Love in Other Worlds

Solaris I may be biased because I am a huge George Clooney fan, but I thought this was an interesting and engaging movie. The ending in particular really made me think especially since they both were not human anymore—but both memories of their human forms. This reminded me of Zizek’s “Courtly Love or Woman as a Thing,” in regards to Zizek’s idea that women are just an empty space where men put on their desire. Rheya “functions as a kind of ‘black hole’ around which [Chris’] desire is structured. The space of desire is bent like space…the only way to reach the Object-Lady is indirectly,” (Zizek 94). The aloof character Gibarian alludes to the Myth of Narcissus when he declares, “We don’t want other worlds. We want mirrors.” If others worlds are a symbol for women, then Gordon is effectively saying that men don’t want a real person, they just want a mirror of themselves projected onto a woman. Dr. Gordon confirms this when she tells Chris, “She’s a mirror that affects part of your mind. You provide the formula.” It seems she is saying that love is nothing more than a human constructed formula, re-told throughout the ages and believed by many. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that Chris’ urge to “make do” and “restart” his relationship with this alien unsettling. Chris, a psychologist, fully knowing this women is not a human, not his wife, is willing to go along with Solaris’ copy just so he can have someone. The film uses a lot of extreme close-ups of eyes, blood, and faces, along with the use of chiasmus to destabilize the traditional love scenes, making them dream-like and indistinct. On a higher level, the film does refer to religion versus numbers and probability, as well as transcendentalism and existentialism. Another important allusion in the film is the poem, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” by Thomas Dylan, Chris quotes it, Rheya quotes it, and it shows up in Rheya’s suicide note. The meaning of the phrase changes throughout the film from the beginning where Chris just uses it to impress Rheya to the end, where the two realize they are no longer human. I am Love One thing I found fascinating in this movie is the mother daughter relationship, something that has not really been focused on in our class discussions. I like how the mother and daughter look to each other for strength and guidance, when both of them are figuring out life as they go, unsure of what to do next. Emma looks at Betta’s happiness as her explores her sexuality and knows she must do the same. I thought there were a lot of phallic symbols in the novel. Like when Antonio uses the paste tube to squirt out the tomato paste onto the fish, then the next shot is of Emma shoving the fish into her mouth and moaning…In the restaurant Emma stares at the prawn with wide eyes—a symbol for his penis/the object of her desire. She then begins to chow down, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen anyone enjoy his or her food to that degree before now. I think the name Emma was an allusion to Emma Bovary, especially since she did not like or choose the name; her husband gave it to her, effectively stripping away her Russian identity and giving her an Italian one. The pool is focused on multiple times in the film, before I saw the ending I wondered why, then I understood. Probably the most well done scene in the movie is the sex scene where shots of their skin are alternated with shots of flowers with bugs on them. In the film there were two symbols for desire and entrapment: the moth and the light of the lamp and the bird trapped in the cathedral.

Winners and Losers

In every book there are winners and there are losers. In Madame Bovary, it is obvious which characters are the losers: Charles, Emma, and Berthe and which are the winners: Rodolphe. Rodolphe instantly sees Emma’s preoccupation with the ideal and Romanticism. After he first meets he, he says to himself, “Poor little woman. Gasping for love, like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water” (137). Like the sad carp, Emma cannot discern that she will not be able to find what she is looking for, and Rodophe plays that to his advantage. Many “enlightened” people, like Rodolphe or Madame Bovary senior, can see that Emma lives in a world full of the ideal, and whenever she tries to combine fantasy with reality—something goes awry. Even Emma’s daughter suffers because of this. Emma laments, “She yearned for the child to be born in order to know how it felt to be a mother. But not being able to spend as freely as she wished—to have a cradle shaped like a boat with pink silk curtains an embroidered baby caps—she abandoned her dreams of a layette…And so she did not enjoy those preparations that stimulate maternal tenderness, and her affection from the beginning was perhaps weakened on that account” (101). Emma so closely ties the ideal picture she has in her mind of lavish nursery with a glowing mother cradling her rosy baby that when reality falls short of this, she takes an immediate dislike/disinterest in being a mother. Emma spends all of her time reading books and living in the world of imagination that she is blind to Rodolphe’s less-than-genuine motives behind wooing her. When reality fails to live up to her fantasy—the overwhelming debt and Rodolphe not eloping with her—she kills herself, because she cannot live in the real. Charles is also a loser, for he lives in a world of fantasy, even if his fantasies are much more simplistic. He is blind to his wife’s affair, until he finds concrete undeniable evidence, and then he too dies. His daughter Berthe must resign to a cotton mill in order to pay her now-dead family’s debts. A rather tragic ending…the only person walking away relatively unscathed is Rodolphe, who has the money and power to live out his dreams, without living in a fantasy. During his bleedings, he is unruffled by the sight of blood and maintains a Stotic-like consistency throughout the novel.

Madame Bovary

Charles is a unique character with an equally unique upbringing. His parents are polar opposites and clash opinions at every point: his father wishes him to run naked with no education, while his mother dictates ever aspect of his life from education to marriage. The opening vignette of Charles' limited elementary education is very telling about his personality, his hat like himself is an amalgamation of many things. It is not quite one purpose, it does not have one direction. Charles is as scattered as his hat, he does not know who he is. He never had many chances to discover himself outside of his overbearing, domineering wife and mother. Emma is very timid and quiet at first. She is always seen sewing, and behaving prim and proper. From the beginning it seems like she plans on using Charles as her escape from the country, where she feels does not belong, and into the city.

Light and Dark

Calisto impetuously gives Celestina a sizable gold chain as a thank you for arranging a secret meeting between Melibea and him. Celestina sees the gold chain as a reward and a token of all of her hard work. It is basically a symbol for her of all her gains made from trickery and deceit. For her, this is her big pay-off, she says, “I have blunted more of my tools serving him than you ever have. I’ve used up more of my stock You should bear in mind that this all cost me…I’ve worked hard at this…What’s my trade and livelihood is you part time hobby” (141). Throughout the novel Celestina strings along Sempronio and Parmeno is her plot to extract money from lovesick Calisto, and when she finally gets paid, she foolishly believes she can keep all of the money to herself. The novel hints that the gold chain represents other things to Sempronio and Parmeno, even though they insist; it is just about the money. Celestina believes the chain represents their relationships with Areusa and Elicia, and their frustration really stems from their desire to see other women, but they cannot because the chain binds them together. For Calisto, the chain also represents his love for Melibea, and although he tries to rid himself of the chain that imprisons his body and soul, by giving the chain to Celestina, it only causes him to love his semi-faithful servants. Calisto’s speech is best summed up by Tristan’s comment after the soliloquy, “…he’s said because of what happened to his lads and full of pleasure because of what he shared with Melibea. The two extremes are bound to affect a lean fellow like him” (157). On a surface reading of Calisto’s speech, one would assume that to be the cause of Calisto’s anguish, but it is probably due to the letdown Calisto felt after he gained the object of his desire: sex with Melibea. The symbolism in Calisto’s and Melibea’s deaths is Calisto dies an a vain attempt to bridge their love, the ladder representing the bridge and the wall is the barrier, similar to the mirror in Lacan’s mirror stage or the pool of water in the Myth of Narcissus. The insurmountable barrier when the beloved and the lover, they even fulfillment of that desire cannot fully reach or surmount. While attempting to overcome this boundary, Calisto falls and breaks his neck. Melibea, after realizing there is no way for her to every truly be with her love, opts instead to jump off of a tower, because she cannot bear to be without the hope of love. A continued troupe throughout the novel is the imagery of fire and darkness. Melibea and Calisto both say their hearts burn with fire for each other, their love is light to their eyes, and radiant. It is ironic that their first meeting, after they both profess their undying love for each other, they meet in total darkness at midnight. As soon as it begins to lighten, villagers come with torches and pitchforks. Not to mention the more obvious symbol of separation: the gate that keeps them apart. Rojas employs the use of dramatic irony to reveal the falsity of Melibea and Calisto’s love for each other.

Two things I noticed in Celestina are the themes of pains that love brings and the two extremes of women presented in the novel. Sempronio and Calisto mirror a Plato and Socratic conversion when they denote the differences between the cruel burning of Rome by Nero and the burn on a man’s heart caused by rejection. Calisto’s speech of differences in the two fires alludes to the allegory of “The Cave,” by Plato, “The difference between the fire in your song and the one burning in me is as great as the gap between appearance and reality, life and artifice, a shadow and its source.” In this sense, Calisto subverts the expectations that the “real” fire is the fire that burns you when you love someone, and the “shadow” of that fire is the one that burns through fields and houses alike. Their discussion leads them to two extreme views of women. Calisto sees women as beautiful creatures; he describes Melibea as “slanted green eyes, long eye lashes, thin arched eyebrows, dainty nose…” (9). The list goes on and on of the virtues and excellence of women. Calisto uses imagery of gods and royalty to refer to Melibea. Contrastingly, Sempronio believes women to be vile creatures. He also lists the qualities of women, “they are all play-acting, lip, deceit, sleight of hand, frostiness, ingratitude, infidelity, slander, denials, scheming…” (7). He carries on this list for quite a while, all while speaking of all the evils of women. This motif continues throughout the rest of the novel Melibea representing the goddess wonderful end of the extreme, while Celestina the evil not to be trusted side. The interactions between the women are insightful, because they play off of each others known strengths and flaws, like Celestina’s craftiness or Melibea’s weakness of spirit. Either way I am excited to see which one “triumphs” in the end.

Black Hole of Desire

Courtly Love is a technical paper about the form and theory of “courtly love;” it also discusses many of the characteristics of courtly love. It is not real in the sense that it is not directed at any specific women. Even the woman in question is not real, “the Lady in courtly love loses concrete features and is addressed as an abstract Ideal” (Žižek 89). There are no specific features given, so the Lady is not relatable or desirable. Lacan even states a woman is a “kind of automaton, a machine which utters meaningless demands at random” (90). She is like a voodoo doll, channeling the form of a real person, but is only an empty shadow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Courtly love is not just not real, but it is only a mirror of the man’s own narcissistic desires. She is unattainable and meant to be viewed as such. Even if the woman were to present herself as available, the man would no longer want her. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . .. . The woman is an imitation of the real and nothing more, “[she is] the mute mirror-surface…a kind of ‘black hole'" (93). The replacement of the woman with a black hole or void is a troupe that reappears through out the essay. The ‘black hole’ refers to the inaccessibility of the Lady, for one can never venture to the end of a black hole. The women is merely a series of unattainable detours put in place by the man who wants her. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Courtly love is expressed in Bernard de Ventadorn’s poems, through the use of literary devises,like imagery and anaphora of words like “color,” beauty,” and “youth.” Lacan also refers to love as a game or formula. Courtly love is not passionate only mannerly. One interesting quote was, “Masochism confronts us with the paradox of the symbolic order of ‘fictions’: there is more truth in the mask we wear, in the game we play, in the ‘fiction’ we obey and follow, than in what is concealed beneath the mask” (92). When does the woman or man stop acting and face reality, how much of the mask is their real self. The need for desire is already there she simply draws it out of him and focuses in. she is the center of his black hole. “Object is attainable only by way of an incessant postponement, as its absent point of reference” (95). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The poems are a conduit of portrayal of this ‘courtly love’ as depicted by Lacan. The speaker believes the pain outweighs the love her feels for the woman. He never provides detailed descriptions of her, effectively keeping her out of the realm of the real and always suspense in this ideal unreality. He always refers to her in a master/king and servant/ peasant dynamic. He never views himself of worthy of her; she is out of reach. She is merely the Object of the Thing according to Lacan. The speaker even admits that “the sighs have a sweeter taste,” referring to the enjoyment of suffering for his desire. In the poem the speaker is constantly removed and distanced from his love. He only loves and fears her, what kind of a relationship is that? More of a God to man, rather than two humans being on equal grounds. The speaker has elevated the women to a God-like position. He references the “Myth of Narcissus” in poem 26, he states that her eyes are mirrors, then he refers to the woman as “Mirror” just an outward projection of his inner longings. She symbolizes the mirror and embodies it as well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That Obscure Object of Desire ties in well with the two other pieces because of the dynamic between the two very different actresses. One is sweet and innocent, and more respondent to the wishes of Mathieu, than the other seductive- world-wise actress, who seems very aware of her body, and very disdainful of Mathieu as well. Like Lacan references in Courtly Love, the woman only serves to postpone the highly sought, sexual act, never to fulfill the desires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . . ... . All of these pieces, support the idea that real love and desire is a mirror and lacking a truth, and a real nature. One can only chase, detour, and postpone, but never actually obtain the Object of their desires. There will always be a deferral of gratification that is impossible to be had. Just like Narcissus that pursued the image in the Lake, but as soon as he tried to touch or kiss the image disappear, leaving ripples of disappointment and despair in its wake.

Desire in Self and in Others

In Song of Songs, the relationship between the lover and beloved is clearly intimate. One pines for the other, and envisions the other as the most sought after person in the world. At one point the lover says, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men.
 I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love” (Songs 2: 3-4). They use fruit, herb, and architectural imagery to describe each other’s various body parts. It is specific and vivid. The beloved does not simply say to the lover, “Your eyes are pretty, and you have big breasts,” he instead proliferates, “Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon 
by the gate of Bath Rabbim” (Songs 7:3-4). Today this language may appear excessive and over-the-top, but hundreds of years ago, epic love poems like this were much more common, a similar style to “Epithalamion,” by Edmund Spenser. This text is intended to demonstrate the perfect marriage between two people, who both love and desire each other in a biblical context. Back in Genesis, a perfect marriage is ordained by God, when Eve is first created, “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones
 and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:23-24). Song of Solomon, can be read a various of ways , the two most recognized being, a visual text of a holy, unabashed relationship between man and woman, or a conceit for man’s relationship with Christ (he is the head of the church and the church is his bride). In “The Myth of Narcissus,” Echo was a talkative Nymph, who was cursed by Juno to only be able to repeat the last words someone spoke. An echo today essentially does the same thing, when we are in a large empty room or cave, except it cannot throw arms around you and hug you. Also, echoes cannot fall in love with you and try to get you to speak. It can also not choose which words you just spoke to repeat back to you. However, with Echo the line between an echo and a person is blurred. At one point she appears to simply have a “handicap,” but later it seems like she cannot choose who to reply to, like she must reply the last few words spoken every time she hears someone, “Never again would she reply more willingly to any sound,” (Ovid, 84). Another grey area is when the texts implies he is “deceived by what he took to be another’s voice,” (84). So, in more than one way, Echo does not have her own voice, and in that way she is more shadow an individual. This conversation toys with the power of his own beauty to charm even his echo into falling in love with him, which is what makes the next situation seem less absurd, but still confusing. Narcissus falls in love with “the boy trapped in the pool,” it takes him a while to begin to figure out who the boy is, and even when he learns the boy is, in fact, himself, it is too late. He so is overcome with desire for the person “trapped underwater,” he cannot tear his eyes away from the creature that stares at his from in the water. This tragedy illustrates when your desires can be attainable or foolish, you, outside of your own free will, are trapped and held captive by the apple of your eye, whether or not the apple is a mere illusion. As portrayed in the text, “He…was…excited by the very illusion that deceived his eyes…Why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that eludes you? The thing you are seeing does not exist,” (85). Lacan’s text was quite confusing, referring a lot to how captivating and disrupting one’s own image can be. It parallels Narcissus in that by simply seeing your own reflection it can wreak havoc on and disrupt your current stage of development. Narcissus lost his youth, by being caught up in his reflection in the pool.