهایی که از ژیژک میشود به گمانم از بهترین نوشتههایش باشد؛ خصوصاً برای علاقهمندان به دنیای فیلمهای لینچ؛ و از آنجا که ژیژک از مفسرین لاکان نیز هست رویکردی لاکانی در تفسیر سینما و این فیلم دارد. لاکان ژیژک یک «امر واقعی» است(مفهومی از مفاهیم لاکانی که بیش از دیگر مفاهیم لاکانی مورد توجه ژیژک قرار گرفته است) نه یک لاکان پساساختارگرایی. به نظر ژیژک امر واقعی به صورت ترسناکی به هستی روزمره تجاوز میکند. ژیژک نشان میدهد که چگونه موانع زندگی قهرمان فیلم نوعی فرافکنیِ خیالپردازانه به یک ابژهی ناممکن میل است.
...
گذشته از اینها به بهانه تحلیل «بزرگراه گمشده»ی لینچ، گریزی به سیاست، روانشناسی، نظریهی فیلم، اخلاق، جامعهشناسی و فضای مجازی نیز میزند.
...
گذشته از اینها به بهانه تحلیل «بزرگراه گمشده»ی لینچ، گریزی به سیاست، روانشناسی، نظریهی فیلم، اخلاق، جامعهشناسی و فضای مجازی نیز میزند.
June 18, 2021
“Lynch pone a la realidad social aséptica y cotidiana ‘junto’ a su suplemento fantasmático, el oscuro universo de los placeres masoquistas prohibidos. Transpone lo vertical a lo horizontal y pone las dos dimensiones -la realidad y su suplemento fantasmático, lo superficial y su ‘represión’- sobre la misma superficie”.
He aprovechado la reposición (me encanta que se recupere ese concepto antiguo, y lo que supone) estos días de ‘Mulholland Drive’ para leer la edición mexicana de unos textos muy lacanianos de Zizek que encontré en Madrid hace unos años. Y me ha servido para disfrutar más si cabe de la película y su crescendo poético y demoniaco, para verla dejándome llevar por la sorpresa y las asociaciones libres pero también siendo consciente de su juego sobre la identidad, los dobles, las máscaras, y los saltos temporales, las casualidades y los déjà-vu que los conecta. Como bien explica Zizek, lo que plantea Lynch no es la simple descripción de una pesadilla, sino la confrontación de la realidad con sus múltiples represiones, tabúes, desvíos e interpretaciones, con las estructuras psicológicas mediante la que la percibimos, la sufrimos, la recordamos y la olvidamos. Eso que está escondido en la cajita azul que sólo se abre con la llave azul que guarda un homless monstruoso de un callejón de atrás de Los Ángeles y que no es más que el vacío más infinito e inabarcable. O sea, todo lo posible y lo imposible. Silencio, silencio. No hay banda.
He aprovechado la reposición (me encanta que se recupere ese concepto antiguo, y lo que supone) estos días de ‘Mulholland Drive’ para leer la edición mexicana de unos textos muy lacanianos de Zizek que encontré en Madrid hace unos años. Y me ha servido para disfrutar más si cabe de la película y su crescendo poético y demoniaco, para verla dejándome llevar por la sorpresa y las asociaciones libres pero también siendo consciente de su juego sobre la identidad, los dobles, las máscaras, y los saltos temporales, las casualidades y los déjà-vu que los conecta. Como bien explica Zizek, lo que plantea Lynch no es la simple descripción de una pesadilla, sino la confrontación de la realidad con sus múltiples represiones, tabúes, desvíos e interpretaciones, con las estructuras psicológicas mediante la que la percibimos, la sufrimos, la recordamos y la olvidamos. Eso que está escondido en la cajita azul que sólo se abre con la llave azul que guarda un homless monstruoso de un callejón de atrás de Los Ángeles y que no es más que el vacío más infinito e inabarcable. O sea, todo lo posible y lo imposible. Silencio, silencio. No hay banda.
August 23, 2014
دیک لورنت مُرده*ی لینچ از زبان اسلاوی ژیژک با ترجمه مازیار اسلامی!
هنر امر متعالی مبتذل: درباره «بزرگراه گمشده»ی دیوید لینچ
اسلاوی ژیژک / مازیار اسلامی
نشر نی - 104صفحه
به جز ارتباط اثر با سینما به شکل عام و دیوید لینچ، سینمایش و اثر درخشان او «بزرگراه گمشده» به شکل اخص، استنباطات بیشتری نیز میتوان از عنوان این کتاب داشت. مهمترین آنها این مسئله است که در این کتاب تنها به سینما پرداخته نخواهد شد. ژیژک به طور معمول و به عادت فلاسفه و متفکران اروپایی به همه مباحث به شکلی اجمالی میپردازد. این اثر هم از این قاعده مستثنی نیست. تحلیل ژیژک بسیار فراتر از سینمای لینچ میرود به طوری که در مقاطعی فراموش خواهید کرد که اثر پیش رو درباره سینماست. او به جز سینما و مفهوم رسانه، از فلسفه و سیاست میگوید، و از جامعه و جامعهشناسی و انسان و روان او نیز. ژیژک بسیاری از کانسپتهای سینما را با اشاره به نمونههایی از سینمای کلاسیک و مدرن شرح میدهد و از روند تغییرات ماهیتی این مفاهیم در گذر سالها و ورود به سینمای مدرن پرده برمیدارد؛ تغییراتی که شاید پیش از این به این وضوح تبیین نشده و مورد تمایز قرار نگرفته بودند.
لازم میدانم چند نکته را متذکر شوم. ژیژک از شارحان برجسته ژک لکان است و در این اثر نیز به فیلمها و پدیدههای مورد نظرش از دیدگاه لکان و نظریاتش پرداخته، از این رو شناختی اجمالی از لکان و اساس نگاه و اندیشههای او در روانکاوی در درک و نتیجتاً لذت از مطالعه این کتاب کمک شایانی خواهد کرد. سینما نیز مقوله دیگریست که خواننده پیش از مطالعه باید با برخی مفاهیم آن آشنا باشد. در این راستا میتوان لیستی از آثار سینمایی مورد بحث در کتاب را تهیه و با تماشای آنها -خصوصاً مجموعه آثار دیوید لینچ- بیشترین استفاده را از کتاب برد. به جرئت میتوان گفت که طرفداران جدی سینما بیشترین لذت را از خواندن این کتاب خواهند برد، چرا که افراد آشنا با ژیژک، لکان و شیوه او در روانکاوی، پیش از این جستار کوتاه ژیژک هم با نگاهی این چنین سینما و دیگر پدیدهها را مورد بررسی قرار میدادند. لذت فراوان سینمادوستان از این جهت است که با مطالعه این کتاب با زوایای جدیدی از سینما و مفاهیم سینمایی آشنا شده و نگاهی نو نسبت به فیلم -خصوصاً فیلمهای لینچ و آثاری از این دست- پیدا خواهند کرد. ژیژک پیشنهادهای درخور توجهی برای قرائت و تأویلی نو از «بزرگراه گمشده» ارائه میدهد. او ابراز میدارد که لینچ بیش از «تنها یک سینماگر سورئالیست درگیر در فرم و نتیجتاً پایینتر از بزرگانی چون بونوئل» است و برای اثبات این مدعا دلایل خواندنی و محکمی هم میآورد. خواندن این کتاب به علاقهمندان روانکاوی، اسلاوی ژیژک، ژک لکان و دیدگاههایش در روانکاوی توصیه میشود، به علاقهمندان سینما، دیوید لینچ و سینمایش هم.
*اولین و آخرین دیالوگی که در «بزرگراه گمشده» شنیده میشود.
هنر امر متعالی مبتذل: درباره «بزرگراه گمشده»ی دیوید لینچ
اسلاوی ژیژک / مازیار اسلامی
نشر نی - 104صفحه
به جز ارتباط اثر با سینما به شکل عام و دیوید لینچ، سینمایش و اثر درخشان او «بزرگراه گمشده» به شکل اخص، استنباطات بیشتری نیز میتوان از عنوان این کتاب داشت. مهمترین آنها این مسئله است که در این کتاب تنها به سینما پرداخته نخواهد شد. ژیژک به طور معمول و به عادت فلاسفه و متفکران اروپایی به همه مباحث به شکلی اجمالی میپردازد. این اثر هم از این قاعده مستثنی نیست. تحلیل ژیژک بسیار فراتر از سینمای لینچ میرود به طوری که در مقاطعی فراموش خواهید کرد که اثر پیش رو درباره سینماست. او به جز سینما و مفهوم رسانه، از فلسفه و سیاست میگوید، و از جامعه و جامعهشناسی و انسان و روان او نیز. ژیژک بسیاری از کانسپتهای سینما را با اشاره به نمونههایی از سینمای کلاسیک و مدرن شرح میدهد و از روند تغییرات ماهیتی این مفاهیم در گذر سالها و ورود به سینمای مدرن پرده برمیدارد؛ تغییراتی که شاید پیش از این به این وضوح تبیین نشده و مورد تمایز قرار نگرفته بودند.
لازم میدانم چند نکته را متذکر شوم. ژیژک از شارحان برجسته ژک لکان است و در این اثر نیز به فیلمها و پدیدههای مورد نظرش از دیدگاه لکان و نظریاتش پرداخته، از این رو شناختی اجمالی از لکان و اساس نگاه و اندیشههای او در روانکاوی در درک و نتیجتاً لذت از مطالعه این کتاب کمک شایانی خواهد کرد. سینما نیز مقوله دیگریست که خواننده پیش از مطالعه باید با برخی مفاهیم آن آشنا باشد. در این راستا میتوان لیستی از آثار سینمایی مورد بحث در کتاب را تهیه و با تماشای آنها -خصوصاً مجموعه آثار دیوید لینچ- بیشترین استفاده را از کتاب برد. به جرئت میتوان گفت که طرفداران جدی سینما بیشترین لذت را از خواندن این کتاب خواهند برد، چرا که افراد آشنا با ژیژک، لکان و شیوه او در روانکاوی، پیش از این جستار کوتاه ژیژک هم با نگاهی این چنین سینما و دیگر پدیدهها را مورد بررسی قرار میدادند. لذت فراوان سینمادوستان از این جهت است که با مطالعه این کتاب با زوایای جدیدی از سینما و مفاهیم سینمایی آشنا شده و نگاهی نو نسبت به فیلم -خصوصاً فیلمهای لینچ و آثاری از این دست- پیدا خواهند کرد. ژیژک پیشنهادهای درخور توجهی برای قرائت و تأویلی نو از «بزرگراه گمشده» ارائه میدهد. او ابراز میدارد که لینچ بیش از «تنها یک سینماگر سورئالیست درگیر در فرم و نتیجتاً پایینتر از بزرگانی چون بونوئل» است و برای اثبات این مدعا دلایل خواندنی و محکمی هم میآورد. خواندن این کتاب به علاقهمندان روانکاوی، اسلاوی ژیژک، ژک لکان و دیدگاههایش در روانکاوی توصیه میشود، به علاقهمندان سینما، دیوید لینچ و سینمایش هم.
*اولین و آخرین دیالوگی که در «بزرگراه گمشده» شنیده میشود.
December 20, 2023
Most fascinating here is the construction of "reality and its fantasmatic support, surface and its 'repressed'" not as vertical--consoling appearances with brutal reality "underneath"--but as horizontal, in tandem and simultaneous. The notion of "Canned Hatred" is also loaded with suggestive critical utility. Zizek's Lacanian Lynch opens a hole in cinematic enjoyment where knowledge can penetrate.
October 11, 2018
کتاب خیلی جالبی بود، تحلیل روانکاوانه ش از سینمای لینچ، بازنمایی فَم فَتَل در سینمای نوآر و سینمای لینچ، به علاوه ی بررسی فیلم های مربوط به جنگ جهانی دوم و بالاخره کارکردان محبوبم، وینتربرگ خیلی جذاب بود. مازیار اسلامی این کتاب رو ترجمه کرده اما من انگلیسی خوندم و میتونم بگم برای کسی با سطح انگلیسی متوسط کاملا قابل فهمه. فقط کافیه با اصطلاحات روانکاوی لاکانی آشنا باشید.
July 5, 2025
همینجا از اسلامی خواهش میکنم از ژیژک دربیاره و سراغ تپههای دیگه بره. 🙏🏻
Read
December 10, 2009اول باید بزرگراه گم شده ی استاد لینچ و ببینید........
August 5, 2022
In less than 50 pages, Žižek not only makes a thoroughly compelling examination of Lynch's intricate masterpiece LOST HIGHWAY, but he also delves into the rest of the filmmaker's body of work, as well as exploring the portrayal of Nazism in SCHINDLER'S LIST and LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, Jungian and Freudian psychology, cyberspace, and much more. Dense, but oh so worth it.
September 12, 2023
Father, can't you see i'm burning?
February 2, 2023
Zizek undoubtedly rehearses a lot of ideas here which he mentions elsewhere in his voluminous writings.
But I haven't read much of him (lately), so none of it bored me. I think that Zizek really gets David Lynch, at least in that he "reads" (really watches) the director on his own terms. Too many people think that Lynch is sometimes so naive (in his own words and in the dialogue he puts in the mouths of his characters) that he must be joking... that it's all this sly, ironic game. The point, as Zizek notices, is that Lynch is serious:
Zizek is a very enjoyable writer. In a weird way, he has a lot in common with Chesterton. Both are economical when compared to how many interesting ideas they come up with (especially compared with what I feel like is the normal academic style, using up a whole book to put forth a single idea). Where the Chestertonian method is paradox, the Zizekian method is sublation. Their respective methods could be sketched out as follows:
Chesterton:
1. Take some commonplace.
2. Examine its negation, and show how this negation has truth to it, more truth than the original commonplace.
One could argue that this basic structure is itself essentially "cruciform," in that in Christ the reality of the world (God) is seemingly denied, nullified (the passion), but this very nullity produces a higher and a more absolute truth (we see that the passion is the expression of the very deepest truth—God's overwhelming infinite love—such that all preceding truth is seen as incomplete).
Zizek:
1. Option 1 (which usually corresponds to the "right wing") solution to some intellectual problem is considered, rejected (as absolute).
2. Option 2 (usually the "left-wing" option) solution considered, rejected (also as absolute).
3. Option 3, not as the flat synthesis of both, but as the sublation of both—negation. The intellect denies both options and by thrusting them down from itself simultaneously generates the momentum required to push itself "upwards," to the transcendent higher truth.
Where C's method is cruciform, one could call Zizek's method (really Hegel's method) subtly (unconsciously) trinitarian, in that these true patterns it discerns in phenomena are the immanent impression of the trinity in the world of phenomena, the world of becoming itself—with the reservation that such an impression is merely an impression of absolute truth, not the absolute itself.
Both Z & C sometimes seem so enslaved to their method (which is nevertheless almost infallibly brilliant in the truths it continuously yields) that something about them can begin to seem rather mechanical—particularly when they begin to repeat themselves.
Yet as with Chesterton, the general experience is enjoyable. Zizek's interpretation of Lost Highway, for example, is one of those great readings which are so strong that once you've read them, it's near impossible to see the film any other way...
Namely, he writes that Lost Highway repeats the psychoanalytic process, "traversing the fantasy" to reach a point where one comes to understand a fundamental phrase which has already been structuring one's conscious experience. At the end of the road, one hears the message with full understanding, it becomes integrated into consciousness. So "Dick Laurant is dead" moves from meaningless trigger of conscious experience to the understanding that it means that there is nothing extrinsic which prevents a happy relationship (no "Mr. Big" getting in the way of romantic happiness)—the problem is in human nature itself, which as fallen cannot but experience romantic relationships as riddled by frustration and dissatisfaction, domination and lust...
A few of the essays were admittedly boring or incomprehensible (or both), but sometimes there are ideas which are so interesting that they make up for an otherwise dull essay:
There is also something tremendously insightful in the "Canned Hatred" chapter, where he argues that TV does the laughing for us (it objectifies and abstracts what would otherwise be an immediate subjective emotional response) in a way that is genuinely cathartic. Just as the TV laughs for us, Zizek argues, the Nazi system (or any ideological system) hates for us—we don't need to be cartoonish, psychologized caricatures to be truly morally evil.
Zizek goes even further, and says that this split which generates a sense of objectivity is also the split which generates the subject themselves.
Technology (every tool which humans purposively create—including art and culture) which is first created as the purely instrumental expression of some human reality, the tool to faciliate that power or skill, eventually comes to subvert the very thing which originated it. A shovel can lead to weakness compared to digging by hand... literate cultures have weaker memories than oral, etc.
The products of *techne* (human doing or making: arts & crafts—and culture / worldviews are indeed one such product) are always intended to add to human power—to serve man. But our fallen nature means that such products invariably come to *replace* the human power they were originally intended to augment. This is alienation.
Canned laughter was originally created to add to the joy of our normal laughter—that it comes to *replace* such laughter is the deviation of alienation.
The case of Eichmann is more difficult because it seems to involve two moments of alienation. In one, there is the alienation of human as truth-knowing produced by the Nazi ideological system. In other words, the ideal Nazi subject is already alienated insofar as he has led the "technology" of Nazi ideology replace his capacity to think and know truth. But even within this ideological bubble, the system which was created to facilitate hatred ends up doing its job so well that it alienates even something of this falsehood on the level of subject. Thus Eichmann stands for a twice-alienated subject: first alienated from truth by his adoption of ideology and then further alienated from even the psychological interiority which perhaps once pertained to the ideology's adherents.
As to the claim that such alienation is *constitutive* of the subject—I think that this deserves a more nuanced approach.
Something is indeed lost in the passage from nature to culture (we move from being perfect animals to being imperfect human beings), and alienation describes the ongoing reality of this loss as it appears in the context of human techne.
But there are tools which function normally, adding to our powers without thereby weakening us. And there are more and less alienated subjects such that I think that it is excessive to link subjectivity to alienation.
This is admittedly going beyond Zizek, but that's because I have this compulsion to "fix" his general anti-realism and wrangle something more intelligible from the insight he's touching on.
But I haven't read much of him (lately), so none of it bored me. I think that Zizek really gets David Lynch, at least in that he "reads" (really watches) the director on his own terms. Too many people think that Lynch is sometimes so naive (in his own words and in the dialogue he puts in the mouths of his characters) that he must be joking... that it's all this sly, ironic game. The point, as Zizek notices, is that Lynch is serious:
[The seriousness of the cliched dialogue in Lynch] does not signal a deeper spiritual level underlying superficial cliche’s, but rather a crazy assertion of the redemptive value of naive clichés as such.
Zizek is a very enjoyable writer. In a weird way, he has a lot in common with Chesterton. Both are economical when compared to how many interesting ideas they come up with (especially compared with what I feel like is the normal academic style, using up a whole book to put forth a single idea). Where the Chestertonian method is paradox, the Zizekian method is sublation. Their respective methods could be sketched out as follows:
Chesterton:
1. Take some commonplace.
2. Examine its negation, and show how this negation has truth to it, more truth than the original commonplace.
One could argue that this basic structure is itself essentially "cruciform," in that in Christ the reality of the world (God) is seemingly denied, nullified (the passion), but this very nullity produces a higher and a more absolute truth (we see that the passion is the expression of the very deepest truth—God's overwhelming infinite love—such that all preceding truth is seen as incomplete).
Zizek:
1. Option 1 (which usually corresponds to the "right wing") solution to some intellectual problem is considered, rejected (as absolute).
2. Option 2 (usually the "left-wing" option) solution considered, rejected (also as absolute).
3. Option 3, not as the flat synthesis of both, but as the sublation of both—negation. The intellect denies both options and by thrusting them down from itself simultaneously generates the momentum required to push itself "upwards," to the transcendent higher truth.
Where C's method is cruciform, one could call Zizek's method (really Hegel's method) subtly (unconsciously) trinitarian, in that these true patterns it discerns in phenomena are the immanent impression of the trinity in the world of phenomena, the world of becoming itself—with the reservation that such an impression is merely an impression of absolute truth, not the absolute itself.
Both Z & C sometimes seem so enslaved to their method (which is nevertheless almost infallibly brilliant in the truths it continuously yields) that something about them can begin to seem rather mechanical—particularly when they begin to repeat themselves.
Yet as with Chesterton, the general experience is enjoyable. Zizek's interpretation of Lost Highway, for example, is one of those great readings which are so strong that once you've read them, it's near impossible to see the film any other way...
Namely, he writes that Lost Highway repeats the psychoanalytic process, "traversing the fantasy" to reach a point where one comes to understand a fundamental phrase which has already been structuring one's conscious experience. At the end of the road, one hears the message with full understanding, it becomes integrated into consciousness. So "Dick Laurant is dead" moves from meaningless trigger of conscious experience to the understanding that it means that there is nothing extrinsic which prevents a happy relationship (no "Mr. Big" getting in the way of romantic happiness)—the problem is in human nature itself, which as fallen cannot but experience romantic relationships as riddled by frustration and dissatisfaction, domination and lust...
A few of the essays were admittedly boring or incomprehensible (or both), but sometimes there are ideas which are so interesting that they make up for an otherwise dull essay:
... today’s prevailing “psychologization” of social life is the mask (or mode of appearance) of its exact opposite, of the growing disintegration of the proper “psychological” dimension of authentic self-experience. “Persons” that we encounter are, more and more, experienced as individuals talking like puppets who repeat a prerecorded message. Recall the New Age preacher telling us to rediscover our true Self: is it not that the very style of his words - the style of repeating, like an automaton, learned phrases contradicts his message?
There is also something tremendously insightful in the "Canned Hatred" chapter, where he argues that TV does the laughing for us (it objectifies and abstracts what would otherwise be an immediate subjective emotional response) in a way that is genuinely cathartic. Just as the TV laughs for us, Zizek argues, the Nazi system (or any ideological system) hates for us—we don't need to be cartoonish, psychologized caricatures to be truly morally evil.
Zizek goes even further, and says that this split which generates a sense of objectivity is also the split which generates the subject themselves.
The key to the Lacanian solution to the problem of the relationship between subjective libidinal experience and the libidinal economy embodied in the objective symbolic order, the “big Other,” is that the gap between the two is original and constitutive [of both!]: there is no primordial direct self-experience which is then, in a secondary move, “reified” or objectivized in the working of the symbolic order. The subject himself emerges through such a displacement of his innermost self-experience onto the “reified” symbolic order.
Technology (every tool which humans purposively create—including art and culture) which is first created as the purely instrumental expression of some human reality, the tool to faciliate that power or skill, eventually comes to subvert the very thing which originated it. A shovel can lead to weakness compared to digging by hand... literate cultures have weaker memories than oral, etc.
The products of *techne* (human doing or making: arts & crafts—and culture / worldviews are indeed one such product) are always intended to add to human power—to serve man. But our fallen nature means that such products invariably come to *replace* the human power they were originally intended to augment. This is alienation.
Canned laughter was originally created to add to the joy of our normal laughter—that it comes to *replace* such laughter is the deviation of alienation.
The case of Eichmann is more difficult because it seems to involve two moments of alienation. In one, there is the alienation of human as truth-knowing produced by the Nazi ideological system. In other words, the ideal Nazi subject is already alienated insofar as he has led the "technology" of Nazi ideology replace his capacity to think and know truth. But even within this ideological bubble, the system which was created to facilitate hatred ends up doing its job so well that it alienates even something of this falsehood on the level of subject. Thus Eichmann stands for a twice-alienated subject: first alienated from truth by his adoption of ideology and then further alienated from even the psychological interiority which perhaps once pertained to the ideology's adherents.
As to the claim that such alienation is *constitutive* of the subject—I think that this deserves a more nuanced approach.
Something is indeed lost in the passage from nature to culture (we move from being perfect animals to being imperfect human beings), and alienation describes the ongoing reality of this loss as it appears in the context of human techne.
But there are tools which function normally, adding to our powers without thereby weakening us. And there are more and less alienated subjects such that I think that it is excessive to link subjectivity to alienation.
This is admittedly going beyond Zizek, but that's because I have this compulsion to "fix" his general anti-realism and wrangle something more intelligible from the insight he's touching on.
October 16, 2018
در کتاب هنر امر متعالی مبتذل، ژیژک قرائتی لاکانی از فیلم «بزرگراه گمشده» دیوید لینچ ارائه میکند، گرچه دامنه بحثش شامل فیلمسازان دیگری همچون اسپیلبرگ، توماس وینتربرگ و مباحثی دیگر همچون اخلاق، سیاست و ... هم میشود.
The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime is first of all the detailed reading of David Lynch's The Lost Highway, based on the premises of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lynch's unique universe of the "ridiculous sublime" is interpreted as a simultaneous playful staging and traversing of the fundamental ideological fantasies that sustain our late capitalist society.
A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse-and as closely linked-as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK, a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana, is the author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchock) and In Defense of Lost Causes, among many books. Marek Wieczorek is assistant professor of modern art history at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of The Touch of Light: Laser Paintings by Carel Balth.
Credit. www.washington.edu
The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime is first of all the detailed reading of David Lynch's The Lost Highway, based on the premises of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lynch's unique universe of the "ridiculous sublime" is interpreted as a simultaneous playful staging and traversing of the fundamental ideological fantasies that sustain our late capitalist society.
A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse-and as closely linked-as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK, a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana, is the author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchock) and In Defense of Lost Causes, among many books. Marek Wieczorek is assistant professor of modern art history at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of The Touch of Light: Laser Paintings by Carel Balth.
Credit. www.washington.edu
December 9, 2025
14/30
way too dense, but i guess that should be expected of Zizek
1. _The Inherent Transgression
Žižek opens by insisting that Lost Highway stages transgression as structural—transgression is not merely ethical shock but the engine that reveals how subjectivity is constituted. He reframes the film’s violent ruptures as moments that expose ideological fantasy-structures rather than puzzles to be decoded.
2. The Feminine Act
Here Žižek examines the role of feminine subjectivity and the femme fatale figure, arguing that Lynch’s women enact specific acts that destabilize masculine fantasy. The feminine act is read as a site where symbolic order is challenged—producing both desire and its failure.
3. Fantasy Decomposed
This chapter details how the film fragments fantasy into component parts: dream logic, substitution (Fred → Pete), and compensatory narratives. Žižek shows how Lynch decomposes protective fantasies so that their internal contradictions and failures become visible.
4. The Tree Scenes
Focusing on Lynch’s recurring “tree” or forest imagery, Žižek treats these sequences as topological and symbolic sites where the Real intrudes. The tree-scenes function as spatial metaphors for the subject’s internal topology—places where symbolic coordinates break down.
5. Canned Hatred
Žižek reads scenes of routinized aggression and hatred (domestic violence, social cruelty) as ideology’s banal face. He argues the film exposes how hatred is packaged, circulated, and normalized—how violence becomes an almost bureaucratic part of psychic life.
6. Fathers, Fathers Everywhere
This chapter maps paternal figures and their duplications in the film, connecting fatherhood to law, authority, and the traumatic kernel. Žižek reads paternal presences (and impostures) as crucial to understanding the film’s ethical and symbolic ruptures.
7. The End of Psychology
Žižek attacks humanist-psychological readings—arguing that Lynch’s cinema outstrips ordinary psychology. The film, he claims, stages structural breaks that clinical psychology can misread; only psychoanalytic categories (Real, symbolic) adequately account for its form.
8. Cyberspace Between Perversion and Trauma
Žižek brings in technological mediation—videotapes, recordings, and screens—as extensions of psychic surveillance. He shows how media encodes both perverse circuits of enjoyment and traumatic exposure, collapsing inner and outer gaze.
9. The Future Antérieur in the History of Art
This theoretical detour places Lynch within a philosophical lineage: the sublime, German Idealism, and the way art anticipates a future-past (future antérieur) that retroactively structures meaning. Žižek uses this frame to argue Lynch’s work as metaphysical, not merely stylistic.
10. Constructing the Fundamental Fantasy
In the finale Žižek synthesizes earlier moves: the film constructs and then fails to sustain a fundamental fantasy that would reconcile desire and guilt. The looped narrative is thus read as the topological imprint of a fantasy that cannot hold against the Real’s return.
way too dense, but i guess that should be expected of Zizek
1. _The Inherent Transgression
Žižek opens by insisting that Lost Highway stages transgression as structural—transgression is not merely ethical shock but the engine that reveals how subjectivity is constituted. He reframes the film’s violent ruptures as moments that expose ideological fantasy-structures rather than puzzles to be decoded.
2. The Feminine Act
Here Žižek examines the role of feminine subjectivity and the femme fatale figure, arguing that Lynch’s women enact specific acts that destabilize masculine fantasy. The feminine act is read as a site where symbolic order is challenged—producing both desire and its failure.
3. Fantasy Decomposed
This chapter details how the film fragments fantasy into component parts: dream logic, substitution (Fred → Pete), and compensatory narratives. Žižek shows how Lynch decomposes protective fantasies so that their internal contradictions and failures become visible.
4. The Tree Scenes
Focusing on Lynch’s recurring “tree” or forest imagery, Žižek treats these sequences as topological and symbolic sites where the Real intrudes. The tree-scenes function as spatial metaphors for the subject’s internal topology—places where symbolic coordinates break down.
5. Canned Hatred
Žižek reads scenes of routinized aggression and hatred (domestic violence, social cruelty) as ideology’s banal face. He argues the film exposes how hatred is packaged, circulated, and normalized—how violence becomes an almost bureaucratic part of psychic life.
6. Fathers, Fathers Everywhere
This chapter maps paternal figures and their duplications in the film, connecting fatherhood to law, authority, and the traumatic kernel. Žižek reads paternal presences (and impostures) as crucial to understanding the film’s ethical and symbolic ruptures.
7. The End of Psychology
Žižek attacks humanist-psychological readings—arguing that Lynch’s cinema outstrips ordinary psychology. The film, he claims, stages structural breaks that clinical psychology can misread; only psychoanalytic categories (Real, symbolic) adequately account for its form.
8. Cyberspace Between Perversion and Trauma
Žižek brings in technological mediation—videotapes, recordings, and screens—as extensions of psychic surveillance. He shows how media encodes both perverse circuits of enjoyment and traumatic exposure, collapsing inner and outer gaze.
9. The Future Antérieur in the History of Art
This theoretical detour places Lynch within a philosophical lineage: the sublime, German Idealism, and the way art anticipates a future-past (future antérieur) that retroactively structures meaning. Žižek uses this frame to argue Lynch’s work as metaphysical, not merely stylistic.
10. Constructing the Fundamental Fantasy
In the finale Žižek synthesizes earlier moves: the film constructs and then fails to sustain a fundamental fantasy that would reconcile desire and guilt. The looped narrative is thus read as the topological imprint of a fantasy that cannot hold against the Real’s return.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 27, 2024
"...one could say that David Lynch’s first feature-length film [Eraserhead] was such an
intense experience audio-visually that people needed to invent explanations... even to the point of hearing inaudible noises"
This quote summarizes nicely the general thrust of what Lynch does -- against the New Age 'experiential' and conservative 'dangerous Other' readings -- with his films, Lost Highway being a particularly poignant example of the destruction of fantasy. A lot is said in few words, but the thesis that I could make out is that Lost Highway "traverses the fantasmatic universe of noir" by putting their two fantasies of the femme fatale side by side, which ultimately shows how our reality functions by "an inconsistent multiple of fantasies; generating the effect of the impenetrable density that we experience as "reality"". The 'cut' between the classical noir and the neo noir femme's is made literal in the story, with the incomprehensible division between Renee and Alice, which is resolved by the Mystery Man in the wooden shack (effectively containing these two into one - Renee).
If this thesis is true, what I think is key here is that this resolution in no way invalidates the bizarre transformation of Fred into Pete; at the end of the movie, we see the detectives who arrested Fred and the ones who were watching Pete meet at Andy's house to legitimize the femme fatale as Renee. I'm not completely sure the meaning of this move nor on what Zizek's reading of the film entails for such a conclusion -- but reading this against McGowan's paper 'Finding Ourselves on a Lost Highway', we have to see the Mystery Man as the superegoic Law who, in addition to demanding Fred's name ("and your name... what the fuck is your name?"), resolves Renee's split into one fantasy. But Fred refuses this demand, his fantasy (Pete) is destroyed after Alice's negation ("you'll never have me") but he also runs (quite literally in the end) from his joyless world where he is caught in Renee's desire. Thus the killing of Mr. Eddy and the beginning line "Dick Laurent is dead" is Fred's final attempt to overcome his desire and fantasy -- if Zizek's understanding of Mr. Eddy as an extreme superegoic Father figure is true, then Fred enacts foreclosure and his state at the end of the film (endless driving from police, flight from the master) is psychotic. Zizek states "Dick Laurent is dead" is the Real of Lost Highway, and so this being Fred's final words are fitting since his foreclosure prevents a symbolization of the impossible Real.
A very good and interesting analysis and general exposition (and plenty of fun tangents) that effectively explicate psychoanalytic points of critique on modern ideology, the fantasy of violent war, and an intense exploration of cyberspace (which proved incomprehensible to me).
intense experience audio-visually that people needed to invent explanations... even to the point of hearing inaudible noises"
This quote summarizes nicely the general thrust of what Lynch does -- against the New Age 'experiential' and conservative 'dangerous Other' readings -- with his films, Lost Highway being a particularly poignant example of the destruction of fantasy. A lot is said in few words, but the thesis that I could make out is that Lost Highway "traverses the fantasmatic universe of noir" by putting their two fantasies of the femme fatale side by side, which ultimately shows how our reality functions by "an inconsistent multiple of fantasies; generating the effect of the impenetrable density that we experience as "reality"". The 'cut' between the classical noir and the neo noir femme's is made literal in the story, with the incomprehensible division between Renee and Alice, which is resolved by the Mystery Man in the wooden shack (effectively containing these two into one - Renee).
If this thesis is true, what I think is key here is that this resolution in no way invalidates the bizarre transformation of Fred into Pete; at the end of the movie, we see the detectives who arrested Fred and the ones who were watching Pete meet at Andy's house to legitimize the femme fatale as Renee. I'm not completely sure the meaning of this move nor on what Zizek's reading of the film entails for such a conclusion -- but reading this against McGowan's paper 'Finding Ourselves on a Lost Highway', we have to see the Mystery Man as the superegoic Law who, in addition to demanding Fred's name ("and your name... what the fuck is your name?"), resolves Renee's split into one fantasy. But Fred refuses this demand, his fantasy (Pete) is destroyed after Alice's negation ("you'll never have me") but he also runs (quite literally in the end) from his joyless world where he is caught in Renee's desire. Thus the killing of Mr. Eddy and the beginning line "Dick Laurent is dead" is Fred's final attempt to overcome his desire and fantasy -- if Zizek's understanding of Mr. Eddy as an extreme superegoic Father figure is true, then Fred enacts foreclosure and his state at the end of the film (endless driving from police, flight from the master) is psychotic. Zizek states "Dick Laurent is dead" is the Real of Lost Highway, and so this being Fred's final words are fitting since his foreclosure prevents a symbolization of the impossible Real.
A very good and interesting analysis and general exposition (and plenty of fun tangents) that effectively explicate psychoanalytic points of critique on modern ideology, the fantasy of violent war, and an intense exploration of cyberspace (which proved incomprehensible to me).
June 15, 2025
نکتهی مشترک میان این دو پدر (پدر در فیلمهای زندگی زیباستِ روبرتو بنینی و جشنِ توماس وینتربرگ) این است که هر دو عاملیت قانون/ ممنوعیت نمادین را به تعلیق در میآورند، یعنی عاملیت پدرانهای که کارکردش ورود کودک به جهان واقعیت اجتماعی با تبعات سخت و دشوار آن است، جهانی که کودک بدون هیچ سپر محافظ مادرانهای به آن وارد میشود: پدر بنینی سپر خیالی را در برابر مواجههی وحشتناک با واقعیت اجتماعی میسازد، در حالی که پدر متجاوزِ وینتربرگ نیز پدری خارج از قیدوبندهای قانون (نمادین) است و از اینکه به حداکثر کامیابی دست یابد لذت میبرد. بنابراین این دو پدر مابهازای تقابل لاکانی میان امر خیالی و امر واقعی هستند: پدر بنینی همچون محافظ یک امنیت خیالی، در برابر پدر وینتربرگ همچون تعریف سبعیت و بیرحمی امر واقع خشونت فاقد قانون. در اینجا حلقهی مفقوده، پدری حامل اقتدار نمادین، نام پدر و عامل اخته کردنِ بازدارندهای است که به سوژه این امکان را میدهد تا وارد نظم نمادین و درنتیجه قلمروی میل شود. هر دو پدر، پدر خیالی و واقعی آن چیزی هستند که به محض اینکه اقتدار نمادینِ پدرانه متلاشی شود، برجا میماند.
چه بر سر عمل نظم نمادین میآید، اگر قانون نمادین کاراییاش را از دست بدهد و دیگر بهدرستی عمل نکند؟ آنچه حاصل میشود، سوژههایی هستند که به طرز عجیبی واقعیتزدایی یا کمابیش روانشناختیزدایی شدهاند، انگار با عروسکهایی ماشینوار سر و کار داریم که از سازوکاری کور و عجیب پیروی میکنند...
روانشناسانهسازیِ زندگی اجتماعی امروز نقابی (ظاهرسازی) است که وجه مقابلش یعنی چندپارگی رو به تزاید بعد روانشناختی تجربیات شخصی را میپوشاند (سیل کتابهای راهنمای روانشناختی از دیل کارنگی گرفته تا جان گری که همگی میکوشند متقاعدمان کنند که راه خوشبختی را باید درون خودمان، در بلوغ روانی و خودیابیمان بجوییم؛ یا اعترافات علنی به سبک اپرا وینفری، شیوهای که در آن خود سیاستمداران لطمههای خصوصی و دلمشغولیشان را در معرض داوری عموم قرار میدهند تا تصمیمگیریهای سیاسیشان را موجه کنند). «اشخاصی» که با آنها مواجه میشویم، بیش از پیش همچون کسانی به نظر میرسند که همانند عروسکهایی مدام یک پیام از پیش ضبطشده را تکرار میکنند. مثلاً واعظان عصر نوین را در نظر بگیرید که از ما میخواهند خودِ حقیقیمان را کشف کنیم: آیا این همان سبک کلام او نیست -سبک تکرار کردن جملات پیشآموخته، آنهم به سان یک ماشین- که پیام او را نقض میکند؟ این شاید تاثیر خارقالعادهی واعظان عصر نوین را توجیه کند: گویی در پس طرز برخورد مهرآمیز و باز آنها، ابعاد هیولایی وحشتناکی کمین کرده است.
چه بر سر عمل نظم نمادین میآید، اگر قانون نمادین کاراییاش را از دست بدهد و دیگر بهدرستی عمل نکند؟ آنچه حاصل میشود، سوژههایی هستند که به طرز عجیبی واقعیتزدایی یا کمابیش روانشناختیزدایی شدهاند، انگار با عروسکهایی ماشینوار سر و کار داریم که از سازوکاری کور و عجیب پیروی میکنند...
روانشناسانهسازیِ زندگی اجتماعی امروز نقابی (ظاهرسازی) است که وجه مقابلش یعنی چندپارگی رو به تزاید بعد روانشناختی تجربیات شخصی را میپوشاند (سیل کتابهای راهنمای روانشناختی از دیل کارنگی گرفته تا جان گری که همگی میکوشند متقاعدمان کنند که راه خوشبختی را باید درون خودمان، در بلوغ روانی و خودیابیمان بجوییم؛ یا اعترافات علنی به سبک اپرا وینفری، شیوهای که در آن خود سیاستمداران لطمههای خصوصی و دلمشغولیشان را در معرض داوری عموم قرار میدهند تا تصمیمگیریهای سیاسیشان را موجه کنند). «اشخاصی» که با آنها مواجه میشویم، بیش از پیش همچون کسانی به نظر میرسند که همانند عروسکهایی مدام یک پیام از پیش ضبطشده را تکرار میکنند. مثلاً واعظان عصر نوین را در نظر بگیرید که از ما میخواهند خودِ حقیقیمان را کشف کنیم: آیا این همان سبک کلام او نیست -سبک تکرار کردن جملات پیشآموخته، آنهم به سان یک ماشین- که پیام او را نقض میکند؟ این شاید تاثیر خارقالعادهی واعظان عصر نوین را توجیه کند: گویی در پس طرز برخورد مهرآمیز و باز آنها، ابعاد هیولایی وحشتناکی کمین کرده است.
December 10, 2024
Zizek's analysis of Lost Highway is not only a more satisfactory explanation of Lost Highway (and of Lynch's entire catalogue) than I've read--his application of Lacanian concepts to films (including those of other directors) made obscure concepts within reach of my understanding. The account Zizek gives of the general Lynchian narrative is that he makes the viewer confront the fundamental fantasy through presenting opposed fantasies. In the case of Lost Highway, the noir half of the film, which I take to be Fred's consciously-endorsed fantasy, is horrific and does not capture the fundamental fantasy. Zizek seems to be implying that the horror of this noir portion, much like in his discussion of The Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998) and False Memory Syndrome, obscures the fundamental fantasy that is not the hypersexual noir or the drab impotent marriage. The horror perhaps "guarantees" there is a third possibility of "unconstrained" enjoyment.
I found the discussion of cyberspace hypertexts particularly intriguing and would like to consider them in light of Land/Fisher/CCRU. His political claims also warranted further consideration, particularly the account he offers in response to Arendt's 'banality of evil' and their place in an evil institution. I am still working through everything presented, will probably need to reread to make sense of how everything ties together.
I found the discussion of cyberspace hypertexts particularly intriguing and would like to consider them in light of Land/Fisher/CCRU. His political claims also warranted further consideration, particularly the account he offers in response to Arendt's 'banality of evil' and their place in an evil institution. I am still working through everything presented, will probably need to reread to make sense of how everything ties together.
August 23, 2019
An excellent extended essay on Lost Highway, the ruminations on the hypertextuality of Lynch’s film are especially interesting. (The same could be said of course for Mulholland Dr., INLAND EMPIRE, and Twin Peaks The Return, all adopted the same essentially open-ended narrative trajectory.) The discussions of Life Is Beautiful, The Last Seduction, and Festen are also very interesting. I liked especially how he homes in on the hauntological character of the film. Those fantasies never fulfilled but never quite abandoned are like a spectre, or even an alter ego, a Pete for a Fred. But of course being Zizek he cannot resist many a Lacanian swerve just as the argument is most lucid, descending into some irritatingly foggy dead ends. Were it not for these an unreserved recommendation, but a very worthwhile read nonetheless.
February 17, 2025
Good points about how the fantasy itself ends up failing right where reality failed, and dissolving, and about the 'psychoanalytic' nature of the circle in the movie: the character starts hearing something meaningless from outside ('Dick Lorant is dead'), and ends the movie by uttering these very words himself (to himself) and meaning them. But there's far too much material in this that has *nothing* to do with Lost Highway (even by SZ's standards). This is just a 50-page book for crying out loud! Do we really need lengthy digressions on the representation of Holocaust in movies?
April 11, 2022
I'm not sure what to make of this... is Zizek writing a Lynchian Zizek in this book. I AM CONFUSED. I probably shouldn't expect Zizek's take on Lynch to be clear... as that would defeat the purpose of what I think he is claiming... that Lynch's films are a way of describing the Ethics of the Lacanian Real... are we living in Zizek's fantasy with this text? I would say it's a bit ridiculous... not what I wanted but maybe what I deserved...
January 20, 2021
A great insite on David Lynch's mind and universe. It was amazing to get to read something so well constructed, easy writting. A lot of unecessary repetition in my opinion, I felt like you could read the chapters on their own without reading the rest of the book, a great thing for a class but not when you read the whole book.
February 24, 2019
Surprising to myself, I'd not read this before. I was truly hoping for more focus on Lynch's cinema. I've gotten the theoretical points elsewhere and wanted to see what readings Zizek would offer of Lost Highway.
November 20, 2019
Sonunda sinema tarihinin en tuhaf filmi bir şekilde anlaşılır hale geldi, oysa nasıl da olanaksız görünüyordu. Zizek’in tüm kitaplarında olduğu gibi, ağır teorik konular heyacanlı bir gerilim / dedektif öyküsüymüş gibi soluk soluğa okunabiliyor..Zizek terminolojisi ile bir tanışıklık gerekiyor ama.
November 2, 2021
Short essay with typical sidestepping. At one point I was not even sure if this was about Lynch or something else. I find Žižek to be very good writer and entertainer but for some reason I can't remember most of his philosophical arguments. Why is that?
March 11, 2023
I've read a fair bit of Zizek's work and I keep coming back to this one. Maybe because I like Lynch as well so much, I don't know. L'obscurité est quelque chose de profond en nous, hors de notre contrôle.
April 7, 2024
Very interesting essay, I think this essay along with my recent readings of excerpts of Freuds writings on dreams have really influenced how I understand the subconscious in general, would highly recommend.
April 17, 2019
El tratar de entender a David Lynch desde Jacques Lacan o intentar entender a Lacan desde Lynch.
December 24, 2019
Zizek, Kayıp Otoban filmini merkeze alarak David Lynch sinemasını okumaya girişiyor. Ufuk açıcı bir deneme.
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