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Editor|Cold Purple Leaf
If the mirror stage of psychoanalysis is regarded as an implausible act floating on feelings and emotions, the so-called symbolic function is used as a tool for self-expression of emotions, and emotions are the cause, then the reason for comparing the symbolic world to the world of practice, the world of order, is undoubtedly in response to the identification of the subject.
Lacan argues that in the symbolic realm, the composition of the subject and the symptoms presented by the subject are not the manifestations of the essentialized center, but the structural effect that needs to be understood in the symbolic order, the world of anthropological law, the prohibition of the desire of the mother, the automatic machine of the linguistic signifier, the death drive in psychoanalysis, and ultimately all boil down to the subject and intersubjectivity.
If the subject's self-aggression, self-misidentification, and self-alienation in the mirror stage are regarded as an interpretation of the imaginary world, then, with the development of the mirror stage, the subject in the symbolic world still needs to face the contest with others, the self-castration of the paternal function, and the difference between the ideal self and the self-ideal. This chapter analyzes the corresponding characters of the father characters and female figures in the play from the perspective of symbolism and symbolic subject identity, and explores the performance of characters in the symbolic world in the text of the film.
The New York Statute of Metaphor – Prohibitions, Restraints and Coercion of the Father's Law
Through Lévi Strauss and Lacan, symbolic structure is considered to be the structural formalization of kinship appellation system and mythology, "the human world is characterized by 'symbolic function'", while subjectivity classifies the purpose of analyzing experience to the practice of language and speech, Lacan introduces linguistics to illustrate the unconscious structure of the subject in order to re-establish the dimension of subjectivity, so that the composition and fate of the subject can be explained.
If the experience of psychoanalysis is used as the entry point into the symbolic realm of Lacan, then the game between children and mothers, which is mentioned several times, refers to the initial moment when language is subjectivized as an individual, and the moment when desire is humanized is the moment when children step into language.
The real theater building built in "New York Metaphor" is now like a prophecy of the characteristics of a certain kind of contemporary art where immersive experience reigns supreme, a kind of game of words and constructed laws, an abbreviation for a long life. Directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Philip Semer Hoffman and Michelle Williams, the film tells the story of Kaydon, as a theater director, who built a theater place that recreates life, but is lost and struggled here.
The signifier of the contract
The symbolic world is the overarching concept, which includes the signifier, the signifier network, the signifier chain, and signifierization. The signifier network is a structural concept, the signifier chain is the component that constitutes the symbolic boundary, is the support, the operation of the signifier in the structure of language forms the signifier network, and the law of the signifier is the law of language.
"Signifierization is actually the operation performed by the signifier when it 'has entered the level of the signifier' and when it finally 'carries meaning'." The signifier law is characterized by difference and randomness, the question about man is transformed into energy, the problem of symbols, and the machine becomes a metaphor for man. At the same time, the rules of operation of energy are random.
In the film "New York Method", the speech activity generated by the energy of randomness occurs without the subject's knowledge or unwillingness to accept it. For example, at the beginning, a childish but treacherous ballad, a poem reading on a TV program suggesting a decaying ending, Cayton, a theater director who "sits for a long time" on the toilet, and Kayton, who feels distant and uneasy about the radio broadcast, the news information in the newspaper, is thrown into a helpless situation. These things also underscore the kinship of Kaydon, the father of a four-year-old girl, Olive Live.
Moreover, in a few short pictures, we find that the little girl Olive chatters strange questions without any actual reply, the young animation in the collage style on the TV is unclear, and the first line of his wife Adele, no words, words, just a cough, which shows that everyone in the family is in a state of loss, that is, abandonment, that is, entering, the law of the symbolic world dominates the subject, the subject is captured by the signifier network, Kaydon, Adele, Olive repeats the feeling of loss in the frustrated reality.
For example, the news of Harold Pinter's death in a very sensitive newspaper section of Kaydon, who indulged himself in feelings of decay and death, and Adele, who had no enthusiasm or patience for family life and the curiosity of his daughter Olive were unenthusiastic. These seemingly unrelated and meaningless conversations are a way for individuals in the family to resolve their own feelings of loss and frustration, and for their way of declaring their existence.
Then we are also in random speech activities, feeling the subject repeating the events that are controlled and harmed. During a tedious morning family conversation, Kayton is suddenly hit by a bursting water pipe; The injury was to the forehead and eye, but the doctor who examined the body recommended that he see a neurology; Inside the car, Kaydon, seemingly unconscious, tells Olive that the water pipes behind the wall are like blood vessels in her body. The film's delicate portrayal of the protagonist highlights that Kaydon's desire is a strong possession and control of life, and at the same time, due to the repeated domination of the symbolic world, he constantly falls into panic and confusion about living.
Lacan, in his interpretation of the fatherhood and primordial function of the symbolic world, pointed out that the symbolic world is actually a world of law and contract, and the primordial is like the ultimate signifier, which is the prototype of all the laws of human society, "symbols are contracts, they are first the signifiers of contracts, and then they constitute the signified."
The most obvious reference to the symbolic world in " New York " is Cayton's theater, which has several obvious meanings, first of all, it is the place where Cayton worked before he was forced to accept the departure of his wife and daughter, where he has the power to speak, he can comfort actors who have been interrupted by accidents, and it is a career that Cayton is tired of managing but still receiving social praise.
Secondly, the doubts and displeasures of his wife Adele after watching the performance are hints of Cayton's alienation from the theater and artistic differences, and the film does not show that this original theater was built or established by Kaydon, and the theater as a symbol existed before Caydon's self-consciousness, and Kaydon's behavior and language as a theater director are unconscious expressions, which shows that the structure of the symbol is an unconscious structure.
There are two changes in the theater, both of which are "symbolic debts" that Cayton bears, and at first, when Cayton failed to date Hazel after Adele and Olive left, and built a new theater with Claire, which Cayton called a way of self-discovery, it allows actors to play real roles in life, and Claire still works as an actor in the theater.
Subsequently, Hazel broke up with Derek and came to Cayton's theater as an assistant, and seventeen years had passed, Cayton himself said "I will not be idle, I will find someone to play me, to explore the depths of my depressed and humble soul", and let Sammy play himself, so he explored his own jealousy of Derek, this unconscious structure dominates the composition and existence of the subject, and even the life and death of the subject, so the scene where Sammy jumps off the tall building is a repetition of Kaidon's jealousy of Derek, It is the death of actor Sammy that replaces the physical death of the real Caydon, who eventually plays the cleaning lady named Allen and gives way to his directorial identity, which is the social disappearance of the real Caydon.
The death drive of authority
The symbol of the law of the symbolic world exists in the function and name of the father, which represents the restraint of desire and the domination of authority, "If the child accepts the father's law, then the father's authority exists." "The New York Dialect Act is a disciplinary mechanism constructed by Kaydon's dual symbolic language of fatherhood and fatherhood.
In the film, we see that Kayton was abandoned by his wife Adele, lost contact with his daughter Olive and struggled with this sad memory, followed this experience, but the failure and pain experienced by the family followed the story of a lifetime.
And this also proves that as a father figure, the father always exists in the form of absence and absence, and this "father" is embodied through Olif's pryed diary, tattoo photography in the middle of a magazine, a performance in the double-sided mirror window of a dancer, and Olive pouring out her misunderstanding and resentment of Kayton before her death, with this complete privacy, the absence of dull pain and alienation, and even a certain state of confrontation, as the implantation of paternal experience.
From the perspective of the Oedipus complex, the symbolic identity of the subject is the identification of the father's function in the primitive. The paternal function represents order and command, and it is within the scope of permission and prohibition, the symbolic Philus signifier forbids the mother's desire or desire for the mother, and the father's function promises the subject or can have a certain Philus, so the father obtains the position of subjectivity in the symbolic order, and in order to obtain the position, he accepts the castration of the paternal law and renounces the desire for the mother.
Caton is in the midst of "the greater other itself, the more fundamental experience of being rejected by symbolic order", Kaydon maintains a frustrated experience of love throughout, his performance is a great success, but Adele goes to Berlin, after which Adele politely declines the expectation and possibility of Caydon's return to yesterday's warmth on the phone, and Cayton begins to fall ill, and the doctor describes his illness as a sudden degeneration caused by a sudden onset of bacteria.
It is a neurological problem, he will lose the ability to secrete saliva and cry, he is forced to accept the fact that Adele left, and instead expresses his enthusiasm for the new theater in front of Hazel, and when he meets Hezel, who is married to Derek, he is eager to find short-sightedness, trying to get rid of his desires with the end of death.
At the end of the film, Cayton gives up his directorship, abandons subjectivity, and becomes a performer in a play, and the cleaning lady who plays Caydon will say: "Cayton is a dead man, he lives in a world of stagnant and moving interaction, and time is condensed and out of order."
The anthropological level sees the laws of the symbolic world as a prohibition of the mother's desires, a prohibition on "the object of the mother's desire", that is, ". There are many mother roles in "New York Method", as Adele, who has gone away, her motherhood is flickering and vague, and the connection between Adele and Olive is only a complaint about oatmeal at the beginning of the film, and then Adele disappears into Kaydon's life with Olive, and she calls Kaydon to explain the diary, which seems to repeatedly mention her own motherhood.
The last time is to see the rebellious Olive in Adele's miniature paintings through the eyes of Kaydon, whose desires are broken, and with the disappointment of a trivial marriage, she travels to a foreign land to pursue art. Maria presents herself as a "creator" and lover to Olive as a "creator", and when Maria thinks that she "created" Olive and is a "mother", she seems to reduce herself to a creator with the meaning of a mother, when in fact, their desires under the paternal mechanism, whether it is the record of a diary wound in life or the concern in words, are revealed through Olive .
The symbolic world is the world of machines, following the rules of repetition with compulsive characteristics, which are unintentional and random, unknowable for the subject, and the signifier structure and linguistic rules that govern the subject's speech belong to the unconscious realm, and this "machine" metaphor is to connect the phenomenon of repeated compulsion with the subject's death drive. Repetitive compulsion occurs in the subject's body, first of all, because the death drive is a manifestation of the humanization of the subject's desires.
In the film, Kaydon's fear of accidents points to death, and death is even a disguised attraction for Kaydon, Kayton cares about the death of a newsmaker, and is hit in the forehead by a sudden burst faucet, Kayton travels through several departments in the hospital, but the illness is getting more and more serious, he constantly focuses on those cases that eventually die due to small accidents, as if to fulfill the curse on himself, in the process he externalizes the desire for the continuation of life into a desire for career and marriage. But this drive still points to its own primordial force, a force of self-destruction.
This experience also occurs in the cosplay process of the theater, where Caydon allows Sammy's appearance in his own symbolic experience, and aggression is externalized into a binary struggle between life and death, Sammy's lines when playing Kayton are the interpretation of Kayton's desires, and at the same time the establishment of the symbolic realm of the other, Sammy as reality, and finally desperately self-determination due to the experience of playing identity, is a response to and confirmation of the self-murder of the fictional Kaydon, and the reality of Kaydon can get from the subject of this language.
The disintegration of the imaginary identity of his self, the constant repetition of human desire towards death in the topological chain of language and signifier, the infinite return of Caton in the signifier field of death, towards an impossible fate, in the signifier yoke of Kaydon's self-constructed imagination and symbolism, is everywhere the repetition of decaying endings, the nothingness after everything disappears.