Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)

Return to Contents»

Regarding You: Lacanian Gaze and Ethics in Kiarostami’s Close-up / Farhang Erfani

Keywords: Abbas Kiarostami, Jacques Lacan, Aesthetics and Politics

Abstract: For Lacan, the gaze is not on the side of the subject; it comes from the object, staring back at us, disrupting our comfort zone within the symbolic. I argue that Abbas Kiarostami’s extraordinary film Close-up is the model of the gaze (as opposed to vision) that is socially disruptive. I bring Seminar XI on the gaze with the Seminar VII on ethics and show that most of the film is the disruption of the symbolic by the gaze but that Kiarostami allows the “encircling” of the real by the main protagonist who “traverses the fantasy” and comes to term with his desire.

Introduction:

<1> In November 2009, Bahman Ghobadi, the young Iranian-Kurdish director, wrote an open letter to Abbas Kiarostami, the father figure of Iranian cinema. Ghobadi, who had once worked as Kiarostami’s assistant, has been a very successful filmmaker. He founded his own production company, Mij Film, with the aim of producing films on/about minorities within Iran. As the first Iranian-Kurdish director, Ghobadi has had the Midas touch in his young career (born in 1969). Almost every film he has produced has received international awards. His first feature production, A Time for Drunken Horses (2000) won the “Caméra d’or” prize at the Cannes festival; his Turtles can fly (2004) was equally lauded and he received a special prize from the “Index on Censorship,” for his relentless struggles against Iranian censorship and for promoting freedom of speech. His latest film, No One Knows about Persian Cats (2009), follows the underground music scene in Iran, which is filled with aesthetic fusion, mixing Eastern and Western genres, especially rock and rap.

<2> In his open letter to Kiarostami, Ghobadi complains that his “dear and respected master” has gone too far. Ghobadi recounts that Kiarostami expressed his dislike for Ghobadi’s new film – as well as Jafar Panahi’s – for “lying,” for turning art into a political statement. Ghobadi vehemently rejects Kiarostami’s view, defending filmmakers such as he who defend the “oppressed” against the theocratic regime. Apparently, according to the young director, Kiarostami maintained that Iran is the “place in the world for making films,” an unacceptable claim to Ghobadi. “Perhaps,” he replies, “this is the case for filmmakers such as yourself and for the kind of films that you produce” (Ghobadi, 2009). In his response, Kiarostami maintains a seemingly contradictory position. On the one hand, he believes that art – and art films – survive the turmoil of everyday politics. Art, to him, has a different, if not higher, vocation. Yet, he asks whether his films are truly non-political, or whether there is such a thing as non-political art (Kiarostami, 2010).

<3> The Oedipal gesture of Ghobadi in itself is quite noteworthy. It is a remarkable achievement to produce and direct the kind of films he has made in his career despite the suffocating religious masters of Iran; the additional gag from the aesthetic master of the country is understandably too much to take. My focus here is on Kiarostami’s work, however. Elsewhere, I have argued that Kiarostami’s work, in political payoff, is Heideggerian, particularly with his Taste of Cherry (1997), which was the first Iranian film to win a prize at the Cannes Festival (Reference removed for peer-review purposes). His work is Heideggerian insofar that it does not address politics directly but opens up a poetic space that resists political domination, particularly in the context of Iran. He is a “poet” as Hölderlin was for Heidegger. It is therefore no surprise that Kiarostami believes that his films are not really apolitical. If the coupling of art and politics is asymmetrical, then art prevails in his work, as opposed to Ghobadi’s case where art clearly matters but the “message” is perhaps even more important. Ghobadi’s work, as the range and type of his awards indicate, is close to Sartrean literature engagée, or “committed literature.”

<4> His No One Knows About Persian Cats, at the heart of this controversy, was given special consideration by the jury at Cannes in 2009, awarding him the prize of “Un Certain Regard,” which translates as “A certain gaze.” Ambiguously, “certain” in French means both certainty but also “particularity,” as in a “special” or a “type” of gaze. Regardless of the delightful polysemy, the jury correctly attributes the intentional, meaningful, directed gaze to the director’s perspective and camera.

<5> Kiarostami’s work presents us with a different sense of gaze, a Lacanian gaze, which explains Kiarostami’s ambivalence toward politics. The gaze, per Lacan and Lacanian film theory, is disruptive of the symbolic order, where politics resides. I must immediately point out that I am not the first to make the connection between Lacan and Kiarostami. Joan Copjec (Copjec, 2007), whose work is invaluable for my thesis here, has already made this bridge. And of course, there is Hamid Dabashi, the most learned Iranian film theorist. Dabashi, in his recent Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema, admits that “Lacan's distinction among what he called the imaginary order, the symbolic order, and the real had always fascinated me” (Dabashi, 2007: 283). Interestingly, his discussion of Lacanian theory begins in his chapter on Kiarostami, which is mainly devoted to Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994), though other works of the director are included in Dabashi’s analysis. Regarding Kiarostami and Lacan, Dabashi writes:

If I am correct in my understanding of Lacan, then Kiarostami navigates more fluently between the imaginary and the symbolic than otherwise allowed in the normative orders of his culture, history, society, religion, and metaphysics (Dabashi, 2007: 283).

A few pages later, he further adds:

In Lacan's terms, Kiarostami is challenging the imposing symbolic order that ordinarily prevents the onslaught of the anarchic imaginary disorder; he is threatening and dismantling its regime (Dabashi, 2007: 295).

<6> For the record, I have no intention of defying the master of Iranian film theory. Overall, I am in agreement with Dabashi’s argument but I submit that there is something even more transgressively Lacanian in Kiarostami’s work. The “anarchic disorder” is on the side of the real and not the imaginary. I suggest that Kiarostami’s Close-up (1990) embodies Lacanian gaze theory, as presented in Lacan’s Seminar XI (Lacan, 1978). Moreover, Close-up also bridges the gap between the notion of the gaze and Lacanian ethics from Seminar VII (Lacan, 1988b). The status of the gaze in film theory has been controversial. To put it somewhat crudely, there is a lot of “bad” gaze theory, at least bad insofar that many gaze theorists claim to ground their work in Lacan. In the words of Todd McGowan, traditional Lacanian film theorists should be “even more Lacanian” (McGowan, 2003: 28; Vighi, 2005: 239). The issue is not merely “academic,” as we will see. The proper understanding of Lacan’s theory of the gaze yields a much more profound sense of disruption and ethical intervention that the traditional film theorists miss. I begin the chapter with a brief, non-analytical summary of Close-up. Then, the second portion of my analysis focuses accordingly on the traditional theorists and their critique. Finally, I turn my attention to Lacan’s own text, by sketching out the three Lacanian orders and his theory of the gaze to end with an appropriate analysis of Close-up.

A brief overview of Close-up:

<7> One of the reasons Kiarostami maintains that Iran is a great place for filmmakers is, paradoxically, the political setting. This is not the place to go into the details of Iranian censorship since it has been well documented at this point (Naficy, 2002), but a few words will help in placing Close-up in its context. As Hamid Dabashi correctly insists, “it is not despite [the political censorship]...but because of it” that Iranian cinema has become so successful (Dabashi, 2007: 308). In a sense, creativity itself is a gesture of dissidence. Using the role of children in Iranian cinema, I have previously argued that censorship, despite its intentions, brings attention to itself and undermines its own goals. Kiarostami has “thrived...working within limitations of various sorts” (Naficy, 2005: 797) over the years, in even more creative and original ways than other directors, learning to “work around” the censors (Kiarostami, 2006: 90). In a movement of Islamizing cinema, Khomeini’s regime set severely restrictive rules (Naficy, 1995, 2002). In an unintentional homage to Platonic epistemology and metaphysics, the Islamic regime denounced the impoverished reality of the image, pushing instead for depiction of reality. Even without ontological considerations, it is questionable to what extent reality is represented when, for instance, women on screen are veiled even in their own home. Kiarostami has countered these restrictions through a seemingly innocent technique:

Kiarostami’s cinema is a situated cinema, in that his films generally emanate from the specific social worlds around him or from his own encounters. However, at the same time that they treat these social worlds and encounters with the ethos and aesthetics of realism and neorealism, his films embody certain deconstructive practices that counter or problematize realism and neorealism (Naficy, 2005: 797).

Simply put, many of his films portray “real life” events, often re-enacted by the actual people involved in those events. This gives Kiarostami’s aesthetic a clear documentary overtone (Saeed-Vafa & Rosenbaum, 2003: 8), but proper documentary it is not (Elena, 2005: 62). Ironically, catering to the censors’ demands, his films by design undermine the government’s monopoly on reality.

<8> His self-reflexivity and inter-textuality reached new heights in Close-up, which is the story of a very ordinary man, Hossein Sabzian, of modest origins. Sabzian is quite unnoticeable in his own right: he works at a copy store, making a small living Xeroxing paper all day. He happens to have a vague resemblance to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a famous and brilliant filmmaker, whose reputation rivals Kiarostami’s. In 1987, Makhmalbaf directed a feature film, The Cyclist, that was a heart-wrenching portrayal of an Afghan worker in Iran. Though Iran is not well-off by Western standards, in comparison to Afghanistan, it is a prosperous country, the dream destination for many Afghans. Afghans and Persians are virtually identical, especially to the eyes of non-Middle-easterners. Yet, despite the shared border, significant religious, cultural and linguistic overlaps between the two countries, Afghans are the oppressed underclass in an already oppressed country. This racism – which literally is not black and white – sadly runs deep in Iran. In the style of committed aesthetics, Makhmalbaf portrayed the plight of an Afghan worker, Nasim, who was financially desperate, trying to fund his wife’s medical operations. He turned to the mob, who in turn placed bets on him, on his one skill, to ride a bicycle in a small courtyard for seven straight days and nights. The overwhelming humanism of Makhmalbaf in his projection of the inhumanity of Iran’s racism and its absence of charity – an Muslim virtue, after all – made The Cyclist quite successful, both in Iran and abroad. Pointing to the stains of society on screen, as I will argue, is the function of the Lacanian gaze. This gaze operates more subtly in Kiarostami, but it is no less disruptive.

<9> Sabzian, we learn, takes copying quite seriously, well beyond his job. He identifies with Makhmalbaf, dreaming to be the successful director. This self-aggrandized specular image of himself makes him a narcissist, though as the latter is defined within Lacan’s theory. We tend to think of a narcissist as someone satisfied with his own image. Yet, Joan Copjec rightly points out, narcissism “must, rather, consist in the belief that one’s own being exceeds the imperfections of its image” (Copjec, 1989: 70). Clearly, Sabzian is dissatisfied with how he is seen in life, by his station in society – his place within the symbolic order, to use Lacan’s term.

<10> Sabzian purportedly “deftly impersonates Makhmalbaf for the entertainment of his friends and to impress strangers” (Naficy, 2005: 798). There is a radical departure between the two types of impression, however. Entertaining one’s friends is a playful gesture, slightly challenging the order of the symbolic but all involved parties participate in this escapist detour willingly and knowingly, sharing a fantasy that momentarily detaches them from the symbolic, to which they dutiful return thereafter. Impressing strangers is, however, an entirely different business, since it aggressively lays bare the strangers’ own narcissistic fantasies of touching fame. One such stranger was Mrs. Ahankhah, who one day met Sabzian during a bus ride. Sabzian was carrying his fantasy with himself, holding a published copy of the screenplay of The Cyclist in his hands.

<11> Mrs. Ahankhah casually mentions that this was a great film, which her children enjoyed very much. Seizing on the misrecognition – which is an important element to psychoanalysis – Sabzian reveals his “true” identity as the director of the film and, in a moment of grand gesture, furthering his fantastic role, he signs the screenplay as Makhmalbaf. Pushed deep into her own desire, Mrs. Ahankhah insists that the filmmaker must come with her to meet the rest of her family. A modest home, she says, but her middle-class status far surpasses anything that Sabzian encounters in his own life. (It is important to point out that the “dress code” of decency enforced by the Iranian regime, as well as Makhmalbaf’s own reputation for modesty—as the end of the film clearly demonstrates—does not make this encounter on a bus all that improbable. Sabzian’s simple clothes therefore do not betray his modest origin; Iranian directors, though immersed in fame, still pass as ordinary people, making the moment of mis-recognition all the more believable.)

<12> The Ahankhah family is of course most pleased by this surprise visit. It turns out, to no one’s surprise, that the children, college-educated yet jobless, have their own fantasies of fame and fortune; they are, they clearly believe, actors waiting to be discovered by chance. Sabzian is understandably at the height of ecstasy – or jouissance, again in Lacanian terminology. He, too, has the chance to play the role of a lifetime. And this role he plays to near-perfection, as close as an imaginary identification can be. He modestly accepts the praise, gently refuses their advances but slowly lets them twist his arm and make him produce a film, starring the frankly homely Ahankhah children. Far from home, in the rich part of town (northern-Tehran), Sabzian borrows 1,500 tomans – the equivalent of $2 or $3 – for a cab ride home, promising to come back later. As the film crew fails to show up in the following days, the Ahankhah begin to suspect that they have been conned. Supposedly fearing having been victims of a master-criminal, who explored their home in preparation of a future robbery, the good family involves the authority, sues Sabzian for fraud and the copy-man is thrown in jail, awaiting his trial. After all, he embezzled them for two dollars.

<13> The story, later on, is published in the weekly magazine Soroush, catching Kiarostami’s attention. In a non-linear way, the film begins with the arrest of Sabzian. The arrest is to take place at the Ahankhah home, and the Soroush journalist is in cab, along with two police officers on their way to restore order. The truant must be apprehended, yet the police is impoverished enough to be without an official vehicle; the journalist has no tape-recorder either, which he has to borrow from people. Ironically, the journalist borrows money from the Ahankhah to pay for his own cab fare. The ethics of psychoanalysis is precisely about “The Analytic Toll” (Kesel, 2009: 250); the question is what price are we willing to pay for our desires? Mr. Ahankhah clearly is willing to pay a price but only to return to the status quo, denying his own involvement in the fantasy. I will explain concepts shortly.

<14> Kiarostami himself appears in the film, though he is rarely seen and mostly heard. He asks the judge whether he can film the proceedings. The baffled judge suggests that there are “more interesting” cases of fraud, involving real money! Kiarostami nonetheless gets his way, using his fame to move things forward. The film also shows Kiarostami meeting Sabzian in jail, with the cameras present. Sabzian agrees to be filmed, as do the Ahankhah family members, who after all get their wish to be in a film. But it is Sabzian who is most honest. He admits to having impersonated Makhmalbaf, and he regrets the fraudulent act, but most revealingly, he maintains that deep down he was nothing but sincere and honest. The family gives permission to have the whole story filmed because they want the truth out, as does Sabzian, but they seem to have different notions of truth. The family stubbornly maintains that they were never fooled, though they admit that the mother perhaps was. Sabzian signs off on the project because, in his mind, he did this for art’s sake. “I give you permission,” he tells Kiarostami, “because you are all my audience.”

<15> The film forces re-enactment of the story, making family members relive their complicity, as they play with sincerity their joy of meeting “Makhmalbaf.” They come face to face with the stain of their own life narratives, forced to confront their own misrecognized desire on screen. In the courtroom, Kiarostami de facto becomes the master of ceremonies, making the trial of a petty crime last over ten hours (Saeed-Vafa & Rosenbaum, 2003: 16). In particular, he tells Sabzian that there will be two cameras, with two different types of shots. One camera captures the court in wide and long shots; another camera takes Close-up shots of Sabzian’s face, giving the viewer a very large picture of the mastermind. Kiarostami directs him to pay attention to the setting. The long shots will depict the court in its usual life, at the symbolically preordained level. The Close-up, the director says, is “for us.” The “us” is somewhat unclear though one may easily assume that it means the crew. However, Kiarostami clarifies his intention: “if at any time during the trial you need to explain something in particular, something seems unbelievable or unacceptable to the court, then tell it to this Close-up camera.” Truth, the extra-ordinary and the un-believable, cannot be thrown in the midst of the ordinary affairs of the court. For it to burst forth, for it to disrupt, it deserves its own angle.

<16> The trial becomes the stage of public confessions, but Sabzian seems unremorseful. He admits to the fraud but only in the name of art. He cites Tolstoy, elevates his act to the level of an artist, with a slight smirk on his face that the Close-up camera does not fail to capture. The Ahankhah family, especially the father and the son, continue to blame him while absolving themselves of any wrongdoing. Sabzian’s mother pleads with the court, though she is clearly ignored. She vouches for her son’s character; she says that he is a descendant of the prophet but to no avail. In the court (of public opinion), the Ahankhah family retreats from its initial claims to some extent. As long as Sabzian promises to be a productive member of society, as long as he has learned his lesson, they shall drop the charges.

<17> The last sequence of the film is quite amazing. Kiarostami and his crew, from some distance, are filming Sabzian coming out of the court but only to meet the real Makhmalbaf, who, on Kiarostami’s request, has come to give Sabzian a ride. Unfazed by the symbolic (the court), Sabzian finally falters, falling to his knees face to face with his own desire and fantasy. Makhmalbaf, in modest clothes, offers him a ride on his motorcycle on the way to the Ahankhah house to make amends. Sabzian rides on the back of the motorcycle, holding onto Makhmalbaf, grabbing his fantasy in his arms. The theatrical appearance of Makhmalbaf is unsettling but could prove to be a delightful ending to this enigma. After all, perhaps now Sabzian can come clean. The sound, however, cuts off at that moment and we hear Kiarostami asking his crew to fix it. The director’s men scramble, supposedly unable to explain the technical breakdown (Saeed-Vafa & Rosenbaum, 2003: 15). The sound gets restored, but only and clearly after Makhmalbaf and Sabzian had a chance to talk. The audience – and supposedly the director and his crew – are left without answers, with unsatisfied curiosity. This is typical of Kiarostami, whose “work is not like a puzzle in the way of, say, Hitchcock’s films, or indeed of most Hollywood cinema, peopled by characters who represent specific values and have a specific motivation or motivations apparent to themselves” (Lippard, 2009: 38).

<18> The motorcycle makes a brief stop, letting Sabzian buy flowers for the family. At the Ahankhah door, Sabzian rings the bell. Through the speaker, Mrs. Ahankhah answers and Sabzian identifies himself – as Sabzian. Sensing a hesitation on her behalf, timidly he corrects himself, “it’s me, Makhmalbaf.” Mrs. Ahankhah, irritated, hangs up. After a brief delay, the door opens to let the father out, who greets the real Makhmalbaf while coldly acknowledging Sabzian who stares at the ground. The real Makhmalbaf apologizes on the behalf of his fake-personae. The father once again reiterates that he was never fooled and that he only took Sabzian to court to teach him a lesson. As long as the young man learned his lesson the master of the house is satisfied. The film ends then, as we hit the wall which hides and protects the family, supposedly with their good name restored.

<19> (As a small side note, it is worth mentioning for non-Persian speakers’ sake, that the names of the involved parties – beyond Kiarostami’s control – contribute mischievously to the overall irony. Sabzian’s name means “Green,” a last name in its own right in English. But it is not referring to the color as much as to green growth, as in a plant striving toward vitality. Makhmalbaf’s name means “silk maker” or “silk weaver,” the one who gently weaves together and smoothes over. Finally, in my mind most intimately revealing, Ahankhah means “wanting iron,” as in both wanting to be iron-like and lacking iron-like solidity.)

Misreading Lacan’s Gaze:

<20> The gaze is a very fitting lens for analyzing and appreciating Close-up. Some preparatory work is needed, however, which I begin “negatively” by looking at what the Lacanian gaze is not. This is necessary given the widespread confusion. I mentioned at the outset that Lacan has been quite influential in film studies though the appropriation of his theories has been quite controversial. There are those who criticize Lacanian theory from the outside. To them, psychoanalysis, particularly Lacanian theory, though fashionable, has little merit. The criticism, for instance, is that the ideal spectator that is described by Lacanian theorists simply does not exist (Mullarkey, 2009: 58-61). This critique is not valid for me, as I have recourse to Lacan for my analysis. I believe my use of Lacan is grounded in a concrete situation, where the Lacanian analysis provides a unique angle that no other theoretical framework can rival.

<21> The debate regarding Lacan’s status is not limited to detractors versus defenders. Within the Lacanian camp, there are different interpretations – or at least there is a renewal of interest in Lacan that positions itself against earlier adaptations of his work in film theory. Film being a visual medium readily lends itself to questions of vision and gaze. The latter as a concept occupied an important place in twentieth century French philosophy, for instance in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (Sartre, 1956) and Foucault’s panopticon, especially in Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1995). Merleau-Ponty is another important thinker who gave the “eye” its due, far more than Foucault or Sartre. From his Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty, 2002) to his Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty, 1992), Merleau-Ponty never ceased being interested in the function of sight. The last book left open on his desk, upon his premature death, was Descartes’ Optics (Lefort, 1974: 692). From his earliest writings, such as “The Mirror Stage”, Lacan showed his own investment in the question of the gaze (Lacan, 2006: 75-81). “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in few short pages, described with complex erudition, the human experience of relating to one’s own image. In French, Lacan speaks of “le stade,” which is rightly translated as “stage;” though stage in theoretical writings often refers to stages in terms of steps, such as Kierkegaard’s aesthetic, ethical and religious stages, that is not Lacan’s sense. He begins the “Mirror” essay with infancy and moves to adulthood, but as in the case of psychoanalysis in general, nothing is surpassed and really left behind.

<22> Lacan describes the “Aha” moment that a child experiences before her own image in the mirror (Lacan, 2006: 75). Human beings, he says, are born “premature” (Lacan, 2006: 78); we are quite incapable and are dependent on others at birth, and for many years afterward. The experience of the child does not correspond to her image on the mirror; the child barely knows the contours of her body and is unable to coordinate herself in the world. This “fragmented body” is fundamentally mis-recognized in the image, where she looks integrated and complete (Lacan, 2006: 78). The image is far more coherent than her lived experience. The delight in this (mis)recognition is quite significant (Lacan, 2006: 80), since it underlines our driven attachment to an image of our selves that is never fully accurate. We begin with an imaginary projection of the ideal ego that continues in adulthood, though becoming more complicated as the ego becomes socially mediated, caught in the web of intersubjectivity, out there as in a stadium, before all to see.

<23> The idea of the mirror image and its pacifying quality (Lacan, 2001b: 95) was taken up by film theorists, such as Christian Metz (Metz, 1982) and Laura Mulvey (Mulvey, 1989).[1] Blending together Althusser and Foucault, these theorists took the gaze to be an ideological operation, in the service of power, which, in Mulvey’s view, is the male perspective. They located the “gaze as it appears in the mirror stage and as it functions in the process of ideological interpellation” (McGowan, 2003: 28). For Althusser, interpellation calls on – interpellates – the subject, giving it the illusion of selfhood. From this perspective, the subject exists not only through the operations of power (the Foucauldian model), it is produced and reproduced by the dominant ideology to serve its function (Althusser, 1972: 133). Ideology is indeed pacifying; it too is an illusion, a misrecognition, and is marked by Marx’s model of camera obscura (Marx & Engels, 1978: 134). For Metz and others, by identifying with the images on screen in the movie theatre, the spectator is implicitly deceived in having a sense of mastery, in the experience of viewing as well as in identifying with powerful roles on the screen.

<24> Laura Mulvey pushed this logic even further, rightly pointing out that the ideological gaze is not gender-neutral; it is a male gaze on the screen (Mulvey, 1989: 18). She points out that Lacan is correct in saying that the unconscious is structured like language, but language itself is structured through patriarchy (Mulvey, 1989: 14). Associating the gaze with vision and mastery (“visual pleasure” as she calls it), Mulvey sees three possible gazes at play: the camera’s, the audience and the characters on screen. The camera works beneath our radar; we take its perspective for granted without realizing how much it directs our perspective. The audience also disappears in the dark, to the point of forgetting where we are and who we are (Mulvey, 1989: 18). We are left with the gaze on screen itself and we associate, according to Mulvey, with the male protagonist, who is portrayed as powerful and in charge. Women, in contrast, are given as objects of visual pleasure, as “icons” on whose bodies the camera slows down, reinforcing the projection of inactivity; men, in contrast, are given as “heroes” in action, in motion (Mulvey, 1989: 20).

<25> There is a good deal of truth to the theses of Metz and Mulvey. For one, it is undeniable that cinema – particularly mainstream films – give the illusion of mastery to a particular subject, often neglecting structural issues that are less visually pleasurable and more ideologically complicit, allowing spectators to naively believe that they, too, can succeed in life, despite all obstacles. Equally pertinent is Mulvey’s analysis of patriarchy, which is impossible to deny. The trouble with their arguments is twofold. First, it is not what Lacan meant by the gaze and this misapplication is all the more unfortunate that the Lacanian gaze is by nature counter-ideological. Second, and this objection is limited to the scope of my research here, the patriarchy of film through objectification of the female body does not apply in the strict sense to Iranian cinema. In fact, the censors in a twisted way insist that they are defending women’s honor and privacy by hiding them beneath a veil on screen.[2]

The Three Orders: Real, Symbolic and Imaginary

<26> As I have said before, the question of the gaze is about the real and not the imaginary. A brief overview of the three Lacanian orders (real, symbolic, and imaginary) is therefore needed to understand the proper role of the gaze. These three are not, once again, stages to go through; they co-exist in the human condition. In emphasizing this non-linear aspect of the orders, I mentioned earlier Lacan’s difference with Kierkegaard’s famous stages. The Kierkegaardian stages bear some similarities with Lacan’s orders. Very roughly put, the imaginary is like Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage in that it is the “subjective” and individualized realm; it concerns one’s own image with little input from the realm of social objectivity, which for Kierkegaard is the ethical stage and for Lacan the symbolic order. The religious stage in Kierkegaard, the realm of the absurd, can be compared to Lacan’s real, except that for Kierkegaard this is the realm of truth that belongs to God’s asymmetrical alterity, whereas for Lacan it is the order of “negativity” (Lacan, 2006: 255), for all that has resisted symbolization (Fink, 1999: 46-48; Lacan, 1988a).

<27> As we already saw in the “Mirror Stage,” the imaginary is indeed at the “subjective” level, in the philosophical sense that it is originated by the subject, though Lacan speaks of the ego here. With him, the imaginary has a very affective quality; it is experienced paradigmatically by the child prior to language and it is associated with the maternal.[3] The imaginary is a fairly comfortable zone, where we build (“oeuvre” says Lacan) our being (Lacan, 2006: 206). I use the word ‘subjective’ only to indicate the imaginary’s intimacy and proximity. In ordinary language, we understand subjective as something akin to this phenomenon but I admit subjectivity is misleading if we think of it as solipsism. We are not alone in the imaginary. Not only in terms of psychic genetic order where the mother’s presence is felt from the start, Lacan insists on the presence of the other in this order. This other (autre) is however apprehended in mirror terms, or in terms of proximity to our own image. Differently put, the other is encountered through our own view of ourselves, which is why the imaginary often seeks the comfort of narcissistic sameness (Lacan, 1988a: 171). To use Lacan’s terminology, the ego is produced and sustained by the imaginary and it encounters others as ego (ego prime).

<28> The symbolic, however, predates the imaginary; language comes before us (Lacan, 2006: 413). The symbolic, in being language, is the domain of meaning that imposes itself onto the imaginary. The order of the imaginary is without direction, which is provided by the symbolic, by the law (Lacan, 2006: 214) – what Lacan calls the Name of the Father. In associating it with the Father, Lacan points to the fact that the symbolic order forces us into a position, by signifying our place. As opposed to the ego of the imaginary, the symbolic is about the subject. It is worth emphasizing that the word subject belongs to what we ordinarily associate with the realm of objectivity. We are a subject through the symbolic, which is not in us but is Other than us. As opposed to the imaginary other (autre), this is what is called the (Big) Other (Autre). This Other is impersonal but comes through an other (such as a father or a mother). The symbolic dominates the imaginary, as we shall see, and this is nicely illustrated in its maternal association and the inherent patriarchy in Close-up. The Ahankhah mother is the one who makes the mistake first and is continually blamed; Sabzian’s mother, before the court of law is ignored. What she says about her son is untrustworthy as she comes from the imaginary, the ego’s perspective and not the law’s.

<29> In the psychoanalytic model, the child is affectively attached to the mother, receiving pleasure and feeling somewhat satisfied. The father however is the figure of discipline, of restraint, of saying no. While the symbolic – through language – gives the subject a position and names it (in the case of most societies we literarily inherit the (last) name of the father) – it is also the space of repression of desire (of growing up and learning to cope with not getting what we want). In a playful way, which works in French, Lacan says that the Name of the Father (Nom-du-Père) is also the No of the Father (Non-du-Père). As counterintuitive as it may be, Lacan locates the unconscious at the level of the symbolic. It is through the symbolic order that we are fully split from our selves. There was already a split at work in the imaginary (between the child and its ideal image); the symbolic permanently entrenches the divides, giving us what Lacan refers to as the barred subject $.

<30> In Seminar XI, Lacan succinctly says that “desire is the essence of man”(Lacan, 1978: 275). But why do we desire in the first place? Lacan explains, following Sartre quite closely, that it is lack of being, or lack in our being (Fink, 1995; Hyldgaard, 2003: 231; Lacan, 2006). We of course have lacks as in what we do not have, which Lacan associates with demand. Demand is a form of desire but the latter is the ultimate drive that seeks plenitude of being, not being split – an impossible goal in itself that can only be sustained by fantasy. The complexity of Lacan’s thought resides in locating our desire in the Other. He says that our desire is the desire of the Other, which has two interrelated meanings. On the one hand, what we desire is what we lack and therefore we ask of the Other (through the other) to fulfill it. Lacan emphasizes that speaking is precisely an act of addressing the other; it is a demand for recognition of our lack and of our being. He goes as far as calling it a request for love (Lacan, 2001a; 2006: 689). On the other hand, our desire is shaped by the other, it is the desire of the Other (Lacan, 2006: 688) that we seek to decipher and model our own after it. Bruce Fink illustrates this notion quite nicely. According to Fink, when an infant cries, it is not clear what she wants. Parents interpret for the infant her own desire, by asking “Are you hungry?” and feeding her immediately:

There is perhaps a sort of general discomfort, coldness, or pain, but its meaning is imposed, as it were, by the way in which it is interpreted by the child's parents. If a parent responds to its baby's crying with food, the discomfort, coldness, or pain will retroactively be determined as having "meant" hunger, as hunger pangs. One cannot say that the true meaning behind the baby's crying was that it was cold, because meaning is an ulterior product. Indeed, constantly responding to a baby's cries with food may transform all of its discomforts, coldness, and pain into hunger. (Meaning is thus determined not by the baby but by other people—that is, by the Other.) (Fink, 1999: 235).

<31> It is clear that there is a structural gap between the imaginary and the symbolic. The latter is like a map that can never fully correspond to the actual terrain. The leftover, the unsymbolized is the real. This real, properly speaking, is nothing since things are designated and named within the symbolic. Without the real, the symbolic would own us fully. As Lacan puts it:

Symbols in fact envelop the life of man in a network so total that they join together, before he comes into the world, those who are going to engender him ‘by flesh and blood’; so total that they bring to his birth, along with the gifts of the stars, if not with the gifts of the fairies, the shape of his destiny; so total that they give the words that will make him faithful or renegade, the law of the acts that will follow him right to the very place where he is not yet and even beyond his death; and so total that through them his end finds its meaning in the last judgment, where the Word absolves his being or condemns it – unless he attain the subjective bringing to realization of being-for-death (Lacan, 2006: 231).

<32> Death is one particular, albeit paradigmatic case of the real, which matters to the question of the gaze as we shall see with Lacan’s illustration of Holbein’s painting. But as Heidegger had already pointed out – Lacan’s being-toward-death is from Heidegger after all – death is that which society (the symbolic) cannot face and tries to ignore. Death, and the real in general as negativity, haunts us. Coming to terms with the real is the difficult task of psychoanalysis. In the imaginary and especially in the symbolic, we avoid the real as we avoid death in life. Where we see the void, we fill it with fantasy; where there is a lack that is unfulfilled, we avoid it by filling it on our own. The difficulty is to face this finitude, for ignoring it, as we shall see, has its own debilitating cost, further splitting, frustrating and alienating us. Lacan used to say to his students that the problem of the analysts is that they deal with slaves who think they are masters (Lacan, 2006: 242). But the illusion and fantasy of mastery is always disrupted – and not reinforced pace Metz and Mulvey – by the gaze.

The Lacanian Gaze:

<32> However brief, this outline of the three Lacanian orders can help us better understand the question of the gaze. Recall that both Dabashi and classical Lacanian film theorists pay attention to the relationship between the symbolic and the imaginary. Were the gaze at the level of the imaginary, it would be purely visible to the subject that is projecting that image. If the gaze is the operation of the symbolic, then it would also be visible and trustworthy. The difficulty is that the word gaze (le regard) is tightly associated with vision, which is of course located in the eyes of the beholder. Lacan repeatedly insists that he is separating the gaze from vision. The gaze is not in the eyes of the beholder. The (eye of the) beholder is beholden to the gaze. Let us flesh this out.

<33> Traditionally, especially in philosophy, vision occupies a privileged ontological and epistemological space – as in, “I see clearly” meaning I understand, I stand under the concept and grasp it fully. For Lacan, this is a “geometrical” appreciation of vision; it takes vision as capable of standing back and properly comprehending the truth, which is the phenomenological model par excellence. Lacan therefore cites Merleau-Ponty (mostly favorably) and Sartre (somewhat favorably) as representatives of this tradition. For the phenomenological tradition, through its differences, understanding and truth is in the “eye” of consciousness. Though phenomenology recognizes limitations, consciousness occupies a particular position from which being is revealed. At least theoretically it is conceivable to add up all perspectives, to see from every angle to exhaust all that is there to be seen. Accordingly Lacan believes that a work of art, especially a painting and one can extend that to film, gives itself to be seen (Lacan, 1978: 115). The picture, Lacan says, addresses us: “You want to see? Well take a good look at this”(Lacan, 1978: 101). And we trust this invitation; we trust vision’s honesty and decipherability to the point that, Lacan points out, Diderot in his Letter on the Blind argued that the blind can “see” the world because scientifically, geometrically, vision gives itself to us.

<34> Yet, for Lacan, psychoanalysis is precisely about the inherent – structural – limits of consciousness (Lacan, 1978: 82). These limits are not like phenomenology’s, which, once again, sees vision as situated but is theoretically capable of covering the entire “geometrical” field before the eye. By splitting vision and gaze (Lacan, 1978: 78), Lacan is indicating that the limit refers to what escapes the subject or the self. Gaze, by “eluding vision” (Lacan, 1978: 73), limits the grasp of the (viewing) self. This is why the works of Metz and Mulvey do not adhere to Lacan as they associated the gaze with mastery. For Lacan the function of the gaze is disruptive and unravels the mastery of the self.

<35> To be fair, even at the level of common parlance – without recourse to Lacan’s jargon – his claim regarding the “unapprehensible” (Lacan, 1978: 83) quality of the gaze is odd, to say the least. How can we speak of that which escapes vision as disruptive? Must not the disruptive be visible to do its work? The imaginary comes from the self and it is essentially pleasing by nature, hence not particularly inclined to see disruption. The symbolic does come from without, but as it is the field of understanding and comprehension, can it incorporate the elusive? Wouldn’t it be the case that as soon as the “elusive” is indicated, pointed at, verbalized, it is no longer unapprehensible? Since the real resists symbolization, or better yet the real is the “excess” that the symbolic fails to integrate, it makes perfect sense that the gaze would be real. Still, since things are apprehensible objects – and since the real is not a thing or is a no-thingness – how can it effectively disrupt? Can the elusive, the disruptive be “represented” without losing its uncanniness in being domesticated by the symbolic?

<36> To address these concerns, Lacan explains that the gaze is partially seen or is present. By being partial, it resists fullness or integration. Simply put, Lacan calls it a “stain” (Lacan, 1978: 74). The gaze is the famous Lacanian objet a. The small a is for autre, but not the autre of the imaginary; it is small because it is not part of the Big Other. Simply put, objet a is a stand-in, a partially represented real. It is the cause of desire that seeks more from the symbolic but it is nothing in itself; it can only provide partial satisfaction. Lacan repeatedly maintained we are subjects of desire; we are desiring subjects as much as we are subjected to desire. Desire goes hand in hand with lack, without which desire is impossible. In the imaginary, as we saw, the self desires mastery which it lacks but finds in its own image. But even one’s own image is mediated and coded by the symbolic order that structures desire, such as the infant’s cry. The symbolic as the Other radiates with seeming plenitude. The Other has answers to all questions (since all questions and answers are always already part language). So where is the lack, especially since Lacan associates the gaze with lack (Lacan, 1978: 88)? It is misleading to speak of the lack (only perhaps structurally) but instead we should consider several lacks. Demands grounded in the imaginary are demands of fulfillment of (a) lack. What is demanded itself is lacking in precision, if you recall, once again, the case of the infant’s cry. And if we extract from all such lacks a broader definition, as Lacan puts it, addressing the other (by using the language of the Other) is a demand for love and recognition, which we also lack. In addition, the lack operates deeply within the symbolic. For one, language is differentially constituted; it is built around negation and difference in a chain of signifiers. This much Lacan learned more from structuralism than from Freud. The symbolic also lacks in precision in a sense. Not only is it internally split through differentiation of signifiers as well as the polysemy of a given symbol, being a kind of a “map” for navigation, it is not an infinite one. Bluntly put, it fails to symbolize everything and that failure is a lack as well. We can now better see what the real is the lack and that it is nothing. It is the uninhabited space that cannot be tamed or colonized for good by the symbolic.

<37> When a split subject makes demands on the symbolic – already pre-formulated by the latter – in return it receives an answer in form of recognition. But because the symbolic operates at the general and universal level, the recognition – the answer – is itself lacking in satisfaction (hence our attachment to objet a, as the fantasy of full enjoyment). We desire recognition by the Other, while having our desire already coded and interpreted by the Other. So the formulation that states that we are “subject of desire” needs to be completed; we are subjects of desire of the Other. Children struggle with this from the start. Not only do they have desires, they also desire to be desired by the m(O)ther and the Other in general. They form and reform their own desires as to satisfy the desire of the Other and be desirable to the Other. Hence displaying discontent with their behavior is an efficient and profoundly forceful mode of disciplining. The child’s desire accordingly adjusts to the desire of the Other. The real as lack is manifest here as the process of subjection to the Other leaves one (the child here) dissatisfied. Most importantly, it becomes slowly clear to the child that the symbolic order itself is lacking in consistency. While we are subjects of desire to the symbolic, we also learn that the “symbolic has no clothes”!

<38> The emperor’s nakedness, the real in the heart of the Other, is the site of the gaze. Going back to film theory, the early Lacanian theorists posited the gaze in terms of mastery, but the gaze is about the lack (Lacan, 1978: 88). Lacan argued that the gaze is present in all art, especially paintings (Lacan, 1978: 110). In so far as art re-presents anything, it operates within the symbolic, but as long as it slices up the symbolic, as long as it frames the Other, purposefully or not, it deals with the gaze as lack; the symbolic is shown as limited. The notion of suspension of disbelief is then a plea with the viewer to ignore the lack. In being outstanding (as in standing out), art amplifies the sense of lack, but I shall explain this better shortly.

Gaze in Close-up:

<39> Some works of art and artists purposefully deal with the lack. My argument is that Kiarostami is such an artist. In Seminar XI, as Lacan makes his case about the function of the gaze, he takes an autobiographical detour. He tells his audience that he once went to Brittany in France, which was quite poor at the time, full of “toilers of the sea.” As he was with a few local fishermen on a beautiful day, Petit-Jean (a local fisherman) points to a shiny can of tuna that is floating out there in the water. The small can reflected the sunlight, standing out from the rest of the picture. Petit-Jean turns to the young analyst and says, “You see that can? Do you see it? Well it doesn’t see you!” (Lacan, 1978: 95). Unlike the fishermen, Lacan found the joke less than amusing. It is an odd joke to say the least. After all, the can clearly has no “eyes.” Of course, one is tempted to say, it does not see the young Lacan. But paying closer attention, we notice that Petit-Jean did not say that the can does not see “us” – all the fishermen, including Lacan. It is Lacan in particular that is not seen. The empty can without eyes (after all, it is an object) was gazing at Lacan.

<40> Lacan locates the eyes and vision at the level of the subject; the gaze is at the level of the object, which makes his formulation quite counter-intuitive. Let us use phenomenology for a moment and we can better understand how the gaze comes from without. Lacan praises Sartre’s notion of the look (Lacan, 1978: 82, 184),[4] because Sartre’s famous description of being under the look of another for-itself (a fellow human being) does not refer to an actual person. Sartre’s narrative depicts a self, peeping through a keyhole. All of the sudden, hearing some noise, assuming that it might be another person about to catch him in his voyeurism, Sartre says that the voyeur feels shame. The self is no longer seeing itself seeing (the very model of phenomenology) but it is now seeing itself being seen; it is under the gaze. Prior to the gaze, the self was in a situation of control, checking things out. Abruptly, through the gaze, every little thing, a bit of noise, robs the self of its mastery and brings it back to its self. For Lacan, the phenomenological description of the gaze fails to see that in illuminating the world and bringing meaning to it, consciousness has already been filtered by the symbolic.[5] Symbolically generated meaning is haunted by the real. To put it more simply, a projected meaning suffers from symbolic finitude. What has not been symbolized – that which escapes meaning, i.e., the real as disorderly – presents itself within the order of meaning.

<41> Even more illustrative than his own story, in Seminar XI, Lacan famously refers to Hans Holbein’s painting, “The Ambassadors” in which two men stand magisterially appearing self-assured and in charge of the situation and their lives. Yet, a sort of spot or stain stands in the middle of the painting. Once noticed, it requires shifting one’s position. From a particular angle, the stain on the painting is revealed as a human skull, which “nearly seems to flee the entire scene” (Aydemir, 2007: 63). In this case, aptly and metaphorically, the real as stain points to death, the ultimate real that is unsymbolizable. No explanatory paradigm, however well crafted and seemingly omniscient can account for mortality, for annihilation. As the unrepresentable, death is the real stain in the painting, disrupting the peaceful pose of the ambassadors.

<42> In the case of the can of tuna, Lacan admits that he did not belong to the picture. He was a young bourgeois, unlike the fishermen, trying to fit in. The gaze of the can was directed at him – and only at him – because under his own vision, he saw himself fitting. Yet the young analyst did not belong; he was at his own limits. It was not so much the can or even the joke that defied comprehension; it was Lacan’s presence and his ignorance of himself. He was unjustifiable and nothing justified him. He was the one out of order, reminded of his lack (of mastery of situation).

<43> In Close-up, we have a can as well. Early in the film, as the taxi driver waits outside the Ahankhah home as Sabzian is being interpellated by the police, the camera stays with the driver outside. The man walks around the neighborhood, looking and touching a pile of dead leaves, covering an empty can of bug spray. The driver kicks the can, which rolls down the hill and Kiarostami’s camera follows the can for an uncomfortably long time, nearly forty seconds. It is quite an absurd moment in itself. Gilberto Perez has praised Kiarostami’s naturalism in depicting and staying with everyday life in this scene (Perez, 1998: 272). Earlier I indicated that from a Lacanian perspective, even in representing the “normal” life, the artist is already framing the symbolic, making things stand out. We of course expect that whatever was chosen to stand out is meaningful and relevant. In Close-up, the entire film crosses back and forth with great ease the border between fiction and reality. Yet, this one shot apparently deserved focus. Nothing else seems quite as random. Why?

<44> Hamid Naficy reads more into the shot. Maybe the can represents the shiftless condition of Iranian society (Naficy, 2005: 799). Perhaps. But one has to admit that it is not the best way to depict the problems of Iranian society. Naficy’s interpretation does not seem to exhaust the question either. Can we retort “why not?,” instead? After all, there is a clear incomprehensible quality to much of Kiarostami’s work. Can we chalk it up to his “quirky” style? In my view, attributing it to weird aesthetics tames the moment too quickly. The can of spray is like Lacan’s can of tuna. It has no why; it has no place in this film. It stands in as a partial object for the real. It does not satisfy the viewer’s curiosity (which Mulvey associates with the gaze as voyeuristic). The can rolls down the hill utterly incomprehensibly, fundamentally unjustifiably. It is nothing of value and that is why it matters. If anything it already signals to the audience that this film will not fit the mold of their expectations. Yet it is not telling the audience that the film is absurd. Far from it, it is an indication that the audience’s desire for peace – the Apollonian gaze as Lacan calls it (Lacan, 1978: 101) – that will explain everything will go unsatisfied. The film is not letting the look of the audience be a look of mastery. The rolling can already – as a stain – announce that the symbolic order will not erase the spot; the symbolic will not have its Hollywood ending that ties everything back together, weaving all loose ends.

<45> Sabzian is clearly the largest stain on screen. He is the gaze reflecting back. This reflection operates at three different levels. First and foremost, he is clearly a stain for the Ahankhah family. By taking him to court, by agreeing to wash their dirty laundry in public, they are asking to be cleansed. Recall that the children were not particularly successful in life, though they were educated. They have conformed to the desire of the Other; they are good people, they insist. Yet, despite their efforts, something is lacking.[6] Their desire was fixated; it sought an outlet. The presence of Sabzian was the accidental moment that they believed would finally let them have it all. They thought that they shall finally stop feeling lacking. Psychoanalysis lets the subject speak in order for the patient – the analysand in Lacanian terminology – to come to terms with where her desire has gotten stuck, where she is frustrated (Fink, 1999: 8-10).

<46> Interestingly, Kiarostami has compared his work to that of a psychoanalyst. And if he is one, he is of the Lacanian variety. The Lacanian analyst does not have all the answers, even though he is supposed to know it all (Fink, 1995: 87; Huson, 2006). The Lacanian model requires the analyst to empty out, to stand there as representing the Other and work through the analysand’s frustrations with the Other (Grigg, 2008: 68). The analysand will do everything to circumvent her own stuck desire, blaming everyone around. In a Sartrean way, however, the analysand has to come to terms with her own involvement, her investment in her narrative. The Ahankhah family, to the contrary, is eager to wash its hands off. They want Sabzian to pay the price for his transgression which exposed their own finitude and insecurities. They want the justice system – the Law of the Father, the symbolic – to absolve them of their momentarily lapse (which they deny anyway). They want the stain removed, the bug sprayed. They seek refuge in the proper order of things; in court they insist that this man is a menace to society (to the symbolic). He must be put back in his place (below them). Recall that they happily paid for a cab fare for the symbolic (the police) to take away the man whose embezzlement equaled that fare. Yet, in the name of the good, while denying their own fantasy, they agree to re-enact the whole story on film. Implicitly, they get their wish to be in a movie, but with the approval of the symbolic order. They are the “ambassadors” of the good society in Iran. They even forgive him in the name of the nation as long as he becomes a “proper” subject once again, as long as he too agrees to repress his desire and conform to the desire of the Other. They are the ambassadors but they need the haunted skull gone. Sabzian, at his last performance as a stain, reminds them all too well. Apparently, off camera, when Kiarostami’s crew went to the Ahankhah house to re-enact the film, Sabzian cleverly pointed out, “I told you I will bring the cameras to you!” (Ciment & Kiarostami, 2009: 218)

<47> The audience is equally subjected to the gaze. Sitting in the dark, like Sartre’s voyeur, we wish to take a peek from a safe distance. We want to see the good guys win, the truant put away. The can of spray had announced that there will be no such satisfaction and Kiarostami delivers on his promise. Consider the Close-up camera, to which Sabzian is instructed to tell the truth. But the truth is nothing we hope for. The man is fairly unremorseful and he is no villain. In the Close-up shots, Sabzian’s face as stain is no longer a corner of the screen; it almost takes over the entire scene. In him, we see nothing lacking if by lack we would mean lacking humanity or education. After all, he even quotes Tolstoy! Exposed before our eyes is the man who transgressed against the symbolic, the one who refused to repress and conform. He haunts us because he acted on his fantasy while we sit before him repressing our own. There is nothing inherently criminal in him; there is nothing so deeply disturbing for the camera to capture. Of course the audience can believe itself to be different than him but to what extent? Is “the lack of moral fiber” as we might call it that evident? Or isn’t it the case that through Kiarostami, most fundamentally, it is the lack, the finitude and the shortcomings of the symbolic, of the Iranian society, that is exposed, gazing back at the tranquil viewer?

<48> When in prison Kiarostami interviews Sabzian, the copy-man tells him that he wants us to be his audience. It is however a mistake to (only) chalk this up to his narcissism. Of course he still wants to be on screen, as we do all. In a way, he is reminiscent of Lacan when he appeared on prime-time French television. Standing before the camera, quite close to it, occupying most of the screen, with a Sabzian-like smirk, in his very first sentence he tells the viewer: “I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there’s no way to say it all. Saying it all is literarily impossible: words fail” (Lacan & Copjec, 1990: 3). Similarly, Kiarostami maintains:

Even when we want to borrow from reality, we cannot tell the whole story. So we must leave some things untold. And in the movie theater, the virtual prosecutors themselves, as they are signing their verdicts at the last minute, cannot think that they possess the definitive information about my characters (Kiarostami, 2006: 93).

<49> Exposing himself in the court of public opinion, Lacan takes the oath to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, yet words fail. Words (the symbolic) fail not because the analyst had something to hide. He cannot speak the whole truth because as exposed and willing as he could be, there is still a little something, a little “hidden treasure” (Žižek, 1992: 39), a bit of the real in each of us that keeps us going but also keeps us split, from ourselves and from the Other. Hence the Close-up on Sabzian, the angle of truth up close and personal fails to expose him fully. He knows that what he has done is “legally wrong” but he makes two demands, two pleas. On the one hand, he asks us to take his love of art into consideration; he wants us to see his desire. On the other, he wants a film that depicts his suffering, his misery, his lack. He lacks a proper position in the symbolic; he is disenfranchised and poor. The symbolic makes us, fabricates us but its fabric is lacking in justice, in precision and in equity, hence its obsession with directors to as demi-gods (Naficy, 2005: 803). Hence the fantasy of Makhmalbaf. More importantly, notice that Kiarostami with ease manages to make the justice system do as he wishes.[7] He is powerful, transgressive and yet lauded. In contrast stands Sabzian, disempowered, trying to imitate a powerful image, trying to make something out of nothing for himself. And as the audience, particularly the Iranian audience, watches the film, brought to the theatre by the name of the director, the stain of Sabzian is not just a spot on the clean fabric of the Ahankhah narratives; it stains the audience’s too.

<50> At the very beginning of this analysis, regarding the feud between Ghobadi and Kiarostami, I stated that Ghobadi is correct that Kiarostami’s films are not directly political, but they are not escapist either. Escapism is a form of fantasy that serves the symbolic, the status quo. Our leftover, residual, frustrated, and unfulfilled desires – for all of us, anywhere – are compensated by our fantastic projections. Fantasy plugs the holes in the Other; it covers up the lack of the Other as well as our own. Gaze is the disruption of the tranquility of fantasy, of a peaceful vision that is in denial. One simple, albeit extremely dangerous, form of social fantasy, as Slavoj Žižek pointed out, is racism and scapegoatism (Žižek, 2008). Citizens are subjects of the law, yet face its lack, the deficiencies of the symbolic, especially in times of crisis and instability, which is the opposite of what the symbolic is supposed to offer (just think of the child’s safety in hiding behind the parents’ legs faced with strangers). In times of crisis, the subject is frustrated by “having done everything right,” having been obedient and proper and she is yet jobless and unstable (think of the Ahankhah children). In such moments of crises, the lack of the Other, the shortcomings of the society are covered up with a racist fantasy. “We would all be fine,” the fantasy would maintain, “enjoying a good life, were it not for X.” Replace X with Mexicans, Blacks, Algerians, Turks, Jews, or Afghans. When our space of fantasy is invaded, we feel vulnerable, violated; after all, it forces us to face the real, the lack. This is how we ought to understand Lacan’s previously mentioned position according to which psychoanalysis is about the limits of the subject.

<51> Coming to terms with finitude, with our lacking selves is hard enough; coming to terms with the lack of the Other, the insufficiencies of the social order and the law is even harder. The reason Lacan believes that the “cure” can only take place at the symbolic level is because our desire is fixated by the symbolic, unable to see the lack. Everyone and everything can be blamed, save for the order of things. Gaze in art, by being outstanding, has the potential of revealing and exposing the lacks. But it is only a potential. The Hollywood ending works insofar as it builds a plot – puts forth a trauma – but solves it and reassures the viewer. Things will work out, it says (McGowan, 2007). Kiarostami’s art is Lacanian precisely because it refuses to cover up or “veil” the lack. Sabzian is not erased and forgotten. As Kiarostami explains it in an interview:

The reason you like [Sabzian] is because he's an artist. That's why he can make up beautiful lies. And I like his lies better than the truth that the others have, because his lies reflect his inner reality better than the superficial truth that the other characters express. I think it's always the case that through people's lies you can draw closer, you can get a better understanding of them. (Kiarostami & Lopate, 1998: 359)

<52> And I concur. He is not lying in the sense that he was true to his desire; he really meant it, but there was no symbolic support behind him, having not outlet to perform his desire except through transgression.

The Function of the Gaze as Ethics in Close-up:

<53> In clinical practice, Lacan invented two techniques that were quite controversial: scansion and punctuation (Fink, 2007: 36, 47). The former is an unusual process for analysis that does not stick to exact timed sessions. The analyst can dismiss an analysand even a few seconds into the session, or let it go on for much longer than anticipated. His unorthodox approach makes perfect sense within his system. By giving the analysand an exact framework of time, the analysand can “time” her own speech. She can build the plot of her narrative, knowing when the time runs out. In this way, the analysand would continue conforming to the way she overall behaves: with respect to the symbolic order. Being in therapy, the point is to disrupt the repeated fixations and established patterns of frustration that the analysand lives daily in order to “work through” (Lacan, 1988a: 87) and let her come to terms with her desires. We all experience something similar while watching a movie. When we know that the film is about to end, our intentional expectations shift; we await the solution, the end. In typical action films, if the main character – especially a movie star – is, say, shot, we know that he will not die. There is too much time left for the central character on the film poster to go away. Scansion is closely related to punctuation (Fink, 2007: 47). “Punctuation,” Lacan says, “gives meaning to the subject’s discourse” (Lacan, 2006: 209). By intervening in the discourse of the subject, the analyst breaks down the flow of the analysand’s speech which is a rehearsed, given, habituated form of self-representation. Punctuation – which could even be a cough (Fink, 1999: 36) – the analyst prevents the Other to speak through us. In my view, editing in general, but Kiarostami’s editing style is akin to punctuation and scansion. Not only he edits his films with little concern for linearity, heavy-handedly he intervenes in the film, cutting from what we might consider important or staying with a rolling can of spray. Patients always want the analyst to reveal the secret, to tell them what is really behind everything they say or the analyst says. As I mentioned before, the Lacanian analyst “empties” out his or her own feelings, to become an undecipherable person, as a stand-in for the Other.

<54> Scrutinized like the punctuating analyst, Kiarostami is often asked “why” he chose an angle, or a story; and his answers, like a Lacanian analyst, are never satisfying. Sometimes he gives trite answers about aesthetics. But often, he contradicts himself. Regarding Close-up, in an interview he says: “The reason I like Close-up is: it was the kind of movie that didn’t allow me as a director to manipulate or control it. I feel more like a viewer of that movie than the maker of it” (Kiarostami & Lopate, 1998: 359). Yet, in another interview, also about Close-up, he recounts that

The trial scenes were also documentary in substance, but some things were changed because I wanted to be closer to the subject. There were thoughts going on inside this character that he wasn't aware of, and we needed to get them out and make him say them. Sometimes, to get the truth, you have to betray reality a bit. So during the breaks in the trial, I spoke to the judge and the accused to get them to express what I wanted. A trial of this kind generally lasts an hour whereas this one went on for ten (Ciment & Kiarostami, 2009: 217).

<55> Similarly, in one interview, he was asked, “Do you ever feel you have to censor yourself?” To which Kiarostami replies: “Not at all. I normally choose subject matters that jump over the censors” (Kiarostami & Lopate, 1998: 364). Yet, he answered the same question, he answered, “Now I try to censor myself while I make the film, so that they do not have to do it afterwards” (Donmez-Colin, 2006: 56-57).

<56> To be clear, I am not calling Kiarostami out, nor am I accusing him of anything. I take everything he says, including the contradictions, to be true. The heart of the matter is the obsession of interviewers. As a famed director, as an authority figure, we hope that he has the right answer (unlike us), or that unlike us he is not lacking. The ideological, peaceful gaze of the classical Lacanian theorists assumes that the director is serving the powers; it is hard to argue that Kiarostami does. It is fair to say that his works are not political the way Ghobadi’s are, but it is nonetheless disruptive of the foundation of the political order.

<57> A metaphor that Lacan has used to explain his ethics, borrowing from Heidegger actually, is the “empty vase” (Lacan, 1988b: 120). Like a vase, the goal of analysis and art is not to give us fullness but to represent the lack, the emptiness, the finite unjustifiability of the status quo. Since the empty or the lack cannot be represented as such, it can only be “framed” or “encircled” (Stavrakakis, 1999: 71-98). A vase is beautiful but it is hollow; it gives shape to the empty by dwelling around it. In Lacan’s matheme, it is S(Ø), or, in French, S(): the signifier of the lack of the Other. The O of the Other (A of Autre) is barred, like the barred subject because it indicates that the Other has no other, or that the Other is groundless. Fantasy is an attempt to cover up this bar in the Other, the real of the Other. By barring access to the “essence” of Sabzian as evil, Kiarostami is not absolving him. He is not quite protecting him either. He is refusing to have us “figure” him out as a further proof – for ourselves – that there is no lack. Though encircling the real is the mark of all great art, in a totalitarian regime, particularly the religious variety, this encircling is even more urgent and important. All symbolic orders make claim to fullness to ground their authority. Democratic societies, at least in theory, even sheerly through voting, are supposed to acknowledge the lack, the impotence of the system (Stavrakakis, 1999: 122-27). Totalitarian systems – as the name rightly indicates – operate through a claim to totality. When they use religion for their purposes, their failures or lacks are better covered up, under the name of God. Kiarostami, by remaining on the surface of things (Dabashi, 2007: 284), dwells on the holes. Recall that Sabzian’s mother in court reminds everyone that his son is a descendant of the prophet. Yet the Muslim values of charity, religious compassion, the welfare of the poor, all that the regime’s ideology pretends to accomplish is exposed. Kiarostami’s themes, but especially his editing style, are similar to Lacanian scansion because he “punctuates” and forces pauses and shifts in the symbolic narrative, not because those precise pauses are hinting at a secret – the rolling can is just a rolling can – but only to pause the ideological, symbolic narrative continuity that skips over its shortcomings. What it leaves over, in Kiarostami, gazes back.

<58> If the audience still had any hope to return to everyday fantasy, to resume the normal symbolic narrative, Kiarostami’s last gesture as director redirects the audience back to their own obsession with symbolic cohesion. When Makhmalbaf and “Makhmalbaf” finally meet the sound cuts off, cutting off at the same time the viewer from the scene. Unlike paintings, sound often works seamlessly with moving image, providing greater unity and cohesion for the viewer. By now, as experienced spectators, we get our visual cues from sounds, especially music, anticipating the next movement. More importantly there is the spoken word, the sounded signifier, communicating with us via the symbolic. While we still hear Kiarostami’s crew, supposedly panicked about the technical malfunction, we cannot help but feel disconnected and cut off. The sounds we hear have nothing to do with what we desire to know. Blocking if off, we have even less pleasure, nothing left but the picture of Sabzian holding his fantasy in his arms, gazing back at us. But what could he have said that would have satisfied us? As the sound intermittently comes on and off, we hear Makhmalbaf tell Sabzian that he should not try to be like him. “I’m sick of being Makhmalbaf too.” He is not sick of his game, I take it. He is telling Sabzian and the eager audience that there is no secret; he is lacking as the rest of us.

<59> Close-up can be dismissed as nonsensical and that would be in part correct since the realm of sense, meaning, belongs to the symbolic, to coherence, which Kiarostami disrupts. As the function of the gaze,Close-up denies the audience the voyeuristic pleasure that Mulvey was concerned about; it also refuses to play into the hands of the state ideology. Even in the court of law we did not get the “truth” we wanted; like Lacan standing before the television camera, he told the truth, nothing but the truth, and yet there is something left to desire. The audience, like the Ahankhah family, can of course dismiss the gaze of the film, though it is hard to rival their committed denial. Even though at one point the son blames the symbolic – the economic order – for the misery of Sabzian, essentially they remain blameless in their own eyes. Most tellingly, Kiarostami says in an interview, Makhmalbaf later on went to see the family once more. He knew that the family remains committed to the fantasy, but he did not realize how deep their commitment ran. As “he was leaving the house [Mrs. Ahankhah told him]: “Mr. Makhmalbaf, the other Mr. Makhmalbaf was more Makhmalbaf than you are’” (Kiarostami & Lopate, 1998: 361). This is fantasy par excellence; even the real Makhmalbaf leaves too much to desire.

<60> How about Sabzian? This is a more complicated case. The examples that Lacan employs in his writings and seminars about the gaze focus on the viewer of an object, where the latter gazes back, robbing the viewer of mastery. But what happens when the viewed object is a person in his own rights, such as Sabzian? He is the stain, the outsider, but is he in turn subject to the gaze? In his work on film, Slavoj Žižek has pushed Lacanian analysis in this direction. Žižek’s famous example is Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (Žižek, 1992). Chaplin as the tramp, according to Žižek, functions as the gaze. In the story of City Lights, he is mistaken by a blind girl for a millionaire, whom the tramp had befriended. After he pays for her operation to regain her sight, the tramp is quite terrified of meeting her again:

The tramp is thus an object of a gaze aimed at something or somebody else: he is mistaken for somebody else and accepted as such, or else-as soon as the audience becomes aware of the mistake-he turns into a disturbing stain one tries to get rid of as quickly as possible. His basic aspiration (which serves as a clue also for the final scene of City Lights) is thus finally to be accepted as "himself," not as another's substitute-and, as we shall see, the moment when the tramp exposes himself to the gaze of the other, offering himself without any support in ideal identification, reduced to his bare existence of objectal remainder, is far more ambiguous and risky than it may appear (Žižek, 1992: 5-6).

<60> “Reduced to his bare existence” is the real in him, the part of him that is not the symbolic, which in this case was mistaken for a millionaire. Sabzian was mistaken in the symbolic order; he, too, in a way brought “sight” to the family, letting them see themselves, but this is not a sight they wanted, unlike the blind girl. The tramp’s main concern is that he is not what she had hoped for. He is not the symbolic powerful man she though he was. Will she also try to rid her field of vision of this “clumsy” and ridiculous outsider? Chaplin’s film has a happier ending than Kiarostami’s.

<61> As I mentioned in the outline of the plot, Sabzian is quite self-assured, though clearly concerned for his fate. He expects little to no justice, as he knows that he has crossed the symbolic line and that he will be made to pay. He does, however, unravel once he meets Makhmalbaf in flesh and blood. Despite being quite weak in life, in his tour de force performance, he had enjoyed playing the role of a lifetime; though the Ahankhah family accuses him in court of perfectly playing the role of a poor man and a remorseful criminal! In falling to his knees before the real Makhmalbaf, we can safely assume that there is a Sartrean element of shame, from the look of the real director. But Sabzian experiences a more profound disruption than social shame. The real Makhmalbaf becomes a gaze for Sabzian. By enjoying the status of the outsider, by being the stain that the entire symbolic network was committed to erase, nothing was shaking his own ego. Awaiting the network to catch him, with beautiful irony, he had chosen the title for his film involving the Ahankhah: “The Spider’s House.”

<62> Precisely because he was overwhelmingly facing the Law of the Father, more than the family and the audience he was shielded from his own lack and his own problems. Everything was calculated and coded for him. He resisted it; he knew he is no criminal, but this resistance was outwardly oriented, trapping others like a spider. He still had not faced himself as there was nothing gazing back at him. The ultimate turning point in coming to terms with desire, according to Lacan, is to go above the symbolic question (wherein the subject continually and neurotically asks of the paternal order): “What do you want from me?” The encounter with the real returns the question to the subject, asking, “What do you want?” (Lacan, 2006: 690). Most of us are concerned, like the tramp, that we are misrecognized and that there is more to us than the eye of the Other meets. Since this is no concern for Sabzian, knowing deep down that he is mistaken for a criminal, he could enjoy his mistaken identity without facing his own desire, which is the Lacanian formula for ethics.

<63> Lacan sums up his ethics, as a mock version of the Kantian categorical imperative, by saying, “Have you acted in conformity with your desire?” (Lacan, 1988b: 311). This is one of Lacan’s most difficult concepts and easily misunderstood. On the surface, one would say that Sabzian is the ultimate ethical agent since he really seems to conform to his desire; he acted on his desire as opposed to suppressing it. But that would be a mistaken reading of Lacan. In the events of May 1968 in France, faced with the rebelling students, Lacan warned them that while they are displacing the symbolic, letting their desire loose, they cannot simply live through desire; they shall regain another master.[8] In other words, as the child rebels against the father, he still needs the father. There is no bypassing, once and for all, the symbolic order. At best, we come close to Kierkegaard’s “teleological suspension of the ethical,” which is not a permanent suppression of the symbolic but taking stock of its finitude. To make the matter more complicated, we know that the symbolic shapes desire in the first place, so there is no desire without its support.

<64> Lacanian ethics is an ethics of finitude. Cleverly he lectured his students in his seminar on ethics: “We started out from the truth, which we must take to be a truth if we follow Freud's analysis, that we know God is dead. However, the next step is that God himself doesn't know that. And one may suppose that he never will know it because he has always been dead” (Lacan, 1988b: 184). The death of god is the lack in the symbolic order, the finitude of the law that does not know its own limits. In this sense, conforming to one’s desire is not following one’s desire to the letter, since, after all, the letter belongs to the symbolic. To the contrary, conforming to one’s desire has the paradoxical – or better yet I believe existentialist – quality of accepting one’s own finitude. It is no coincidence that the gaze is exemplified by the dead skull and many of Lacan’s example of the ultimate ethical agent – such as Antigone or Hamlet – deal with death and mortality. But the unsymbolizable death cannot serve as a morbid, gothic fascination.

<65> Recall that fantasy supports the symbolic lack, and sustains the subject by projecting “real reasons” onto the real, the incomprehensible. The abused child turns the abuse to the fantasy of love, since the father must love him too much to punish him so harshly. On the other side of fantasy stands the “castration anxiety” which is not a biological function in Lacan. Castration is the ultimate price of the ethical desire:

This formula is, in fact, crucial for the “ethics of psychoanalysis,” which could be defined as that which liberates us by making us accept the risk of castration. In a certain sense, it puts us in the position where we have nothing to lose. However, while not false, this way of putting things can be misleading, since it suggests some kind of ultimate loss beyond which we no longer can desire or get attached to anything, which is precisely not the point. The loss in question is rather supposed to liberate the field of the desire – liberate it in the sense that the desire no longer depends upon the interdiction (of the Law) but is led to find and articulate its own law (Zupančič, 2003: 177).

<66> There is no perfect formula for how one should go about this, as each of us is uniquely shaped in our own desires and frustrations. Like authenticity, it cannot be taught but the structure of it can be delineated and for Lacan this means dealing with castration, which means letting go of the fantasy. In the case of Sabzian, once he met Makhmalbaf, he saw his fantasy before his very eyes, staring at him. Most of us metaphorically cling on to our fantasies to keep going, Makhmalbaf literally held his in his arm, riding through the streets of Tehran on a motorcycle. What he and Makhmalbaf conversed about is quite meaningless for us. They could have very well spoken about the weather. It is not what they said to each other that should matter. Sabzian coming as close as possible to his fantasy is important. But as close as he ever could get, he was still separated from it. He is not, after all, Makhmalbaf. Hitting the wall, in the true sense of it at the doors of the Ahankhah family, one last time he passes for Makhmalbaf but this time with shame, but not the symbolic shame. It is the shame or acknowledgment that he is not the director. As obvious as it sounds, he had to encircle his own lack, he had to face castration by giving up being someone else than himself. And if there is a short, spectacular therapy led by Kiarostami – recall that he does think that he is like an analyst – his ultimate ethical intervention served Sabzian, freeing him of his illusion, which is what Lacan calls “traversing the fantasy.” Fantasy sustains us, but it can also handicap us and lead us astray. His symbolic ethical transgression was to invade the space of fantasy of other people, the Ahankhah’s (Žižek, 1991: 154-62). However, traversing the fantasy is for his own sake. It is holding the fantasy for what it is, in its emptiness, as the vase that it is.

<67> There is still the difficult question of what it means for “desire to have its own law” freed by the law of the Father. In a way, we meet the limits of Lacan’s analysis at this stage. Sabzian is perhaps “cured” of his destructive fantasy, but can he gain true autonomy after all, to be “unalienated” (Lacan, 2006: 250)? Can he still have a desire of his own? What happens to this copy-man, impoverished and abandoned by society? Lacan always insists that he is not serving the purposes of the Bourgeoisie, the good society (Lacan, 1988b: 303), in helping the system further subjugate the rebels. Yet the fact remains that Sabzian’s fate is still in the hands of the symbolic that is failing him. In saying that we reach Lacan’s limits, I am not reproaching him to be exact. That is the inherent difficulty of any ethics and any liberation. The true Lacanian ethical agent, it is rightly said, is the “revolutionary” (Hurst, 2008: 338), someone who genuinely shakes things up. But those come along ever so often, and sometimes – as in the case of Khomeini – they leave us with regrets. For most of us, there is no chance of ultimate radical change overnight (Ciment & Kiarostami, 2009: 220). However, recognizing that is part of the solution from a Lacanian perspective. To have any sense of freedom or autonomy, to liberate our desiring selves from the tyranny of the symbolic, we must at the very least open ourselves to its lack and finitude. The acknowledgment of limits goes a long way in itself, especially in a totalitarian society. With arrogance, the latter attempts to dictate with total control, as a god that does not know it is dead.

<68> The jury of the Cannes festival rightly rewarded Ghobadi with the “A certain gaze,” but a trenchant Lacanian gaze operates in Kiarostami’s work as well. In his own way, he too exposes the Iranian regime’s insufficiencies and lack. It turns out it is not just the emperor, but the mullah has no clothes either.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. (1972). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays: Monthly Review Press.

Aydemir, Murat. (2007). Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning: Univ Of Minnesota Press.

Ciment, Michel, & Kiarostami, Abbas. (2009). 'Abbas Kiarostami', pp. 207-20 in Film World: The Directors' Interviews. Oxford: Berg.

Copjec, Joan. (1989). 'The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan', Žižek (ed), Lacan.' October, 49, 53-71.

Copjec, Joan. (2006). 'May '68: The Emotional Month', pp. 90-114 in S. Zizek (ed.) Lacan: The Silent Partners. London: Verso.

Copjec, Joan. (2007). 'The Object Gaze, Hejab, Cinema', Filozofski Vestnik, 161-83.

Dabashi, Hamid. (2007). Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema. Washington, DC: Mage Publishers.

Donmez-Colin, Gonul. (2006). Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia. London: Intellect Books.

Elena, Alberto. (2005). The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami: Saqi Books.

Fink, Bruce. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Fink, Bruce. (1999). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fink, Bruce. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners: W. W. Norton & Company.

Foucault, Michel. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Ghobadi, Bahman. (2009). .

Grigg, Russell. (2008). Lacan, Language, and Philosophy: State University of New York Press.

Hurst, Andrea. (2008). Derrida Vis-À-Vis Lacan : Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis. New York: Fordham University Press.

Huson, Timothy. (2006). 'Truth and Contradiction: Reading Hegel with Lacan', pp. 56-78 in S. Žižek (ed), Lacan: The Silent Partners. London: Verso.

Hyldgaard, Kristen. (2003). 'The Cause of the Subject as an Ill-Timed Accident', pp. 228-42 in S. Žižek (ed), Jacques Lacan : Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory. Volume I. London: Routledge.

Kesel, Marc De. (2009). Eros and Ethics: Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar VII. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Kiarostami, Abbas. (2006). 'A Taste of My Cinema: A Conversation with Abbas Kiarostami', pp. 81-95 in L. Azam Zanganeh (ed), My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices. Boston: Beacon Press.

Kiarostami, Abbas. (2010). .

Kiarostami, Abbas, & Lopate, Phillip. (1998). 'Can Movies Think? Interview with Abbas Kiarostami', pp. 352-67 in P. Lopate (ed), Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies: Anchor Books.

Lacan, Jacques. (1978). Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. New York: Norton.

Lacan, Jacques. (1988a). Seminar I: Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954. New York: W.W. Norton.

Lacan, Jacques. (1988b). Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton.

Lacan, Jacques. (2001a). Autres Écrits. Paris: Seuil.

Lacan, Jacques. (2001b). Ecrits: A Selection: Routledge.

Lacan, Jacques. (2006). Ecrits. New York: W.W. Norton.

Lacan, Jacques, & Copjec, Joan. (1990). Television. New York: Norton.

Lefort, Claude. (1974). 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty', pp. 692-706 in Y. Belaval (ed), Histoire De La Philosophie III. Vol. 2 Paris: Gallimard.

Lippard, Chris. (2009). 'Disappearing into the Distance and Getting Closer All the Time: Vision, Position, and Thought in Kiarostami’s the Wind Will Carry Us', Journal of Film and Video, 61(4), 31-40.

Marx, Karl, & Engels, Friedrich. (1978). The Marx-Engels Reader: W.W. Norton & Co.

Mcgowan, Todd. (2003). 'Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes', Cinema Journal, 42(3), 27-47.

Mcgowan, Todd. (2007). The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1992). The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

Metz, Christian. (1982). Psychoanalysis and the Cinema: Imaginary Signifier: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mottahedeh, Negar. (2008). Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Mullarkey, John. (2009). Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mulvey, Laura. (1989). Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Naficy, Hamid. (1995). 'Iranian Cinema under the Islamic Republic', American Anthropologist, 97(3), 548-58.

Naficy, Hamid. (2002). 'Islamizing Film Culture in Iran: A Post-Khatami Update', pp. 26-65 in R. Tapper (ed), The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity. London: I.B. Tauris.

Naficy, Hamid. (2005). 'Close-Up: Questioning Reality, Realism, and Neorealism', pp. 794-812 in J. Geiger & R. L. Rutsky (eds), Film Analysis. New York: W.W. Norton.

Perez, Gilberto. (1998). The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ragland, Ellie. (2008). 'The Masquerade, the Veil, and the Phallic Mask', Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 13, 8-23.

Saeed-Vafa, Mehrnaz, & Rosenbaum, Jonathan. (2003). Abbas Kiarostami. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1956). Being and Nothingness; an Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. New York: Philosophical Library.

Starr, Peter. (1995). Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory after May '68. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Stavrakakis, Yannis. (1999). Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge.

Vighi, Fabio. (2005). 'Lacan for Cinema Today: The Uncanny Pouvoir De La Vérité', Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 10(3), 232-51.

Žižek, Slavoj. (1992). Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. London: Routledge.

Žižek, Slavoj. (2008). The Sublime Object of Ideology: Second Edition. London: Verso.

Žižek, Slavoj. (1991). Looking Awry : An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Zupančič, Alenka. (2003). 'Ethics and Tragedy in Lacan', pp. 173-90 in J.-M. Rabate (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes

[1] I am not claiming this is a complete list, since, for instance, Jean-Louis Baudry is not even mentioned. Others have done this work in detail: (McGowan, 2007).

[2] Some have argued that the veil in fact has some – limited – redeeming factors, from Lacanian perspective (Ragland, 2008). But the most nuanced approach to the question of the veil in Iranian cinema, Negar Mottahedeh’s work is unsurpassable (Mottahedeh, 2008).

[3] These are not necessarily biological roles. This is an ongoing debate among psychoanalysts but for my purposes here I stay clear of the issue. Settling it either way matters little to my argument.

[4] In French, Lacan and Sartre use the word “regard” but conventionally Lacan’s translators have used the word gaze in English. With Sartre, it is sometimes translated as “look” and sometimes as “gaze.”

[5] It is really debatable whether consciousness in phenomenology is that much in control. I have elsewhere argued that Sartre – who is the most misread phenomenologist – acknowledges the equivalent of the symbolic, though he does not emphasize it. (Reference removed for review purposes.)

[6] The lack is perhaps more pronounced when one is jobless but, as we know, mid-life crises, the bursts of dissatisfaction, plague the more fortunate ones too.

[7] Apparently, even the judge of the trial was passionate about films; he “was right up with all this film talk” says Kiarostami (Ciment & Kiarostami, 2009: 218).

[8] Others have delved in depth analyzing Lacan’s relationship to May 68: (Copjec, 2006; Starr, 1995: 37-76).

Return to Top»

ISSN: 1547-4348. All material contained within this site is copyrighted by the identified author. If no author is identified in relation to content, that content is © Reconstruction, 2002-2010.