Subject: Waters can't you see I am burning?
From: JM Lozano (rsoab@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jan 31 2000 - 08:37:11 CST
Continuing with Natalie’s interesting comment , I will also relate with
“Pink Flamingos”. Nevertheless I must acknowledge that this is not so much a
comment but an “intertextuality” in the most Kristevan (1) sense:
WATERS CANT YOU SEE I AM BURNING?
“Let us take the extreme case of copography (eating excrement): even such a
practice is not necessarily ‘perverse’, since it can well be inscribed into
a hysterical economy- that is to say, it can well function as an element of
the hysterical questioning of the Other’s desire- Will he still love me when
he sees me doing it? Will he finally abandon me as his object? It can also
function as psychotic if , say the subject identifies his partner’s shit as
the miraculous Divine substance so that by swallowing it he gets in touch
with God, receives His energy. Or of course, it can function as perversion
is the subject, assumes the position of the object-instrument of the Other’s
desire (if he does it in order to generate enjoyment in his partner)”
Zizek, The Ticklish Subject (249)
I - “The subject of late capitalist market relations is perverse”.
My own personal requisite to study Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” today, is to
take it as a “post-festum” activity. Yes, I say it with a certain
nostalgia. As Michael Andre Bernstein point it out it in his essay on
Bakhtin (2): the only way for him (Bakhtin) to write about the carnival was
through the work of Francois Rabelais, much time after. That is, what in the
seventies appear as subversive (in terms of collapsing the hierarchical
distinctions) might seem (for many of us) from today’s perspective as the
very consolidation (and renewal) of what it was supposedly subverting at
that time. As Zizek “would put it” , “the fearless questioning of all
presuppositions, is the model of the false transgressive radicality” (3) or
as Waters himself wrote: “Rebelling quickly became boring when we noticed
that the same people we used to offend were now applauding and imitating our
anti-social behaviour. I think all of us were beginning to realize that we
were closet capitalists at heart” (4).
II - Complicity
But then, why when I recently watched “Pink Flamingos”, still provoke me and
intrigued me? Perhaps as Parveen Adams would say, because a “pervert seeks
is an eye complicit with his own, one that will turn a blind eye to what is
happening and will remain fascinated and seduced” (5). To see Divine on
screen makes me say, there is someone here that knows something that I do
not, someone that “occupies the position of the one who will never again be
deprived of knowledge, particularly knowledge about eroticism. As Clavreul
says, ‘This knowledge about eroticism feels assured of obtaining the other’s
jouissance under any circumstances’” (5).
Yes Mistress, “You may tie me down on the table, ropes drawn tight, for ten
to fifteen minutes, time enough to prepare the instruments”, because I am a
fed up with seeing with my eyes, breathing with my lungs, swallowing with my
mouth, talking with my tongue, thinking with my brain, having an anus and
larynx, head and legs (6).
(Yes Natalie, I am afraid of the singing ass hole... because “I want to sing
too”... )
III - Crypto-logics.
But then perhaps, what it is operating in “Pink Flamingos” belongs to a
somehow ‘new’ cinematic logic, which beginning and end, is “not the Word but
practice”, always that we consider practice as something that, “governed in
all probability by something like
(the possible ways of combining) crypto-logics, is not ‘structured like a
language’ (7). From this perspective, what the film does is to make some of
the viewers accomplices of a practice, that is not part of a a semiological
exercise. A practice that might fascinate some of us and even still
challenge the way we approach film production.
what do yo think? do you think is ‘coherent’ what I am saying?
Help me doctor!!!
Mario
(1) Kristeva J. “Desire in Language” (trans. Gora T.), Blackwell 1980.
(2) Bernstein M.A. “Cuando el carnaval se vuelve amargo. reflexiones
preliminares sobreel heroe abyecto”, UNAM, 1990.
(3) Zizek S. “The Tiklish Subject. The Absent Centre of Political Ontology”.
Verso, 1999.
(4) Walters J. “Shock Value”. Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1995.
(5) Adams P. “ Father cant you see I’m filming” in “Supposing the Subect”
(edited byCopjec J. ), Verso, 1994.
(6) Deleuze G; Guattari F. “A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and
Schizophrenia” (Trans.Massumi B.), The Athlone Press, 1988.
(7) Melrose S. “Please Please me: ‘Emphaty’ amd Symphaty’ in Critical
Metapraxis”.Contemporary Theatre Review Vol 2,2. 1994.
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