The Perverts Guide to Cinema_1of3
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00:00The problem for us is not, are our desires satisfied or not.
00:14The problem is, how do we know what we desire?
00:17There is nothing spontaneous, nothing natural about human desires.
00:24Our desires are artificial.
00:27We have to be taught to desire.
00:30Cinema is the ultimate pervert art.
00:34It doesn't give you what you desire.
00:36It tells you how to desire.
00:57Oh, I do like you, but it just isn't good enough.
01:16Oh, I forgot, your mother asked me out to supper.
01:22Okay.
01:23Bring some ice cream with you, will you?
01:24Sure, what kind do you want?
01:25Chocolate or vanilla?
01:26Chocolate.
01:29Okay.
01:30What we get in this wonderful clip from Possessed is commentary on the magic art of cinema within
01:37a movie.
01:38We have an ordinary working class girl living in a drab, small provincial town.
01:43All of a sudden, she finds herself in a situation where reality itself reproduces the magic
01:49cinematic experience.
01:51She approaches the rail, the train is passing, and it is as if what in reality is just a
01:59person standing near a slowly passing train turns into a viewer observing the magic of
02:39Have a drink?
02:52Oh, don't go away.
02:57Looking in?
02:58Wrong way.
02:59Get in and look out.
03:01We get a very real, ordinary scene onto which the heroine's inner space, as you put it,
03:08her fantasy space is projected so that although all reality is simply there, the train, the
03:15girl, part of reality in her perception and in our viewer's perception is as it were elevated
03:21to the magic level, becomes the screen of her dreams.
03:26This is cinematic art at its purest.
03:35This is your last chance.
03:37After this, there is no turning back.
03:40You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you
03:45want to believe.
03:46You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
04:01But the choice between the blue and the red pill is not really a choice between illusion
04:08and reality.
04:09Of course, Matrix is a machine for fictions, but these are fictions which already structure
04:16our reality.
04:18If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions that regulate it, you lose reality
04:25itself.
04:26I want a third pill.
04:28So what is the third pill?
04:32Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill which enables a fake fast food religious
04:38experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive not the reality behind the illusion,
04:46but the reality in illusion itself.
04:50If something gets too traumatic, too violent, even too filled in with enjoyment, it shatters
04:59the coordinates of our reality.
05:01We have to fictionalize it.
05:21The first key to horror films is to say, let's imagine the same story, but without the horror
05:27element.
05:29This gives us, I think, the background.
05:32We're in the middle of Bodega Bay, where the action of Hitchcock's Birds takes place.
05:48Birds is a film about a young, rich, socialite girl from San Francisco who falls in love
05:57with a guy, goes after him to Bodega Bay, where she discovers that he lives with his
06:03mother.
06:04Of course, it's none of my business, but when you bring a girl like that...
06:07Darling?
06:08Yes?
06:09I think I can handle Melanie Daniels by myself.
06:12Well, as long as you know what you want, Mitch.
06:18I know exactly what I want.
06:20And then there is the standard Oedipal imbroglio of incestuous tension between mother and son,
06:26the son's split between his possessive mother and the intrusive girl.
06:30What's the matter with them?
06:31What's the matter with all the birds?
06:32Where do you want this coffee?
06:33In on the table, honey.
06:34Hurry up with yours, Mitch.
06:35I'm sure Miss Daniels wants to be on her way.
06:42I think you ought to stay the night, Melanie.
06:44We have an extra room upstairs and everything.
06:46The big question about the birds, of course, is the stupid, obvious one.
06:51Why do the birds attack?
06:54Mitch?
07:01It is not enough to say that the birds are part of the natural setup of reality.
07:07It is rather as if a foreign dimension intrudes that literally tears apart reality.
07:17We humans are not naturally born into reality.
07:21In order for us to act as normal people who interact with other people who live in a space
07:26of social reality, many things should happen, like we should be properly installed within
07:31the symbolic order and so on.
07:33When this, our proper dwelling within a symbolic space, is disturbed, reality disintegrates.
07:43So, to propose the psychoanalytic formula, the violent attacks of the birds are obviously
07:51explosive outbursts of maternal superego, of the maternal figure preventing, trying
07:56to prevent sexual relationship.
08:00So, the birds are raw incestuous energy.
08:06What am I doing?
08:07I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
08:08Now I got it.
08:15My God, I'm thinking like Melanie.
08:17You know what I'm thinking now?
08:20I want to fuck Mitch.
08:21That's what she was thinking.
08:24Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
08:25I'm at work.
08:26I got this spontaneous confusion of directions.
08:39Mrs. Bates.
08:50We are in the cellar of the mother's house from psycho.
08:59What's so interesting is that the very disposition of mother's house, events took place in it
09:07at three levels.
09:10First floor, ground floor, basement.
09:14It is as if they reproduce the three levels of human subjectivity.
09:20Ground floor is ego.
09:23Norman behaves there as a normal son.
09:27Whatever remains of his normal ego taking over.
09:31Up there is the superego.
09:35Maternal superego, because the dead mother is basically a figure of superego.
09:40Now, mother, I'm going to bring something up.
09:45I am sorry, boy, but you do manage to look ludicrous when you give me orders.
09:50Please, mother.
09:52No, I will not hide in the fruit cellar.
09:56You think I'm fruity, huh?
09:59And down in the cellar, it's the id, the reservoir of this illicit drives.
10:07So we can then interpret the event in the middle of the film when Norman carries the mother,
10:17or as we learn at the end, mother's mummy, corpse, skeleton, from the first floor to the cellar.
10:29I told you to get out, boy.
10:31I'll carry you, mother.
10:32It's as if he is transposing her in his own mind as a psychic agency from superego to id.
10:47Of course, the lesson of it is the old lesson elaborated already by Freud,
10:51that superego and id are deeply connected.
10:55The mother complains first as a figure of authority.
10:59How can you be doing this to me?
11:01Aren't you ashamed?
11:03This is a fruit cellar.
11:04And then mother immediately turns into obscenity.
11:08Do you think I'm fruity?
11:10Superego is not an ethical agency.
11:12Superego is an obscene agency bombarding us with impossible orders,
11:18laughing at us when, of course, we cannot ever fulfill its demand.
11:24The more we obey it, the more it makes us guilty.
11:28There is always some aspect of an obscene madman in the agency of the superego.
11:42We often find references to psychoanalysis embodied in the very relations between persons.
11:52For example, the three Marx brothers, Groucho, Chico, Harpo.
11:59It's clear.
12:00Groucho, the most popular one, with his nervous hyperactivity, is superego.
12:07Well, that covers a lot of ground.
12:08Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself.
12:10You better beat it.
12:11I hear they're going to tear you down and put up an office building where you're standing.
12:13You can leave in a taxi.
12:14If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff.
12:16If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
12:18You know you haven't stopped talking since I came here?
12:20Chico, the rational guy, egotistic, calculating all the time, is ego.
12:37And the weirdest of them all, Harpo, the mute guy, he doesn't talk.
12:43Freud said that drives are silent.
12:46He doesn't talk.
12:47He, of course, is id.
12:49Who are you guys?
12:52What are you doing in my room?
12:54He's my partner, but he doesn't speak.
12:56He's a demon.
13:00The id in all its radical ambiguity.
13:09Namely, what is so weird about the Harpo character is that he's childishly innocent,
13:15just striving for pleasure, likes children, plays with children, and so on.
13:20But at the same time, possessed by some kind of primordial evil.
13:28Aggressive all the time.
13:30And this unique combination of utter corruption and innocence is what the id is about.
13:45Let that out!
13:47There you go!
13:49You want to break that?
13:51Hey, what is going on?
13:53Dr. Klein?
13:55Yes, I'm Dr. Klein. This is Dr. Tanning. How do you do?
13:57Sharon, things have gotten worse since I found you. I think you better go upstairs.
14:00Is she having spasms again?
14:01Yeah, but they've gotten violent.
14:02Did you give her the medication?
14:03Voice is not an organic part of a human body.
14:09It's coming from somewhere in between your body.
14:13Mother, please!
14:15What is happening?
14:17It's burning!
14:19Do something!
14:21Whenever we talk to another person, there is always this minimum of ventriloquist effect.
14:27As if some foreign power took possession.
14:31Let me have no power over you.
14:33I'm the son of a Lakuti big powerless to harm her.
14:35Your mother sucks cocks in hell, Taras, you faithless sly.
14:41Remember that at the beginning of the film, this was a beautiful young girl.
14:46How did she become a monster that we see?
14:49By being possessed.
14:52But who possessed her?
14:54A voice. A voice in its obscene dimensions.
15:04See the cross of the Lord. Begone, you hostile powers.
15:08The first big film about this traumatic dimension of the voice,
15:13the voice which freely floats around and it's a traumatic presence,
15:18feared the ultimate moment, object of anxiety which distorts reality,
15:23was in 1931 in Germany, Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
15:30Sie und diese Frau werden diesen Raum lebend nicht mehr verlassen.
15:52We do not see Mabuse till the end of the film.
15:56He is just a voice.
16:00Sie werden diesen Raum lebend nicht mehr verlassen.
16:18So the problem is, which is why we have the two priests at her side,
16:22how to get rid of this intruder, of this alien intruder.
16:27That is, as if we are expecting the famous scene from Ridley Scott's Alien to repeat itself.
16:45As if we just wait for some terrifying alien evil looking small animal to jump out.
16:57There is a fundamental imbalance, gap, between our psychic energy,
17:03called by Freud libido, this endless, undead energy
17:09which persists beyond life and death,
17:12and the poor, finite, mortal reality of our bodies.
17:27This is not just the pathology of being possessed by ghosts.
17:35The lesson that we should learn, and that the movies try to avoid,
17:40is that we ourselves are the aliens controlling our bodies.
17:45Humanity means the aliens are controlling our animal bodies.
17:51Our ego, our psychic agency, is an alien force distorting, controlling our body.
18:01Nobody was as fully aware of the properly traumatic dimension of the human voice.
18:08The human voice, not as the sublime ethereal medium for expressing the depth of human subjectivity,
18:15but the human voice as a foreign intruder.
18:18Nobody was more aware of this than Charlie Chaplin.
18:45Chaplin himself plays in the film two persons.
18:52The good, small, Jewish barber.
18:58And his evil double.
19:02Hinkle, dictator. Hitler, of course.
19:15The Jewish barber, the tramped figure, is, of course, the figure of silent cinema.
19:20Silent figures are basically like figures in the cartoon.
19:24They don't know death, they don't know sexuality even, they don't know suffering.
19:29They just go on in their oral, egotistic striving, like cats and mouse in a cartoon.
19:36You cut them into pieces, they're reconstituted.
19:39There is no finitude, no mortality here.
19:42There is evil, but a kind of naive, good evil.
19:46You are just egotistic, you want to eat, you want to hit the other, but there is no guilt proper.
19:53What we get with sound is interiority, depth, guilt,
20:02culpability, in other words, the complex, oedipal universe.
20:09Here you are, get a Hinkle button, get a Hinkle button.
20:11A fine photo with a fooey on each and every button.
20:13My friend.
20:14Here you are.
20:15The name is not the devil's person, but the truth, the truth.
20:19The problem of the film is not only the political problem,
20:23how to get rid of totalitarianism, of its terrible seductive power,
20:29but it's also this more formal problem,
20:32how to get rid of this terrifying dimension of the voice.
20:36With the power of your body, which I have given you,
20:39you will now spit out my punishment,
20:43which I will never forgive.
20:47Or, since we cannot simply get rid of it, how to domesticate it?
20:51How to transform this voice, nonetheless,
20:54into the means of expressing humanity, love, and so on?
21:06German police grabs the poor tramp, thinking,
21:09this is Hitler, and he has to address a large gathering.
21:23I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
21:26That's not my business.
21:28I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
21:32I should like to help everyone, if possible.
21:34Jew, gentile, black man, white.
21:37We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.
21:40There, of course, he delivers his big speech
21:43about the need of love, understanding between people,
21:46but there is a catch, even a double catch.
21:50Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
21:54People applaud exactly in the same way
21:57as they were applauding Hitler.
22:02The music that accompanies this great humanist finale,
22:06the overture to Wagner's opera, Lohengrin,
22:09is the same music as the one we hear
22:12when Hitler is daydreaming about conquering the entire world.
22:16The music that accompanies this great humanist finale,
22:19the overture to Wagner's opera, Lohengrin,
22:22is the same music as the one we hear
22:25when Hitler is daydreaming about conquering the entire world
22:28and where he has a balloon in the shape of the globe.
22:31The music is the same.
22:46This can be read as the ultimate redemption of music,
22:51that the same music which served evil purposes
22:54can be redeemed to serve the good,
22:57or it can be read, and I think it should be read,
23:00in a much more ambiguous way,
23:03that with music we cannot ever be sure.
23:09Insofar as it externalizes our inner passion,
23:13music is potentially always a threat.
23:21For your love
23:27For your love
23:30Your love
23:33has taken
23:36all my heart
23:41There is a short scene in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
23:46which takes place in the theater where we are now,
23:49where, behind the microphone, a woman is singing,
23:52then, out of exhaustion or whatever,
23:55she drops down.
23:58Surprisingly, the singing goes on.
24:03Immediately afterwards, it is explained.
24:06It was a playback.
24:09But for that couple of seconds, when we are confused,
24:12we confront this nightmarish dimension
24:15of an autonomous, partial object.
24:19Like in the well-known adventure
24:22of Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland,
24:25where the cat disappears, the smile remains.
24:29You may have noticed
24:32that I'm not all there myself.
24:39And the moor is hungry.
24:43The fascinating thing about partial objects,
24:46in the sense of organs without bodies,
24:49is that they embody
24:52what Freud called death drive.
24:55Here, we have to be very careful.
24:58Death drive is not kind of a Buddhist striving
25:01for annihilation,
25:04I want to find eternal peace.
25:07No, death drive is almost the opposite.
25:10Death drive is the dimension of what,
25:13in the Stephen King-like horror fiction,
25:16is called the dimension of the undead,
25:19of living dead,
25:22of something which remains alive even after it is dead
25:25and is, in a way, immortal in its deadness itself.
25:28It goes on in this.
25:31You cannot destroy it.
25:34The more you cut it, the more in this it goes on.
25:37Partial undeadness is what partial objects are about.
25:55The nicest example here for me, I think,
25:58is Michael Powell's Red Shoes, about a ballerina.
26:07Her passion for dancing
26:10is materialized in her shoes taking over.
26:13The shoes are literally the undead object.
26:37Perhaps the ultimate bodily part
26:40which fits this role
26:43of the autonomous partial object
26:46is the fist, or rather, the hand.
27:07Ah!
27:16This hand raising up,
27:19that's the whole point of the film.
27:22It's not simply something foreign to him.
27:25It's the very core of his personality out there.
27:28Security?
27:31I am Jack's smirking revenge.
27:37Oh!
27:40What the hell are you doing?
27:43Oh!
27:46Oh!
27:49Oh!
27:52Far from standing for some kind of
27:55perverted masochism
27:58or reactionary fantasy of violence,
28:01this scene is deeply liberating.
28:05I'm here, as it were, on the side of the fist.
28:08I think this is what liberation means.
28:11In order to attack the enemy,
28:14you first have to beat the shit out of yourself.
28:17To get rid in yourself
28:20to that which in yourself
28:23attaches you to the leader,
28:26to the conditions of slavery, and so on and so on.
28:29No! Please stop!
28:35What are you doing?
28:38Oh, God, no, please! No!
28:41For some reason, I thought of my first fight with Tyler.
28:47There is always this conflict
28:50between me and my double.
28:53Motherfucker!
28:56You hit me in the ear!
28:59Well, Jesus, I'm sorry!
29:02You hit me in the ear, man!
29:05I fucked it up.
29:08No, that was perfect!
29:11It is as if the double embodies myself,
29:14but without the castrated dimension of myself.
29:18What?
29:29There is an episode in the wonderful British horror classic
29:32Dead of Night.
29:35I knew you wouldn't leave me, Hugo.
29:38I knew you'd come back.
29:41In which Michael Redgrave plays a ventriloquist
29:44who gets jealous of his puppet.
29:47You know me.
29:50You fool!
29:53Get your hands off me!
29:56Stop, Freya!
29:59Freya, you fool!
30:02Quickly, open the door!
30:05Quickly!
30:10In an outburst of violence,
30:13the puppet breaks down.
30:16In the very last scene of the film,
30:19we see him in the hospital,
30:22slowly regaining consciousness, coming back to himself.
30:25First, his voice is stuck in the throat.
30:28Then, with great difficulty,
30:31finally, he is able to talk.
30:34But he talks
30:37with the distorted voice of the dummy.
30:40Why, hello, Sylvester.
30:44I've been waiting for you.
30:47And the lesson is clear.
30:50The only way for me to get rid
30:53of this autonomous partial object
30:56is to become this object.
30:59Anytime you are ready, tell me.
31:02Wait a minute, so that I don't confuse them.
31:05Where is Mikey? Mikey is here.
31:08You shout.
31:11This is the balcony
31:14where the traumatic murder scene
31:17occurs in conversation.
31:20The murder of the husband
31:23observed through the stained glass
31:26in front of me by the private detective,
31:29Green Hackman.
31:32The detective is in the nearby room.
31:35Significantly, just before he sees the murder,
31:39he walks the balcony
31:42through a crack in the glass wall.
31:45Whenever we have this famous
31:48proverbial Peeping Tom scene
31:51of somebody observing a traumatic event
31:54through a crack,
31:57it's never as if we are dealing
32:00with two parts on both sides of the wall
32:03of the same reality.
32:06Before seeing anything
32:09or imagining to see something,
32:12he tries to listen.
32:15He behaves as an eavesdropper
32:18with all his private detective gadgets.
32:21What does this make him?
32:24Potentially, at least,
32:27it makes him into a fantasized,
32:30imagined entity.
32:33You can't stand it.
32:36You can't stand it anymore.
32:39You're going to make me cry.
32:42No, don't.
32:45He doesn't fantasize the scene of the murder.
32:48He fantasizes himself
32:51as a witness to the murder.
32:54I love you.
32:57What he sees on that blurred window,
33:01as a kind of elementary screen,
33:04cinematic screen even,
33:07that should be perceived
33:10as a desperate attempt
33:13to visualize, hallucinate even,
33:16the bodily material support
33:19of what he hears.
33:31Hello, baby.
33:34Shut up!
33:37It's daddy, you shithead!
33:40Where's my bourbon?
33:50Dorothy's apartment
33:53is one of those hellish places
33:56which abound in David Lynch's films.
33:59A place where all moral
34:02or social inhibitions
34:05seem to be suspended,
34:08where everything is possible.
34:11The lowest masochistic sex,
34:14obscenities,
34:17the deepest level of our desires
34:20that we are not even ready
34:23to admit to ourselves,
34:27Spread your legs.
34:39Wider.
34:42Now show it to me.
34:57Don't you fucking look at me.
35:08From what perspective
35:11should we observe this scene?
35:27Imagine the scene
35:30as that of a small child
35:33hidden in a closet
35:36or behind a door,
35:39witnessing the parental intercourse.
35:42He doesn't yet know
35:45what sexuality is,
35:48how we do it.
35:51All he knows is what he hears,
35:54and when we see
35:57Jeffrey's father having a heart attack,
36:00falling down,
36:03we have the eclipse
36:06of the normal paternal authority.
36:09Hey, dad.
36:12Oh, mommy.
36:15Mommy.
36:18Mommy loves you.
36:21It is as if Jeffrey fantasizes
36:24this wild parental couple
36:27of Dorothy and Frank
36:30as kind of a phantasmatic supplement
36:33to the lack of the real paternal authority.
36:36Get ready to fuck,
36:39you fuckers fucker, you fucker.
36:42Don't you fucking look at me.
36:46Frank not only obviously acts,
36:50but even overacts.
36:53It is as if his ridiculously excessive
36:56gesticulating, shouting, and so on
36:59are here to cover up something.
37:02The point is, of course,
37:05the elementary one,
37:08to convince the invisible observer
37:11that father is potent,
37:14to cover up father's impotence.
37:17As a spectacle,
37:20a ridiculously violent spectacle
37:23set up by the father
37:26to convince the son of his power
37:29of his overpotency.
37:39The third way would have been
37:42to focus on Dorothy herself.
37:46Of course, emphasized the brutality
37:49against women in this scene,
37:52the abuse, how Dorothy's character is abused.
37:55There is obviously this dimension in it.
37:58But I think one should risk
38:01a more shocking and obverse interpretation.
38:04What if the central, as it were,
38:07problem of this entire scene
38:10is Dorothy's passivity?
38:13Don't you fucking look at me!
38:21So what if what Frank is doing
38:24is a desperate, ridiculous,
38:27but nonetheless effective attempt
38:30of trying to help Dorothy,
38:33to awaken her out of her lethargy,
38:36to bring her into life?
38:43So if Frank is anybody's fantasy,
38:46maybe she is Dorothy's fantasy.
38:52There is kind of a strange
38:55mutual interlocking of fantasies.
39:04You're still alive, baby.
39:07It's not only ambiguity,
39:10but oscillation between three focal points.
39:13This, I think, is what accounts
39:16for the strange reverberations of this scene.
39:30This brings us to our third
39:33and maybe crucial example,
39:36what is for me the most beautiful shot
39:40of the film.
39:51The shot in which we see
39:54Scotty in a position of a peeping tom
39:57observing through a crack.
40:00It is as if Madeleine is really there
40:03in common reality,
40:06while Scotty is peeping at her
40:09from some mysterious interspace,
40:12from some obscure netherworld.
40:15This is the location
40:18of the imagined, fantasized gaze.
40:21This is the location
40:24of the imagined, fantasized gaze.
40:28Gaze is that obscure point,
40:31the blind spot,
40:34from which the object looked upon
40:37returns the gaze.
40:45After suspecting
40:48that a murder is taking place
40:51in a nearby hotel room,
40:54Gene Hackman, playing the private detective,
40:57enters this room
41:00and inspects the toilet.
41:03The moment he approaches the toilet
41:06in the bathroom,
41:09it is clear that we are in Hitchcock territory.
41:12It is clear that some kind of intense,
41:15implicit dialogue with Psycho is going on.
41:18In a very violent gesture,
41:21as if adopting the role of Norman Bates' mother,
41:24the murdering Psycho,
41:27he opens up the curtain, inspects it in detail,
41:30looking for traces of blood there,
41:33even inspecting the gap,
41:36the hole at the bottom of the sink,
41:39which is precisely another
41:42of these focal objects.
41:45Because in Psycho,
41:49the soul is morphed into the eye,
41:52returning the gaze.
42:13We say the eye is the window of the soul.
42:16But what if there is no soul behind the eye?
42:21What if the eye is a crack
42:24through which we can perceive
42:27just the abyss of a netherworld?
42:38When we look through these cracks,
42:41we see the dark other side,
42:45where hidden forces run the show.
42:53It is as if Gene Hackman establishes,
42:56no, we are nonetheless not in Psycho,
42:59let's return to my first object of fascination,
43:02the toilet bowl.
43:05He flushes it, and then the terrible thing happens.
43:15The toilet bowl.
43:36In our most elementary experience,
43:39when we flush the toilet,
43:42excrements simply disappear out of our reality,
43:45into another space,
43:48which we phenomenologically perceive
43:51as a kind of a netherworld,
43:54another chaotic, primordial reality.
43:57And the ultimate horror, of course,
44:00is if the flushing doesn't work,
44:03if objects return,
44:06if excremental remainders
44:09disappear from that dimension.
44:12The bathroom.
44:15Hitchcock is all the time playing with this threshold.
44:18Well, they cleaned all this up now.
44:21Big difference.
44:24You should have seen the blood.
44:27The whole place was,
44:30well, it's too horrible to describe, dreadful.
44:33The most effective for me,
44:37the most touching scene of entire Psycho
44:40is after the shower murder,
44:43when Norman Bates tries to clean the bathroom.
44:59I remember clearly when, in my adolescence,
45:02I first saw the film,
45:05not only by the length of the scene,
45:08it goes on almost for ten minutes,
45:11details of cleansing and so on and so on,
45:14but also by the care, meticulousness,
45:17how it is done,
45:20and also by our spectator's identification with it.
45:28I think that this tells us a lot
45:31about the satisfaction of work,
45:35which is not so much to construct something new,
45:38but maybe human work at its most elementary,
45:41work as it were at the zero level,
45:44is the work of cleaning the traces of a stain.
45:56The work of erasing the stains,
45:59keeping at bay this chaotic netherworld
46:02which threatens to explode any time
46:05and engulf us.
46:10I think this is the fine sentiment
46:13that Hitchcock's films evoke.
46:16It's not simply that something horrible
46:19happens in reality.
46:22Something worse can happen
46:25which undermines the very fabric
46:28of what we experience as reality.
46:31This is how the first attack of the birds
46:34occurs in the film.
46:37When a fantasy object, something imagined,
46:40an object from inner space,
46:43enters our ordinary reality,
46:46the texture of reality is twisted, distorted.
46:51This is how desire inscribes itself
46:54into reality, by distorting it.
46:58Desire is a wound of reality.
47:01The art of cinema
47:04consists in arousing desire,
47:07to play with desire,
47:10but at the same time
47:13keeping it at a safe distance,
47:16domesticating it,
47:19rendering it palpable.
47:28When we spectators are sitting
47:31in a movie theater, looking at the screen,
47:34you remember at the very beginning
47:37before the picture is on,
47:40it's a black, dark screen,
47:43and then light thrown on.
47:46Are we basically not staring
47:49into a toilet bowl
47:52and waiting for things
47:55to happen?
47:58Or is it a deceptive lure
48:01trying to conceal the fact
48:04that we are basically watching shit,
48:07as it were?
48:25This is a movie about a man
48:28who wants to be a movie star.
48:31He wants to be a movie star.
48:34He wants to be a movie star.
48:37He wants to be a movie star.
48:40He wants to be a movie star.
48:43He wants to be a movie star.
48:46He wants to be a movie star.
48:49He wants to be a movie star.
48:53He wants to be a movie star.
48:56He wants to be a movie star.
48:59He wants to be a movie star.
49:02He wants to be a movie star.
49:05He wants to be a movie star.