During my middle school years Usher
sang to the world in Yeah! about how he wanted a lady in the street but a freak
in the bed. Well Usher, I'm sad to inform you but you apparently really don't.
He is falling into the trap that Slavoj Zizek says has been set through the
ages of how the lady is some sort of "sublime object" (Zizek, 88).
But once he gets her into bed the desire for her will die down. He only wants
this woman because they are nearly impossible. It is hard to embody both an
angle and a monster. It seems that our most intense sexual desires are created
from the fact that we are unable to carry them out. The human nature of wanting
what we can't have, as always, gets in the way of having perfect happiness. One
of the major complaints from those in a relationship is that they don't have
freedom and are unhappy because they hold being single at a higher level. While
many who are single dream about the companionship and fidelity that comes with
being in a relationship. We torture ourselves with love because it is something
that always seems to elude us; even those in a relationship never have enough
of it. We become masochists, asking for others to torture us with love. Men
want the women to hold control over their own bodies and the bodies of others. This
leads to a masochistic relationship where she controls, “how severely she is to
whip him, in what precise way she is to enchain him, where she is to stamp him
with the tips of her high heels, etc.” (Zizek, 92). Bernart de Ventadorn's
poems are filled with the continual war inside of him caused by love. Dreams of
being loved by the object of his desire fills his words, only to be followed by
imagery of loneliness, isolation, and hurt, all because of this love. he says,
"The ice I see is as a flower, /the snow, green things that grow" (de
Ventadorn, 11-12).
De Vantadorn could easily be talking
about some sort of bipolar or psychosis disorder when he says, "I die of
grief a hundred times a day/ and a hundred times revive with joy" (de
Vantadorn, 27-29) but he is actually talking about love. This supposedly joyful
utopia actually forms a dystopia. This dystopia concept of love being the
crated from our masochistic desires is brought up in Zizik's Courtly Love,
or, Women as Thing. Zizik claims that “Masochism, on the contrary, is
made to the measure of the victim; it is the victim (the servant in the
masochistic relationship) who initiates a contract with the Master (woman),
authorizing her to humiliate him in any way she considers appropriate”(Zizik,
91). Bernart truly slips into the masochistic when he talks about his lover
finding another lover. He debates talking to her about it but doesn't want to lose
her finally deciding that he would rather have only a part of her. "[B]ut
if I tell her exactly what I think,/I see myself with a double loss" (de
Ventadorn, 13-14).
Zizik's femme fetal is seen
all throughout literature and in movies. One movie that follows the paradigm
where the rich older gentleman falls for, and is ruined for the much younger
lady, is in "That Obscure Object of Desire". This obscure object is
the lady that the man has fallen for. To make the "object" even more
obscure she is played by two different actresses. One of the actresses seems to
portray the more demure and lady-like parts of the character, especially the
prude parts. While the other seems to be much wilder and is the one shown in
the sexual scene with the other man. Mathieu seems to create her as he wants to
see her, separating her parts. She is the personification of "The
Object" in Zizek's essay. “The Object, therefore, is literally something
that is created” (Zizik, 95). By looking at her through eyes mirrored in love
he cannot stop looking at her to complete him and feeling lost without her. It
gets to a point where even though he knows she has ruined him, he still looks
for that mirror by going back to her in the end of the movie.
Chains, whips, and hand cuffs. The
sex accessories that should be in everyone's night stand, at least according to
Slavoj Zizek, to be sexually desired. Girls, you know the drill, you are to act
like a sexual powerhouse until the moment you are asked to consent to sexual
relations with another. At this point, it is imperative that you shut your legs
and throw away the key. The prude-yet-whore approach. How did it get this
confusing to be loved? Eventually under all of these "rules" we lose
ourselves. Our personality is pushed aside to follow the necessary steps to
make someone love us. In fact, it is actually difficult to show someone that
you love, in a sexual manner, your true self. “Masochism confronts us with the
paradox of the of the symbolic order qua the order of ‘fictions’: there is more
truth in the mask we wear, in the game we play, in the ‘fiction’ we obey and
follow, than in what is concealed beneath the mask.”(Zizek, 93). The mask is
the mirror we look in when we try to view ourselves internally and externally.
Bernart de Ventadorn in his poem writes about the mirror. "Mirror, since I
beheld myself in you, /the sighs from the depths have slain me, / and I have
lost myself, as fair Narcissus" (De Ventadorn, 21-22). Once you are able
to gaze at yourself in the mirror of love there is no going back. You will lose
yourself in the addiction of the sight. Why is it nearly impossible to view
ourselves as attractive and beautiful unless we have someone else telling us
that it is so? We need this self-assurance and cannot simply see ourselves for
what we really are.
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