Lacan & French Thriller Exam 1

What does Lacan try to distance ethics from?

the superego

What philosophical reference on ethics does Lacan use to distinguish his position from?

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

How is the unconscious structured for Lacan?

like a language

What two principles does Freud distinguish between, according to Lacan in Seminar VII?

pleasure principle and reality principle

Where is das Ding located?

between perception and consciousness

What actor does Lacan associate with das Ding?

Harpo Marx

According to Lacan, how does Martin Luther describe humanity?

as what falls out of the anus of Satan

What does sublimation do, for Lacan?

it raises an ordinary object to the dignity of the Thing

What is one example Lacan gives of das Ding?

the collection of matchbooks

Why is Aristotle unable to think sublimation?

he can't conceive of creation ex nihilo

How does Lacan change Kant's example from the Critique of Practical Reason?

he imagines having sex with someone else because it meant death afterwards

Whose apples reveal das Ding, according to Lacan?

Cezanne's

What psychoanalytic theorist gets sublimation primarily wrong, according to Lacan?

Bernfeld

What does courtly love do?

raises the woman to the dignity of the Thing

What kind of effect from painting is at work in courtly love, according to Lacan?

anamorphosis

According to Lacan, what's the problem with submitting to the moral law?

it increases the demands of the superego

What do the heroes of the plays of Socrates have in common?

for them, the race is run

What is the function of the chorus?

they handle the emotions for the spectator

According to Lacan, why does Hamlet have trouble killing Claudius?

he wants him to die the second death, not just kill him

What does Creon try to promote?

the good of his community

What does Antigone go beyond the limit of?

Atè

Why does Antigone insist on burying her brother?

because she couldn't replace him

What is the only thing that one can be guilty of, according to Lacan?

giving ground relative to one's desire

What does power want to avoid?

an outbreak of desire

What effect foes Antigone have on Creon?

she takes him to the zone between two deaths

What can one do to a hero, according to Lacan?

betray her with impunity

What does Lacan claim about the Sovereign Good

it doesn't exist

The Raven

-The Raven is killed by an avenging victim
-The hospital patient's suicide is foreshadowed by a close-up on a razor blade
-Dr Germaine is accused of performing abortions
-It is difficult to detect the Raven's writing because he writes in all capital letters.

Purple Noon

-bases its mystery on our identification with someone who has completely empty subjectivity
-Ripley's class position is crucial to his social ostracism
-Ripley envies not so much what the others have but who they are
-Tom has no thing of his own, whereas everyone around him seems to have their own thing
-His murder of Phillippe stems from Tom's absence of his own thing

The Red Circle

-the film begins with two apparently disparate narrative lines that only come together at the midpoint of the film
-the elaborate heist occupies just a small part of the film's running time
-the film doesn't turn the object of the heist into das Ding, unlike most heist films
-das Ding is located in each of the three principle characters: Corey, Vogel, and Jansen
-The silence of the heist shows that it concerns what is beyond the signifier

The Cry of the Owl

- Robert enjoys Juliette from afar, but this dissipates when he comes too close
-Patrick desires Juliette insofar as someone else desires her
-With Patrick out of the way and when Juliette professes her love from him, Robert loses his desire for her
-Robert's desire drives him to destroy both himself and those around him
-Chabrol ends the film with the drive to act yet not the act itself

Place Vendome

-shows Marianne caught between her desire and symbolic status
-Marianne is in rehab because the luxurious life requires a betrayal of her desire
-Vincent's suicide reveals the self-destruction that lies even at the heart of the respectable
-Everything in the film occurs at least twice, this repetition reveals the difficulty of breaking out and starting anew
-the ending presents the possibility of total destruction or a new beginning

Tell No One

-the absence of Margot does not diminish Alex's love for her, nor hers for him
-Alex is completely isolated except for his relationship to Margot, which is enhanced by the police suspecting him
-Bruno helps Alex because Alex did not partake in class prejudice and defended Bruno against those who did
-Bruno is the only one capable of helping Alex against Neuville because all official authority is corrupt
-Gilbert Neuville tries to protect himself from any absence of his love object, which is why he wants Margot destroyed
-Alex's father represents an intrinsic good: he refuses to let Phillippe off the hook for his pedophilic behaivor
-The film associates love with the embrace of an absence in the other that cannot be overcome

Anything For Her

-Lisa's suicide attempt is the decisive moment in the film
-we never see Julien make the conscious decision to break her out
-Julien's plan entails his symbolic disappearance: to save Lisa, Julien must enter the zone between two deaths
-The price for their freedom is the loss of their former relationships
-the success of the escape relies on contingencies: contingency within a system of necessity is akin to the moment of singularity in the collective
-the film does not end on the family but on life going on in El Salvador