Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Jaques Lacan: Lack


Lacan's theory of lack states that Humans will never be content with meeting our desires and will always keep wanting more. Jaques's theory idea of lack causes desires in the person to arise making the person act upon this desire to please the act just like how in Freud's Id the Ego and the Superego theory, the Id causes the ego and super ego to have to react to please the Ids urges. According to Lacan, humans are born into a condition of Lack and spend the rest of there lives trying to fulfil it. "But the important point is that this form situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone, or rather, which will only rejoin the coming-into-being dialectical synthesis by which he must resolve as his discordance with his own reality.(CriticaLink, 2018).

When a child looks at themselves for the first time in the mirror they will see the 'perfect' version of themselves. This is developed in Lacan's theory as throughout their lifespan they try to live up to the perfect image of what they saw from that very first stage. This is referred to in Lacans theory as the mirror stage. "The image reflected according to Lacan i the 'Ideal' - the stable and autonomous version which the child does not experience itself and hence yearns to be the other." (Nasrullah Mambrol, 2016)

Scene Analysis

In this scene Lacan's psychoanalytical theory on lack is running throughout. This scene opens up with the protagonist accepting a deal from the federal government getting him out of his illegal activities without many repercussions on his end. The context of this scene and how it links to the rest of the film is important in seeing how Lacan's theory applies as at this point in the film the protagonist has everything he has ever wanted, and has surely met his desire that was set at the start of this film, to become rich, However in this scene it is shown that the protagonist although he should be happy to get out while he can with everything he has gained and the starting desire being fulfilled, does not want to get out. This links to Lacan's theory on Lack and Desire as although he has everything he wanted the protagonist is till desiring more and is not happy with what he has. This goes with Lacan's theory as he states that humans will always be filled with desire and its a feeling that will never leave us no matter how much we try to satisfy it, linking back to the mirror stage as in this scene the protagonist is still chasing and desiring to become this unattainable perfect being that Lacan states infants see when they look at their reflections.






Reference
CriticaLink, 2018, Lacan: The Mirror Stage, [online]
Available from:
http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/lacan/


Mambrol N, 2016 ., Lacan's Concept of the Mirror stage [Online]
Available from:

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