Media Sample Essay | Hitchcock, Lacan
‘This is why Lacan defines the phallic signifier, as a “signifier without signified” which, as such, renders possible the effects of the signified: the “phallic” element of a picture is a meaningless stain that “denatures” it, rendering all its constituents “suspicious,” and thus opens up the abyss of the search for a meaning – nothing is what seems to be, everything is to be interpreted, everything is supposed to possess some supplementary meaning...
The ground of the established, familiar signification opens up; we find ourselves in a realm of total ambiguity, but this very lack propels us to produce ever new “hidden meanings”: it is a driving force of endless compulsion.’.
Precisely because the phallic signifier is that which “stands out” which ex-ists, it sets off the interpretative process, not only rendering everything “suspicious” but also challenging “the ground of established, familiar signification”.
It is easy to see in this context, the special fascination with Hitchcock, for his films, laden as they are with “phallic signifiers” seem to stage this quest for “hidden meanings” to the point of “endless compulsion”.
In his analysis of Rear Window, Zizek appears to equate this interpretative quest with inertia: “The rear window is essentially a fantasy window …incapable of motivating himself to action. Jeff puts off indefinitely the (sexual) act, and what he sees through the window are precisely fantasy figurations of what could happen to him and Grace Kelly.”
In the following paragraph, Zizek implies that the maternal superego is on the same side of the equation as this interpretative inertia of Jeff’s: “Rear Window…also reveals unmistakably the agency that hinders the hero’s “normal” sexual relation: the maternal superego embodied in a voix acousmatique, a free-floating voice that is not assigned to any bearer.”.
It is of interest then that a few pages later, the aforementioned voix acoustmatique finds itself suddenly “embodied”, “assigned to a bearer”: “
What we must bear in mind is the libinal content of this Hitchcockian stain: although its logic is phallic, it announces an agency that perturbs and hinders the rule of the Name-of-the-Father – in other words the stain materializes the maternal superego.” Zizek effectively mimics Lacan by implying that if “having the phallus” is a masculine position, then the feminine involves “being (or in this case, becoming) the phallus”.
What we have here is a) the phallic signifier as that which triggers the production, and indeed, proliferation of new meanings (“hidden” or otherwise) and, simultaneously, b) this phallic signifier is the “stain” that embodies the maternal superego that “perturbs and hinders the rule of the Name-of-the-Father”.
We might legitimately ask what is “the libidinal content” of this fascination with Hitchcock and his Lacanian “phallic stains” which enable interpretation and at the same time engender the production of (new) meanings while at the same time threaten the cherished Nom-du-Pere?
- Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture, p91
