the girl with a pearl earring: the gaze of the 'impossible'? (film review)

7/28/2019 The Girl With a Pearl Earring: The Gaze of the 'Impossible'? (Film Review)

1/4

The Girl with a Pearl Earr ing: The Gaze of the Impossible?

By Mahesh Hapugoda


2/4

Introduction

The fantasy teaches us how to desire and it is desire which keeps us alive, in the sense of seeking an

object in reality whose positive encounter, we believe, would satisfy our desire. According to Zizek, a

fantasy constitutes our desire, provides its coordinates; that is, it literary teaches us how to desire (Zizek:

1997, 7) [1]. Fantasy decides mans act irrespective of what he consciously thinks of it, and directs him to

develop a desire towards another human being (in the form of reality or virtuality). In short, fantasypossesses the capacity to regulate ones desire and establishes the fact that there needs to be an

intersubjective relationship for us to desire. The desire can change a persons fate especially when he

finds the object of desire as a worthy cause of pursue of his existence. Man is capable of sublimating his

desirous object (fantasy), when he could de-sexualize it and place it where it becomes immoral. It will

then be appreciated by millions of others in future. What we find ulti mately in the movie The Girl with a

Pearl Earring ismans infinite effort to abide by the above principle to sublimate his desire. What he

could not reach in penetrating the woman who carried his final fantasy (or, in other words, the

Impossible), was made immoral through his aesthetic skills. His primary sexual energy was converted to

some sublime force to produce an object (in this case, a painting) which was further away from mans

reach.

Film Synopsis

Griet, the protagonist of the movie The Girl with a Pear Earring, comes from a poor family where her

father is also a Delftware painter who is financially bankrupt now. After her father went blind and

subsequently unemployed, she was sent to work in Johannes Vermeers household that is initially

portrayed with some mysterious misunderstanding between the husband and wife, though not obvious.

She continues her duty honestly, while gaining the attention of some butcher boy to whom she responds

slowly. Griet is sometimes treated harshly by Vermeers children and even Vermeers wife becomes a bit

inquisitive about her going to the studio which she is never permitted to enter. Griet gained Vermeers

attention one day when she busied with cleaning the studio after she made a comment about color of an

on-going painting. After that they became acquainted and developed strong aesthetic attachment based

on taste when Vermeer further encouraged her appreciation of painting. In the meantime, he used to giveher lessons in mixing painting and related jobs. Her going to the studio and helping Vermeer was kept as

a secret from his wife but Vermeers mother-in-law treated this affair in a pragmatic manner considering

her usefulness to his immediate production of commercial painting. In the meantime, Vermeers patron

Van Ruijven, having seen her beauty, demands for Griet to work in his household which Vermeer denies.

However, he agrees to paint a portrait of Griet for Ruijven.

Once Vermeer started painting Griet, their attachment further grew and she happened to spend more

time in the studio. This is noticed by Vermeers children and later by Catharina (Vermeers wife) herself.

Vermeer, while working on the painting, one day pierced her earlobe so that she could wear the earring

for the portrait. Griet, taken by the surprise, ran to the butcher boy for consolation. Griet is given the pearl

earring which Catharina used to wear during the final days of the completion of the painting. Catharina,

after found out that her pearl earring was worn by Griet, stormed into the studio she never set foot inbefore and demanded that she wanted to see the painting that Vermeer was working on. She was

shocked to see Griet in the painting and wanted to destroy the painting since Vermeer did not consider

her worthy of being painted. Though she could not destroy the painting she managed to banish Griet

from the house forever. At this point Vermeer becomes silent and Griet leaves the studio majestically.

Later she is visited by the cook from the house carrying the pearl earrings and the blue headscarf as gift.


3/4

Discussion:

Griet gives her body to completes the journey that her father left unfinished in producing something

sublime to make his name immortal (from a Western point of view). In that case, she is the instrument

through which Vermeer creates the gaze in his painting without which this work could have been just

another drawing of no universal attention. Even his thin lip wife could not give that inspirational look for

him to see the world through, and for us see who he was. His wife could not give him this complex feelingabout existence. Thats why he says, you dont understand. Griet carries his fantasy to inspire that

painting (which his business-minded mother-in-law understands) but such fundamental feeling cannot

naturally be explained to his wife. Vermeer starts a kind of intimate communication with her and that

inter-subjective relationship made her to make a sacrifice (pierce her ear=penetration) for the completion

of the work. Vermeer does not agree to offer her to his rich client but makes a painting out of her body to

make her beauty sublime for those who appreciate painting. This meeting finally produced what man is

ultimately capable of. Through the reality of a maid, Vermeer travels back to fantasy and through fantasy

he returns to a fictional element called a drawing. In this process, the maid became more than herself; a

symbolic entity where even she does not have a control.

However, there is a clear line between the Phallus and the non-Phallus; the sexual enjoyment and ethical

goals. Vermeer does not take Griet as a primary sexual object; the fate of any maid in a household.

Instead, may be because of the contemporary Victorian family values, Vermeer sticks by his own values

to be faithful to his wife. According to Zizek, in the guise of professional obligations, he is forced to chose

between woman and ethical duty (Zizek 1994, 152) [2]. What he scarifies here by being public is his true

happiness by being with her. This means that his genuine happiness is eared only through a relationship

with her, and his actual personal fulfillment is achieved only this way. Woman is always aware of this

element of sacrifice that man readily makes. She knows that his public movement is just a

compensation for his guilt of being unethical. What I suppose in this movie is Griet was aware of his

need to be with her (at the same time, she was also ready to be his fantasy-object) and the her intensified

feeling and readiness to be his love-object lead her to go to so called lover; the second- rated substitute

who can never replace her original Phallic signifier; Vermeer. Because of the symbolic order, she cannot

express herself to him, other than her comments about the paintings, but she could pour her innercomplexity out to the butcher boy. In this case, she does not care what happens to that boy from the side

of his desire. Simply misreading her expression as a desire for him, he gets caught in her dialogue which

is not made for him.

The impossibility here is Vermeers need to be with her (physical desires) and the strict Victorian values

with which he runs the family. The painting The Girl with a Pear Earring is Vermeers sublimation of the

impossible or unfulfilled fantasy- love towards Griet, and, on the other hand, how he penetrated her was

just through her ear. Her loss of maidenhood was demarcated by submission to be the instrumental

object of the painting. Hence, one can argue that she became a matured woman (both physically and

psychologically) through certain non-phallic involvement that finally produced a universal object of

appreciation. From an ordinary point of view, he could not bear her gaze and wanted to penetrate it. He

found the right lips for his painting (or the right woman who carried the exact fantasy object). Vermeersreplacement of his sexual energy to an immortal object made his existence meaningful to this date. In this

case, we can say that both Griet and Vermeer found true love. They found it through the renouncement of

the primary phallic or through the de-sexualization of the relationship. That is how the painting Girl with

a Pear Earring hangs before us.

If we are to achieve fulfillment through phallic enjoyment, we must renounce it as our explicit goal. Or in

other words, true love can emerge only within a relationship of non-sexual goal (Zizek 1994, 152).


4/4

[1] Zizek, Slavoj (1997) The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London.

[2] Zizek, Slavoj (1994) The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality, Verso,

London.

Mahesh Hapugoda

Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka

the girl with a pearl earring: the gaze of the 'impossible'? (film review)

Documents