Occasioning the Real: Lacan, Deleuze, and Cinematic Structuring of Sense WESSELS, Emanuelle http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/9/9/3/4/pages299344/p299344-5.php This essay explores the extent to which revisions of Lacanian film theory, which posit that the gaze belongs to the order of the Real as opposed to the imaginary, can, when read through Gilles Deleuzes notion of sense, open the possibility that the cinematic apparatus, as a language, can structure the Real gaze as a Deleuzian form of sense. Although Deleuze begins to investigate some of the ways in which cinema can act as a sense-structuring system in The Time Image, I believe that this aspect of his theory of sense, as articulated to film, needs further development. Thus, using Lars von Triers film Dogville as an illustration, I explore the potential of a revised return to apparatus theory and the framework of film as language, in order to ascertain whether these models, when theorized in the context of Lacans notion of the Real gaze and Deleuzes concept of sense, can supply a useful paradigm for conceptualizing film as a signifying system which acts as a vehicle transmitting sense in the form of the Real gaze, a process which carries possibilities for theorizing more radical modes of spectatorship than allowed by prior approaches to Lacanian film theory. Contemporary neo-Lacanian film theorists, such as Todd McGowan and Slavoj iek, have argued that understanding the gaze as a moment of Real terror or shock carries potential for resistance through spectatorship, insofar as it enables spectators to embrace experiential, new modes of being not previously ideologically defined by the signification system of film. For early Lacanian film theorists working in the Imaginary, such as Christian Metz, Lacans Mirror Stage essay was paramount, and the reception of film was an imaginary experience that had the effect of binding the subject to its interpellation in the symbolic order (McGowan, Psychoanalysis xiii). This imaginary

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Occasioning the Real process of identification was used to argue that cinema, essentially, functions as an auxiliary mechanism constituting and hailing subjects in ideology, by way of their misrecognition in film. Louis Althusser, whose thoughts on ideology largely inform these projects, states that all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject (173). Thus, according to early Lacanian film theorists utilizing the role of the Imaginary, film creates ideological subject positions, and subsequently hails spectators as subjects-in-ideology through misrecognition. According to Jean-Louis Baudry, cinema constitutes the subject by the illusory determination of a central location whether this be that of God or any other substitute. It is an apparatus designed to obtain a precise ideological effect, necessary to the dominant ideology: creating a fantasmization of the subject, it collaborates with a marked efficacy in the maintenance of idealism (Basic Effects 540). Film, then, becomes ideologys accomplice, deceiving subjects into identifying with various subject positions. The problem with this approach, McGowan argues, is that it leaves no room for resistance, and construes film as a wholly ideological machine, completely implicated and flawlessly functioning, in the perpetuation of dominant culture. Attempts to revive Lacanian film theory hinge on transcending focus on overdeterminded imaginary, and returning to the Real as the register offering possible resistant potential, or at least an alternative to the notion of ideology as a closed loop. Further, this approach enables the constitution of subjects more radical than those invested deeply in the imaginary, who are allegedly duped by the forces of ideology. For Lacan, the Real represents a point of intrusion or disruption in the symbolic order, an

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Occasioning the Real intervention that cannot be made sense of with the preexisting symbolic codes. The Real, he explains, can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse in formalization (Seminar XX 93). McGowan understands this Radical Real to involve terror and ecstasy, fundamental challenges to the subject in ideology. Ultimately, he posits, confronting this ecstatic, often horrific Real may supply new coordinates for the subject that challenge current ideological subjectivities in the symbolic order (Introduction xxvii- xxviii). The Real, a gap in the symbolic order, is thus a void that is paradoxically rich with constitutive power, having the ability to reform and disrupt existing ideological order. Thus, confronting and acknowledging the Real has the potential to form new subjects, which McGowan argues is a truly radical move. Locating the Real, and thus the ability to utilize it constitutively, involves, for the new Lacanians, identifying it as a gap within the ideological subject. The Real is, then, the void or lack within the subject that ideology cannot fill, the space that ideology cannot touch. This is the space that must be accessed. Slavoj iek explains that the subject is the void, the hole in the Other (Sublime 196). Subjects emerge, then, because the symbolic order is not seamlessly unified; there are points within it that cannot be neatly reconciled. Imaginary constructs manifest to suture the gaps in the symbolic order, in an attempt to make it complete and integrated. However, these gaps keep emerging, and the process repeats ad infinitum. Joan Copjec argues that an initial, fundamental misreading of Lacan led to the conclusion that the gaze, theorized as rooted in the imaginary, involved spectators identification with the look, and subsequent attempts to master the images; to claim them as objects of possession. This notion of the screen as a mirror stipulates that the

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Occasioning the Real process of spectatorship involves the spectator accept[ing] [them] as its own as belonging to the subject (21). However, a return to seminar XI, Copjec argues, presents an entirely different understanding of the gaze. Rather than attempting to identify with the gaze and master objects, she argues, Lacan understood the gaze to be the object petit a itself, the hidden Thing lurking behind representation, which representation is though to veil and that supposedly supplies meaning. What constitutes subjects, then, is the desire to make meaning out of images by grasping the Thing behind them. However, Copjec argues, Lacan understood this beyond to consist of a fundamental absence or nothingness, a realization that occurs when the gaze is actually apprehended. At the moment the gaze is discerned, she explains, the image, the entire visual field, takes on a terrifying alterity. It loses its belonging to me aspect and suddenly assumes the function of a screen (35). This moment, rather than supplying mastery, reveals to the subject its nature as constituted by a lack or negativity. Lacan argues, rather, that beyond the signifying network, beyond the visual field, there is, in fact, nothing at all (35). This excess of representation, this beyond that the image cannot fully capture, is what constitutes the subject. [L]anguages opacity, argues Copjec, is taken as the very cause of the subjects being, that is, its desire or want to be (35). The extent to which film can serve as a tool structuring this moment of the Real involves reaching an understanding of its function as a language and structuring system. Deleuze writes in The Logic of Sense that We have seen that although sense does not exist outside of the proposition that expresses it, it is nevertheless the attribute of states of affairs and not the attribute of the proposition (24). In this respect, can Deleuzes notion of sense as quasi-caused, as occasioned by, language be reasonably understood as

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Occasioning the Real analogous to films ability, as a signifying system, to occasion an excess of meaning that can be construed as the Real gaze? Deleuzes concept of sense, like Lacans formulation of the Real Gaze, indicates a realm of connotation and interpretation. Both are rooted in what lies outside of denotation and the represented. To pass to the other side of the mirror, Deleuze contends, is to pass from the relation of denotation to the relation of expressionit is to reach a region where language no longer has any relation to that which it expresses, that is, to sense (Logic 25). Further, like Lacan, Deleuze understands this excess to be related to a lack. For Lacan, apprehending the gaze involves grasping an excess of representation, something beyond that which is captured by the image, which in fact indicates a nothingness or lack. Deleuze also maps this similarity, contending that an excess of the signifier also entails a lack in the order of the signified, or meaning. Its excess always refers to its own lack, he explains, and conversely, its lack always refers to its excess (Logic 41). In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze begins to map the process by which representational structures, or language, can carry sense. He states that representation must encompass an expression which it does not represent, (Logic 145) which he likens to the event of dying, and event that could also be compared to the moment of terror and ecstasy realized when experiencing Lacans Real gaze. Although Deleuze does not discuss here the specific processes by which a visual representational system can quasi- cause sense, he gestures to its ability, even necessity, to do so. Representation envelops the event in another nature, envelops it at its bordersThis is the operation which defines living usage (Logic 146). When representation fails to transfer or bring forth the excess,

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Occasioning the Real it ceases to live, remaining only a dead letter confronting that which it represents, and stupid in its representiveness (Logic 146). In The Time Image, Deleuze begins to theorize some of the ways in which cinema acts as a structuring system that carries an important, constitutive excess. Movement or motion is, for Deleuze, a form of sense which comes forth through structuration of the objects represented. [T]he movement image, he explains, has become a reality which speaks through its objects (Time, 28). However, there is another order occasioned by the ordering and construction of a semiotic system of images, that of narration. [U]tterances and narrations are not a given of visible images, but a consequence which flows from this reaction. Narration is grounded in the image itself, but it is not a given (Time 29). The flow of narration, distinct from an utterance or enunciation, belongs to the order of sense, or interpretation, in that it constitutes an effect produced and occasioned by the structuring system. Cinematic sense also develops within and flows through represented bodies, and resonates in spectator bodies through viewing experiences. It is through the body, Deleuze contends, that cinema forms its alliance with spirit, with thought (Time 189). Moreover, Deleuze deals with the issue of concealment, a matter of high importance to Lacan and neo-Lacanian film theorists. The body, he explains, forces us to think, and forces us to think what is concealed from life, thought (Time 189). Both classic apparatus theory, as well as Christian Metzs understanding of film language, offer models for conceptualizing the cinematic structure. Although both were initially informed by ideological perspectives, they can be revised and revisited in order to become conducive to a Lacanian and Deleuzian understanding of the gaze as sense.

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Occasioning the Real Conventional apparatus theory relies on the now challenged understanding of the gaze as located in the register of the imaginary, thereby functioning as a spectatorial attempt to gain mastery over the images, or objects, on the screen. Early apparatus theorists such as Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean-Louis Baudry argue that the cinematic structure establishes a centered subject and privileges the eye and sight as modes of understanding. Baudry understands the spectator position inscribed by the text to constitute a permutation of linear, singular perspective, which creates a centered viewing subject who constructs unified meaning. The cinematic apparatus is patently ideological, he argues, in the sense that it forms a hegemonic viewing subject. This mode of viewing allegedly strongly privileges the eye, understood by Baudry as interchangeable with a certain omniscient, omnipresent, and disembodied gaze. As a support and instrument for ideology, the cinematic apparatus creates an ideological spectator through its positioning of the illusory delimitation of a central location-whether this be that of a god or any other substitute. It is an apparatus destined to obtain a precise ideological effect, necessary to the dominant ideology creating a phantasmatization of the subject, it collaborates with marked efficacy in the maintenance of idealism (Baudry, Ideological Effects 295). The primary ideological work of cinema, for Baudry, lies in its ability to structure the look, understood as an extension of the eye, in a way that produces a centered subject capable of gaining mastery over the world through this look. Thus, by creating a world which can supposedly be known through the senses, the cinematic apparatus constructs a stable, transparent reality conveyable through representations, as well as a stable,

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Occasioning the Real rational subject capable of transparently, unambiguously understanding it (Baudry, Apparatus 305). The camera, moreover, perpetuates the dominant ideology by equating the real with the visible, thus establishing a hegemony of sight and transparent meaning of images. Further, this structured way of looking allegedly produces a blind confidence in the visible, the hegemony, gradually acquired, of the eye over the other senses, the taste and need society has to put itself in spectacle (Comolli 126). What Comollis analysis makes apparent is that his conception of the cinematic apparatus ability to structure a spectatorial experience is limited to the realm of the imaginary, or the function of images in themselves. No space is left for theorizing an excess of the image, an affect or experience of viewing-as-event which escapes representation. The move to locating breaks in the ideological narrative of filmic structure can be better, and more cogently, made by returning to apparatus theory through Lacans notion of the Real and Deleuzes concept of sense. This formulation, rather than ignoring the ideological implications of the structuring apparatus and attempting to locate breaks in the ideological narrative via images, focuses on the excess of the represented that is carried or transmitted by a symbolic, structuring system. Thus, rather than operating on the level of the imaginary, this engagement with apparatus theory functions on the level of the Real, read through Deleuzes notion of sense, to analyze what is carried by the cinematic language. Hence, this theoretical supposition also entails a return to conceiving of the cinematic structure as something akin to a language system. Christian Metzs analysis of cinematic language fundamentally understood the signifying semiotic system, which he conceived of as a unique sort of language, as

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Occasioning the Real patently ideological. Represented images in film, he explains, do not transparently reflect a stable reality. Rather, they construct a new state of affairs infused with an ideological dimension, as a result of being filtered through the structural apparatus. Even the most realistic cinema, he argues, does not show spectators real events, but rather those refracted through an ideological point of view, entirely thought out, signifying from beginning to end. Meaning is not sufficient; there must also be signification (37). Metzs analysis raises two important issues. First, he implies that meaning is not transferable on its own, it must attach itself to an inherently ideological, signifying system. Second, although the vehicle is necessary, the meaning nonetheless remains a separate entity. This mode of conceptualizing film as a language system is conducive to both Lacans notion of the signifier in the Real, as well as Deleuzes formulation of sense. In an early formulation of the notion of the Real, which he names the peace of the evening, Lacan forwards the idea that this moment of the limit of the phenomenons grip on us can be construed as an instant where a radical break in discourse, an unsignifiable moment, is occasioned by discourse itself. We have come to the limit at which discourse, if it opens to anything beyond meaning, opens to the signifier in the real. We shall never know, in the perfect ambiguity in which it dwells, what it owes to this marriage with discourse (Lacan, Seminar III, 139). In this passage, Lacan appears puzzled and unsure as to why these gaps and breaks in discourse must be necessarily occasioned by a discursive system. Metz seems to be grappling with a similar predicament in trying to locate the exact relationship between meaning and signification vis--vis film. A sequence of film, he explains,

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Occasioning the Real like a spectacle from life, carries meaning within itself. The signifier is not easily distinguished from the significate (43). Most of Metzs project on cinema as a language system struggles to pinpoint understanding of how, exactly, to conceive of cinematic meaning as something separate from the signification system, especially considering what he understands to be a relatively short distance, to the point of being nearly (but, importantly, not entirely) collapsed, between signifier and signified. The unique aspects of this particular semiotic language system, which Metz calls image discourse create a specific vehicle in which it is impossible to break up the signifier without getting isomorphic elements of the signified (58, 63). However, even within this nearly collapsed representational system, Metz grants much importance to an excess of signification, an element which escapes the image, and is in turn highly constitutive of the entire order. The language is enriched by whatever is lost to system. The two phenomena are one. It is as if the codes signifying abundance were linked to that of the message in the cinema-or rather separated from it-by an obscurely rigorous relationship of inverse proportionsthe message, as it becomes refined, circumvents the code. At any given moment, the code could change or disappear entirely, whereas the message will simply find the means to express itself differently (49). Thus, for Metz, the most important aspect of the signification system is the message or meaning, which parasitically depends upon the structure, yet, at the same time, exists independently of it, and possesses a certain freedom to seek out another host, if need be. Thus, although the peculiarities of an image-based, cinematic language system present unique challenges in separating the meaning from the structure, this

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Occasioning the Real process is nonetheless possible. Ergo, in Deleuzian terms, we have entered the realm of sense, moving past denotation, signification, and the image. Understanding cinema as a language system, through Metz, facilitates this connection with Deleuzes sense, who conceptualizes this excess as occasioned by the structural system it travels with. The next step, then, is to link up this notion of cinematic sense with Lacans understanding of the Real gaze, in order to begin to understand how film, as a structural and signifying apparatus, can be understood as quasi-causing the Real gaze. In Tarrying with the Negative, Slavoj iek argues that the kernel of meaning that supposedly lies beyond representation is, paradoxically, always occasioned by the symbolic structure, it cannot exist without it. Moments of the Real occur in the context of ideological structures; they never exist independently of them. This is what Lacan means when he says that the traumatic Real is encountered in dreams, this is the way ideology structures our experience of reality (Tarrying 63). This notion of the Real manifesting in a dream-text is akin to Lacans notion of the signifier in the Real. Advancing this theory, moreover, entails reconfiguring the relationship between the eye and the gaze. The original Lacanian film theorists and proponents of apparatus theory understood the gaze as an extension of the eye, with the camera serving as a cyborg-type prosthetic extending its scope of power. However, aligning the gaze on the side of the Real involves separating it from the eye, thus creating a split subject, fracturing of the look, and removing the gaze from the domain of the sight organ. This figuration is, according to Lacan, constitutive of subjectivity. The split that occurs in relation to an encounter with the Real, he explains, enables us to understand the real, in its dialectical effects, as originally unwelcome ( Seminar XI 69). The gaze, Lacan explains,

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Occasioning the Real constitutes the subject around a lack. The gaze is presented to us only in the form of a strange contingencyas the thrust of our experience, namely, the lack that constitutes castration anxiety (Seminar XI 73). The gaze, which Lacan understands as a form of the object a, comes to symbolize this central lack (Seminar XI 77). Thus, according to Lacan, the gaze is best located on the register of the Real, and an encounter with it involves not a moment of mastery, but a profoundly traumatic, self-abnegating encounter with the Other. Further, Lacan explains, an encounter with the gaze cannot simultaneously involve a sense of oneself as a subject; the gaze is ego-negating, and thus the two experiences are mutually exclusive. The gaze, as conceived by Sartre, is the gaze by which I am surprised-surprised insofar as it changes all the perspectives, the lines of my world, orders it, from the point of nothingness where I aminsofar as I am under the gazeI no longer see the eye that looks at me and, if I see the eye, the gaze disappears (Seminar XI, 84). In Deleuzian terms, this gaze also, curiously, resembles the body without organs, or full speech, than the phallic, castrated organ without a body implied by the ideological eye-gaze attempting visual apprehension and mastery over the visual field. This process of removal involves a sense of separation, the feeling that we are not immediately identified with our look, but stand somewhere behind it (iek, Tarrying 64). Through this splitting event, the spectators illusions of mastery are disavowed, and we become aware that there is actually somebody hidden behind the eye and observing what is going on. The paradox here is that the gaze is concealed by an eye, i.e. by its very organ (iek, Tarrying 64). Thus, the eye structures the gaze, but in a manner that immobilizes and paralyzes the subject, denies her mastery, and renders him powerless and helpless.

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Occasioning the Real The experience is fundamentally masochistic, involving an abnegation of subjectivity and ego, and surrender to the gaze-as-other. Further, Lacan explains, images are vessels for the Real gaze, although deliberate attempts to seek, apprehend, and master such an experience will inevitably lead to a missed encounter. The picture is simply what any picture is, he explains, a trap for the gaze. In any picture, it is precisely in seeking the gaze in each of its points that you will see it disappear (Seminar XI, 89). Revisiting the gaze through the lens of Deleuzes sense allows for it to be situated as an excess of cinemas linguistic, structural semiotic system. The significance of refiguring the gaze, and rearticulating it to cinema, lies in the importance of ascribing political valence and progressive potential to the act of spectatorship, a move which continues to disarticulate Lacanian film theory from its original, mistaken ideological applications, and reclaim it a more productive and constitutive manner. Far from being merely an ego-driven process allowing pre-constituted subjects to gain mastery over the visual field, the gaze is, conversely, a traumatic and constitutive process that allows for, when fully experienced, the recognition of a certain vacuousness at the heart of symbolic identity, and the reconfiguration of identities and subjectivities around it. In other words, moments of the Real, of the gaze, change the world, and shifts in the gaze, moments of radical realization, prompt spectators to fundamentally alter their modes of being. Contemporary Application of Gaze Theory and Lacan: An Intervention Contemporary film theorists revisiting Lacan through film are beginning to explore possibilities of re-theorizing the gaze. However, although these critics are revising their understanding of gaze theory, they nonetheless still operate at the level of the filmic text, and stop short of advancing an intervention in spectatorship theory vis--

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Occasioning the Real vis the Real gaze. Their analyses, thus remain limited to the ways in which film characters experience the Real gaze, as opposed to how the cinematic apparatus structures this experience for spectators. Thus, this project will attempt to build off of those contributions by situating an intervention into spectatorship theory. The final piece of this analysis will consist of an examination of how the film Dogville structures spectatorship to occasion the Real gaze. The following scholars discuss numerous instances of how subjects emerge in film narratives. The symbolic order is not seamlessly unified in the texts they discuss; there are points within it that cannot be made sense of. Mark Pizzato, for example, argues that Kubricks film Eyes Wide Shut exemplifies the emergence of the Real by attempting to locate gaps and lacks in the gazes attempt to master its objects. This film, he argues, challenges the totalizing power Mulveys gaze by presenting a focus on directing:

The erotic eye of masculine desire towards the feminine drive of an Other jouissance: From Imaginary visions and Symbolic rites towards Real mortalities (88).

This is accomplished in Eyes, he argues, by the fact that the protagonists gaze is never allowed to assert total mastery and control; it is variously challenged by humiliation, danger, and the threat of destruction. Although the women in the film seem to fill the hollow gap in the gazing males ego, challenges to said ego reveal that very gap, a gap indicating incompletion, vulnerability, and lack of mastery. The gaze, as instantiated in Eyes, exemplifies a lack that desires the Other-as-woman for its fulfillment. However, rather than demonstrating mastery and control, Pizzato posits that this process exemplifies the gap itself, and its potential for ideological disruption. [T]he

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Occasioning the Real film, he argues, presents the arousal, yet insecurity, of the male gaze-in its dependence on the erotic beauty and symbolic knowledge of the woman to bolster the hollow ego and repair its loss of identity (89). This hollowness or lack is exactly what, according to iek, constitutes the subject itself. The Real reveals in this particular case is the death drive and masochistic fear and desire of feminine jouissance. Through his commingled fear, titillation, and curiosity when faced with the rituals of the sexualized death cult, Eyes male protagonist reveals this hollow kernel in his subject. The spectator of Eyes, according to Pizzato, can choose looking beyond the beautiful illusions of the screen Sacrifice towards the Real-the gaze of mortality and lack of being in the apparatus and its audience (108). Locating the radical potential of neo-Lacanian film theory involves reading and dealing with more than the images themselves. Although the above-discussed example breaks ground in its reformulation of gaze theory, it nonetheless remains on the level of the filmic narrative, and does not investigate the ways in which the apparatus itself can structure a moment of the Real-qua spectatorship. Thus, ironically, this study, and others like it, ultimately limits itself to the register of the imaginary, analyzing the ways in which the films storylines contain moments of Real eruptions for their various characters. The next step of neo-Lacanian film theory involves investigating how the cinematic apparatus, when conceived of as a language system in the Deleuzian sense, can carry or structure a moment of the Real. The following discussion of the film Dogville will posit a theory of Real spectatorship through apparatus theory and the understanding of film as a language.

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Occasioning the Real Dogville tells the story of Grace, a trusting and kind, if nave, young woman fleeing her mob-affiliated family. While on the run, she discovers the small mountain town of Dogville. The residents agree to hide her in exchange for manual labor and other miscellaneous services. The situation seems tolerable at first, although the longer Grace stays, and the better she treats the residents, the crueler, more abusive, and more exploitive they become. The film utilizes a minimalist set, relying only on a few props and chalk etchings on the ground. This particular aesthetic choice allows for more focus on dialogue, shot composition and camera work to build the story. From the opening shots of the film, the spectator is positioned as omniscient, able to see the entire town from above. A deductive shot sequence, moving from wide angle to close-up, carries the spectator into various homes. Further, a narrator walks spectators through the story and explains characters as camera follows them, ostensibly supplying absolute knowledge of their inner states. Early moments of contrast between shots and narration structure sense, allowing spectators to make meaning from the film through extra-semiotic events. For example Tom, a young philosopher and important figure in the town, visits a young woman, Liz, with whom he is obsessed. Liz is described by the narrator as a horizon, bound by luscious curls, and a seductive; a sweet, painful abyss. The role of the narrator, revealing Toms perception of Liz, structures an ideological read of her, framing her image as the sort of construct described by Mulvey and Rose: woman as the limit, the erotic break in the narrative. However, the introductory shot of Liz belies this construction. She is working, irreverent and familiar, greeting Tom with a sarcastic, not remotely flirtatious tone, and mockingly cocking her head to one side. She notices his infatuation, and dryly comments that shes moving, and he will have to find some other

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Occasioning the Real girls skirt to peek up. This incongruity between the narration and the shot composition is an element that will constitute the sense as structured by the film. Gaps appear in Dogvilles narrative throughout: the spectator is invited to realize this obvious incongruity and question the narrators reliability. This moment establishes an instance of sense-making: the language of the text has framed a meaning beyond the image, has occasioned a moment of sense in the spectatorial perception. As the film progresses, and the insidious characters of the townsfolk are revealed, these gaps become larger, more pronounced, and more shocking. Immediately before Grace is introduced, the narrator remarks that it hasnt exactly rained gifts on this particular township, gesturing to the disadvantaged status of Dogville, a moment that ultimately foreshadows the ethical issues important to Dogvilles story. Upon hearing the gunshots of the mobsters pursuing Grace, the narrator walks spectators through Toms thought process and reactions, informing that he wanted to hang onto the feeling of danger. Tom then begins to contemplate his self-appointed depth and acumen as a writer, as close-ups capture his wistful and smug expression, while long shots frame him lounging pensively on the bench. Again, like the scene with Liz, the meaning of this sequence lies not in the conveyed or represented, but the unsaid. This time, by pairing Toms reaction to the gunshots with the narrators description of his inner states, spectators are invited to feel shocked and disgusted at the level of egotism and self absorption manifested by this particular character. Unconcerned with the safety of others or the source of the shots, Tom loses himself in moment of selfish contemplation, instances which are left to the realm of sense and excess, carried by the films inner structure but not registering at the level of the signifier. It is on the level of the Real, the

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Occasioning the Real connoted and expressed, that spectators are invited to feel disdain for Tom. The unstated, the obvious but absent excess that emerges from the juxtaposition of shot composition and narrative, constitutes the Real gaze that will ultimately come to characterize the power of this film. Graces introduction on the set is accompanied by descriptions of her character. She could have kept her vulnerability to herself, informs the narrator. But she chose to give herself up to [Tom], at random, a generous gift. Following this narration, the camera pans from Grace to Tom who, the narrator informs, is thinking of her as generous, very generous. The tone is somewhat sly, and Toms face bears a slight smirk as he nods. Again, this moment of contrast structures an excess, a moment of the Real gaze as spectators are invited to the sinking realization that Toms motives are far from pure, especially compared to Graces innocence. Tom convinces the townspeople to accept Grace for two weeks, because we care about human beings, although the sequence after he heard the gunshots structured the sense that he lacks this benevolent side. Thus, the town meeting scene, contrasted against the previous sequence, carries the sense that Tom and the citizens of Dogville, who wish to, the narrator informs, look in the mirror and see good people, ought to be read with cynicism and suspicion, that they lack a thorough understanding of the morality and ethics they profess. Thus, the cinematic structure, through occasioning an excess of imagery, also establishes the dialogue of both the narrator and film characters as incomplete and lacking full meaning. Through the excess, the reliability of discourse as able to supply complete access to meaning is questioned. Dogville, then revolves around the incompleteness and unreliability of the signifier; the majority of the films meaning

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Occasioning the Real occurs not on the level of the image/imaginary, but the moments of the Real gaze, manifesting within the spectators perception and body. Grace is allowed to stay, and increasingly more taxing amounts of unpaid physical labor are demanded from her in exchange for boarding. Shots of Grace offering her help as repayment are followed by close-ups of the faces of Dogville residents; unexpressive, blank, ranging on suspicious and hostile. These montage sequences further establish the radical disconnect between Graces worldview and her hosts. By the third chapter of the film, the involvement of the narrator has tapered off, supplying an initial set up, but leaving spectators to their own devices after informing them that [Grace] had shown the town of Dogville her true face. At this point in the film, the structural work focuses primarily on character dialogue and shot composition. At the next town meeting, Tom frames Graces openness as weakness. Grace had borne her throat to the town and it had responded with great gifts, with friends, the narrator offers, framing Graces reaction to the discovery of small gifts in her clothing hamper as her face beams in a warm smile. Over the course of her labor tenure, the narrator informs, she serves as brains for Ben, hands for Martha, and eyes for McKay. Graces labor power is fragmented and objectified, construed as discrete parts serving a specific and disjointed role. Although relatively innocuous at this point, the sense is that, given the layout of the previous chapters, the situation will become more exploitive and unethical. The camera oscillates between a more natural, organic mode of looking that evokes a spectator present in the narrative, and an omniscient, birds eye gaze capable of viewing the entire town from above. The look afforded to the eye, when combined with narration informing of characters inner states, ostensibly constructs a spectator that is all

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Occasioning the Real knowing, fully informed, and privy to every detail of outward and inner occurrences. However, the excess emerges through the unreliability and lack of transparency provided by this very illusion of full access. Although, on the one hand, spectators have access to every detail of the characters inner states, incongruities establish the insincerities and limits of this very information. Discourse is unreliable and lacking, and the fullness is actualized by moments of the real, occasioned by the revelation of something existing beyond the level of speech. Full access to information within the text, then, indicates the very lack at the level of the signifier, the inability of signification to convey full meaning. The meaning comes from the unsaid, the moments of the real. What are you trying to say, Grace asks Tom at one point, are you trying to say that you are in love with me? Stumbling over his words and pondering the meaning of the concept aloud, Tom eventually replies yeah. Grace replies, warmly, thats good, because I think Im in love with you too. The camera, in a close up shot-reverse-shot sequence, pans between the two characters at moments of speech and reaction. Grace appears engaged and sincere, her body turned toward Tom, smiling and making eye contact, focusing on him. Shots of Tom, conversely, capture him looking up, his body pointed straight ahead, as he ponders the concept aloud and characterizes Graces admission as interesting, psychologically. Again, although Grace construes a moment of communion and understanding between the two, the spectator is moved to a realization, achieved through the shot sequence and dialogue, that the conversation between them has failed to generate a shared sense of meaning. Discourse has failed, and the cinematic language, by pointing this out, has structured the realization not on the level of the images, but in the

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Occasioning the Real connotation that escapes it, the moment of Real gaze achieved through voyeurism of this encounter, which reconstitutes Dogvilles spectator as one suspicious of the ability of codes and surface communication to instantiate understanding. Dogvilles spectator, then is one characterized by doubt, dread, one who knows too much, one who is privy to the natures of Dogvilles residents in a way that Grace is not. Graces fatal flaw is her faith in discourse and surface meaning, whereas, conversely, the spectator is made to question and doubt that level of meaning. Eventually, Grace tries to escape, and overhead shot of her riding in the truck bed as she sneaks out supply full visual access. Even the tarp covering the truck bed is rendered quasi-transparent; no image escapes the spectators visual field. However, despite the seeming omnipotence of the gaze supplied by the text, the classical, eye- centered look always fails to convey full meaning. Conversely, it is the Real gaze, the gap emerging between the representations, that constitutes the node of constitutive meaning and realization. Although the classical gaze appears powerful, its attempts at mastery always fail, and such shortcomings indicate the lack of plentitude offered by the representative field. After Grace is returned, she is punished by Dogvilles makeshift court, run by Tom. Moral issues are Toms obsession: rules, regulations, and codes of conduct are, he believes, the tools necessary for structuring life in a good society. This is a key point of the film: demonstrating the ultimate failure of code systems to capture the kernel of meaning which they profess to constitute themselves around. Toms project of implementing a moral structure onto Dogville fails to cultivate ethical understanding in the residents. In fact, it has the reverse effect, privileging abstract, universal principles such as education, and justice, without any clue of how to ethically implement these

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Occasioning the Real principles in complex, contingent situations. Similarly, the film text, through various framings of spectator positions, establishes the fragility and inability of code-structures to fully convey true meaning. Discourse is always unreliable in the same way that Toms moral mandates are. Moments of understanding are not conveyed by the eye, regardless of how much power it claims, but by the revelations of the Real gaze. Eventually, Grace experiences a wake up call, a moment of the Real which radically alters her worldview and understanding of Dogvilles residents. While changing a residents sheets one day, she mutters that nobody is gonna sleep here, a revelation which initially shocks and disorients her, and is perceived as, the narrator informs, a startling utterance from outside. Graces first moment of understanding that she is being abused and exploited is experienced as a powerful, shifting event. In a conversation with her mobster father, who has tracked her down, Grace acknowledges that justification of ones actions in Dogville is interpreted as weakness. When read against her prior realization, spectators are moved to the understanding that a moment of the Real has dramatically reconstituted Graces outlook. Although she is beginning to accept what has happened, Grace still defends the residents of the town. I call them dogs, her father responds, unsympathetic. Dogs only obey their nature, why shouldnt we forgive them? Grace implores. Graces father accuses her of condoning unredeemable subjects by overdetermining the role of circumstance. Dogs, according to the father, only obey the lash. He then discusses penalties, accountabilities, and accuses Grace of being arrogant for having excessively high ethical standards that prompt her to exonerate those who are allegedly beneath her cultivated sensibilities. As with Tom, Graces father represents the Law, the symbolic order, a manifestation of faith in

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Occasioning the Real abstracted code structures and rules. Shot reverse-shot sequence features her confusion and frustration, and her fathers smug self assuredness in his own position; another impasse. The people who live here are doing their best under very hard circumstances, Grace explains, arguing that material circumstances such as abject poverty may not be the best ground for cultivating a sense of other-centered ethics. Grace initially empathized with the townspeople, assuming, that, given the circumstances, she could have easily engaged in similar behavior. However, suddenly, Grace sees all of the flaws of the people, and experiences another moment of the Real. She finally understands their worldview, accepts it, and realizes that she has failed to change the world through her benevolence and kindness. Deciding that the world would be better off without the town, Grace succumbs to the symbolic order and aligns herself with it, ordering her father to shoot all of the residents, starting with the children, to teach the mother a lesson about stoicism. I owe her that, she muses, now completely assimilated into the interpretive framework of Dogville. Graces worldview has shifted; she has been changed and reconstituted by her Real experiences in Dogville. Similarly, based on the constructions within the films signifying system, the spectator is also reconfigured by being moved to an understanding of the flaws of Dogville, its obsession with unreliable code structures and universal standards of judgment, fidelities which led to a fundamental inability to understand ethical conduct. The film concludes by denying an answer, as the narrator hails the spectator with the call some things you have to do yourself. Conclusions Given the ideological nature of the imaginary, politicized Lacanian film theory must move beyond analysis of the images themselves, especially the notion that they possess a

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Occasioning the Real plentitude of meaning, and read the gaps, The Real, the sites where excess meaning beyond the images emerges. Cinema, as a language and semiotic system, occasions these moments in a manner analogous to the way in which language, for Deleuze, brings forth sense. Dogville, by repeatedly moving spectators toward moments of realization through gaps between visual images and dialogue, structures this mode of understanding. This process can allow for the introduction of new subjectivities outside of and not determined by ideology. Hence, the politics of Neo-Lacanian film theory is one of individual resistance through moments of awareness, one that empowers the viewing subject to break ideologys hold on him/her. The fundamental site allowing for this process of re- subjectification to occur is the Gaze. Specifically, a political Lacanian film theory rooted in The Real involves removing the Gaze from its privileged seat as an ideological handmaiden producing mastery and control, and refiguring it as an object revealing the very lack in ideological subjectivity that new subjects can embrace. The stakes of film and spectatorship involve dramatically reversing and reformulating the nature of the gaze. Far from constituting a tool achieving hegemonic mastery, the gaze is quite the opposite: the object petit a itself, a fetish pursued to complete the gap in ones ego. Gazing indicates a necessity, the need for the subject to include the other, and unite with the other, in order to achieve completion. Approaching film from the perspective of the Real, then, drastically changes the process of spectatorship. As McGowan explains, [t]he gaze is a blank point-a point that disrupts the flow and sense of the experienceAs the indication of the spectators dissolution, the gaze cannot offer anything resembling mastery (Real Gaze 8).

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Occasioning the Real Radical subjectivity, thus, requires a return to The Real and facing the lack present in the self, as opposed to internalizing the ideological promise that this lack can be completely filled by promises of commodified, ego-centric total enjoyment. Real enjoyment is, like masochism, the giving of oneself to the event, letting go of the ego, not attempting to control, possess and master enjoyment-in-objects. The first step towards breaking the ideological stranglehold is noticing its grip on oneself, a process that can be occasioned through cinematic spectatorship. The politics of the masochistic gaze, thus, involve its ability to empower individual spectators to wake up, and realize their subjective presence in symbolic authority, and discursive code structures. As the film Dogville demonstrates, another important aspect of realizing and eschewing subjectivity in ideology involves a subjects recognition of the inherent limitations of semiotic and linguistic structures to convey full meaning. A thorough understanding of how cinematic spectatorship can function in this process of Real re-subjectification is crucial for developing and advancing a theory of the subject around Lacans notion of the Real gaze. In a sense, this intervention reverses the conclusions reached by early Lacanian theorists of film and ideology. Whereas in this phases of the theory film was situated as an ideological apparatus hailing subjects on the level of the imaginary, this reformulation situates it as a mechanism with potential to construct and bring about those definitive Real moments able to radically change selves and worlds. By moving the gaze to the register of the Real, and examining how the cinema can, in a Deleuzian sense, carry the Real gaze in the manner of a language, I hope to have shown how film, through a revised understanding of apparatus theory and spectatorship, contains potential to serve as a reconstitutive, even revolutionary, device.

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Occasioning the Real References Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. B. Brewster. New York: Monthly Review, 1971. 127- 186. Baudry, Jean-Louis. Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Phillip Rosen. New York: Columbia Up, 1986. 286-299. _____. Basic Effects of the Cinematic Apparatus. Movies and Methods. Ed. B. Nichols. Vol. 2. Berkley: University of California Press, 1985. 531-542. _____. The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology Ed. Phillip Rosen. New York, Columbia Up, 1986. 299-319. Comolli, Jean-Louis. Machines of the Visible. The Cinematic Apparatus. Eds. Theresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath. New York: St. Martins, 1980. 121-142. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Movement Image. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989. _____. The Logic of Sense. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. _____. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955-1956. Trans. Russell Gregg. New York: Norton, 1993. _____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X1: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1988.

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Occasioning the Real _____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Encore 1972-1973. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 1998. McGowan, Todd. The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. SUNY UP, 2004. _____. The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan. SUNY UP, 2007. _____. Introduction. Lacan and Contemporary Film. Eds. Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle. New York: Other, 2004. Metz, Christian. Film Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Eds. Leo Braudy. & Michael Cohen. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford University Press. 833-845. Pizzato, Mark. Beautys Eye: Erotic Masques of the Death Drive in Eyes Wide Shut. Lacan and Contemporary Film. Eds. Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle. New York: Other, 2004. 83-111. Rose, Jacqueline. The Cinematic Apparatus: Problems in Current Theory. The Cinematic Apparatus. Eds. Theresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath. New York: St. Martins, 1980. 172-186. Von Trier, Lars, dir. Dogville. Perf. Nicole Kidman. Lions Gate, 2003. iek, S. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York: Verso, 1989. _____. Tarrying With the Negative. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. _____. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. MIT UP, 1991.

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Occasioning the Real _____. An Ethical Plea for Lies and Masochism. Lacan and Contemporary Film. Eds. Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle. New York: Other, 2004. 173-187.

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