Page 162 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 162
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
are all bringing us closer to such consequences. However, as much as such
suppositions seem intellectually attractive, they should not be taken too far,
but they should serve as an indication of some of the complex effects of au-
dio-visual production, which is woven in the fabric of society. Here we are
talking, of course, about symbolic exchanges within any society. Therefore,
there is no doubt that the identity in the framework of culture by and large
functions as a recognition scheme, within which the audio-visual produc-
tion provides many particular views, angles, objects, gazes, suggestions and
so forth, which modify ways of seeing things and also ways of “being seen”.
It should be added that the instance of “being seen” involves the being as
such, which is the category of existence and of the existentialist philosophy.
Lacan‘s theory of gaze that was developed in his most quoted seminar
can be quite helpful for comprehending the extent of this. Lacan’s explana-
tion of a little incident from his youth with a fisherman Petit-Jean has some
methodological value for what we are trying to illustrate here. Petit-Jean’s
claim that the can glittering on the surface of the water “doesn’t see you!” as
we know, engaged Lacan’s thinking quite a lot: “To begin with, if what Pet-
it-Jean said to me, namely, that the can did not see me, had any meaning, it
was because in a sense, it was looking at me, all the same. It was looking at
me at the level of the point of light, the point at which everything that looks
at me is situated – and I am not speaking metaphorically” (Lacan. 1979, p.
95). Why Lacan finds it necessary and, actually, so prominent to stress that
he “wasn’t speaking metaphorically”? Taking into account his relation with
the group of fishermen, what we can characterise as a culturally structured
situation, Lacan demonstrates how the subject, in a “form” of Lacan him-
self in this case, is thrown out of picture. Although in this chapter Lacan
is not concentrating on identity, the process, if I may say so, of gazing and
especially being seen by the objects, could be apprehended as a kind of a
process of identifying. Here we cannot but evoke one of the most imperti-
nent and beautiful finales in film history, namely the end of Godard‘s film
Pierrot le fou (1965), in which the Belmondo character commits a very bi-
zarre suicide at the sea shore. As the cords of dynamite sticks that he wraps
abundantly around his head explode, and the subject goes up in smoke,
camera turns toward the setting sun on the line of seas’ horizon. It is the
intense light of this final shot, accompanied by Rimbaud’s verses1,2 which
bear a resemblance to the scene of Lacan’s vision of a vision. The differ-
2 Verses were taken from Rimbaud’s poem L’Éternité (May 1872), which starts and fin-
ishes with this “dialogic” stanza: “Elle est retrouvée./Quoi ? – L’Éternité. C’est la mer
alée/ Avec le soleil.”
160
are all bringing us closer to such consequences. However, as much as such
suppositions seem intellectually attractive, they should not be taken too far,
but they should serve as an indication of some of the complex effects of au-
dio-visual production, which is woven in the fabric of society. Here we are
talking, of course, about symbolic exchanges within any society. Therefore,
there is no doubt that the identity in the framework of culture by and large
functions as a recognition scheme, within which the audio-visual produc-
tion provides many particular views, angles, objects, gazes, suggestions and
so forth, which modify ways of seeing things and also ways of “being seen”.
It should be added that the instance of “being seen” involves the being as
such, which is the category of existence and of the existentialist philosophy.
Lacan‘s theory of gaze that was developed in his most quoted seminar
can be quite helpful for comprehending the extent of this. Lacan’s explana-
tion of a little incident from his youth with a fisherman Petit-Jean has some
methodological value for what we are trying to illustrate here. Petit-Jean’s
claim that the can glittering on the surface of the water “doesn’t see you!” as
we know, engaged Lacan’s thinking quite a lot: “To begin with, if what Pet-
it-Jean said to me, namely, that the can did not see me, had any meaning, it
was because in a sense, it was looking at me, all the same. It was looking at
me at the level of the point of light, the point at which everything that looks
at me is situated – and I am not speaking metaphorically” (Lacan. 1979, p.
95). Why Lacan finds it necessary and, actually, so prominent to stress that
he “wasn’t speaking metaphorically”? Taking into account his relation with
the group of fishermen, what we can characterise as a culturally structured
situation, Lacan demonstrates how the subject, in a “form” of Lacan him-
self in this case, is thrown out of picture. Although in this chapter Lacan
is not concentrating on identity, the process, if I may say so, of gazing and
especially being seen by the objects, could be apprehended as a kind of a
process of identifying. Here we cannot but evoke one of the most imperti-
nent and beautiful finales in film history, namely the end of Godard‘s film
Pierrot le fou (1965), in which the Belmondo character commits a very bi-
zarre suicide at the sea shore. As the cords of dynamite sticks that he wraps
abundantly around his head explode, and the subject goes up in smoke,
camera turns toward the setting sun on the line of seas’ horizon. It is the
intense light of this final shot, accompanied by Rimbaud’s verses1,2 which
bear a resemblance to the scene of Lacan’s vision of a vision. The differ-
2 Verses were taken from Rimbaud’s poem L’Éternité (May 1872), which starts and fin-
ishes with this “dialogic” stanza: “Elle est retrouvée./Quoi ? – L’Éternité. C’est la mer
alée/ Avec le soleil.”
160
