Lost in Darkness and Confusion: Lost Highway, Lacan, and film noir Thomas Caldwell

Fred Madison in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1996) is suffering from a crisis of personal identity. Fred is a typical film noir hero, in- habiting a doomed and desolate world characterised by an excess of sexuality, darkness and violence. In Lost Highway, however, Lynch has pushed the usual Oedipal themes and stylistic elements of film noir to the limits by portraying the world through the eyes of Fred Madison — a misogynist schizophrenic. To understand Fred’s condition, and the complex non-linear nar- rative of Lost Highway, Lynch’s film can be de-coded by using the psychoanalytic methods developed by Jacques Lacan. Lacan’s mirror stage theory developed the idea of three distinct but overlapping or- ders of human identity - the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. These stages influence each other and work together simultaneously to give most individuals a stable relationship with reality. However Fred Madison has come unstuck and the three orders have become quite distinctly separate, leading to the creation of three versions of the same story, with Fred represented by three different personae. The start of the film features Fred in the symbolic order, the middle part of the film has Fred transformed into Pete Dayton during the imaginary order, and the final part of the film has Fred possessed by the Mystery Man, representing the real order. Direct reference to Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) re- veals that the filmic space of Lost Highway is that of Fred’s mind. Kiss Me Deadly, like Lost Highway, is set in Los Angeles, and portrays civilisation on the brink of disaster. Every character in Kiss Me Deadly is selfish, violent and opportunistic, while the city is lit and shot to emphasise its darkness, superficiality, and materialistic nature. The image at the start of Kiss Me Deadly is that of Christina running down a dark night’s road. She is the only moral character in the film and her flight symbolises her fall from grace, a fall which ends in painful death. The journey down the road of Kiss Me Deadly represents the increas- ing speed at which society is heading out of control. By the end of the film, a nuclear device, the ultimate ‘achievement’ of society, has been detonated, and a beach house, symbolising the city and civilisation, is obliterated in the explosion. The decadence and immoral values of civilisation have ripped the world apart in a devastating apocalypse. In Lost Highway the forces that destroyed civilisation in Kiss Me Deadly are internalised in Fred’s mind. While the highway in Kiss Me Deadly features characters and vehicles from the film and constitutes an objective realm, the highway in Lost Highway is shot from a first person perspective. It is the spectator who is thrust down the dark, endless highway as the film opens, introducing us to the space in which

46 • Metro Magazine 118 the film is located - Fred’s head. Then there is darkness followed by unconscious and an otherness that remains other. There is no concrete Fred’s head filling the screen, lit as he draws on a cigarette. The sub- existence in the symbolic order, since it is constantly moving and gives jective highway has led us into Fred’s head, the setting of Lost High- meaning that is inter-subjective and social. The symbolic order does way. not allow the subject to keep to themselves since everything depends The beach house from Kiss Me Deadly also features in Lost High- on the subject finding meaning in what is around them.3 The first part way as the house in the desert where the Mystery Man supposedly of Lost Highway takes place with Fred still in the symbolic order; he exists. However rather than exploding in an apocalypse of social and appears to interpret the world around him with more cohesion than sexual obliteration, this house is filmed exploding in reverse - begin- later in the film. ning in the chaotic mess of destruction that featured at the end of Kiss The order of the real is a constant threat during both the symbolic Me Deadly and imploding to re-form as a structure representing Fred’s and imaginary sections of Lost Highway and comes into full effect mind. during the final section of the film, when Pete has transformed back to Lacan’s notion of the three orders of the imaginary, the symbolic, Fred, but is now aligned with the Mystery Man. The real lies outside and the real are a development of his mirror phase theory. None of the the symbolic process and can be found in the mental and material three orders are necessarily more true than the other, but they need to world. The real is that which cannot fall into the signifying dimen- be properly aligned in order for the individual to be present in the sion.4 The real presents itself as that which does not cohere to the stable human world.1 The imaginary is the order of mirror-images. It symbolic order. It manifests in the form of the trauma and determines is the dimension of experience where the individual seeks to dissolve all that follows despite appearing to be accidental.5 The real is what their otherness by becoming their counterpart. Through the imaginary, seems impossible to the individual. The real cannot be coded and hence the individual repeats their relationships with the external world of fall in the symbolic, and therefore it cannot be mirrored to fall into the people and things, to desperately create an imaginary ideal self, what imaginary. Freud called the ego. The imaginary links inner and outer mental acts, Fred’s three visions of the world are due to an unstable relation- having the effect of resisting the development of the self.2 The middle ship between the three orders. Although the symbolic has priority over section of Lost Highway exists in the imaginary order, where Fred the imaginary, the imaginary does aid the symbolic in its process of relives his life through the ideal identity of Pete Dayton. understanding the external world.6 However in Fred’s case the imagi- The symbolic order is where the subject, distinct from the ego, nary has taken over the real to such a dangerous extent that he imag- comes into being. The symbolic exists in the realm of language, the ines himself to literally be another person. This collapse of identity is

Metro Magazine 118 • 47 due to the intrusion of the real. In the real, ‘the network of signifiers, superior, or dominant, to all other people it encounters. However ‘the that our being exists in, is not all that there is, and the rest of what is ego’s function is purely imaginary, and through its function the sub- may chance to break in upon us at any moment’.7 In other words Fred ject tends to become alienated ... it is an agency organised to misread cannot identify or realise the forces of violence and paranoia that have the truth which comes to the subject from the unconscious’.18 Hence been produced within him, leading to a breakdown of the symbolic, ‘human knowledge is paranoiac because imaginary ego-properties are leading to a confused and disturbing encounter with the real, which is projected onto things; things have become conceived as distorted, fixed, all that seems impossible to the individual. This split into three orders rigid entities; and things have salience for man [sic] insofar as they are originated long before the audience joins Fred, in his childhood expe- desirable to [the] other’.19 This is why Lacan places so little value on rience during the mirror stage. the imaginary and argues against the strengthening of the ego. The mirror stage is understood ‘as an identification’ where the Once Fred regresses to the imaginary order in memories not only subject is transformed by their image in the mirror.8 At birth, the in- does he view himself as an ideal person, but everybody around him is fant’s body is incapable of surviving on its own in the world and de- also perfectly situated. While Fred is middle-aged, tired and moody, pends on other people to look after it. During the early part of an in- Pete Dayton is young, healthy and good looking. Pete is the ultimate fant’s life, the newborn is unable to separate its own identity from the ideal self for Fred to transform into as he leaves the symbolic order external world around it. It is not until about six months into the in- and enters the imaginary order. fant’s life that it sees its reflection in a mirror and is delighted by the While Fred does not seem to have any friends except for his wife image it sees of itself as total form. The infant falls in love with this Renee, whom he suspects is having an affair, Pete is surrounded by image of its wholeness.9 The reflected image is what the infant identi- loyal friends, caring parents, and a devoted girlfriend. When Pete’s fies as the ‘I’.10 friends turn up to take him out, Lynch plays on the audience’s expec- ‘The mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible tations of an over-cautious parent trying to restrict their children hav- world’, but this is an imaginary image of wholeness since the infant is ing a good time. However when Pete announces he is going out, Bill, still partly dependent on other people to survive.11 However this im- his father, becomes every teenager’s dream father by enthusiastically aginary mastery of the body anticipates the later biological mastery. responding ‘Do ya good’. Fred is experiencing sexual problems - when This initial imaginary anticipation will mark the infant’s future rela- he tries to make love to Renee he collapses and sobs out of frustration tion with reality. This is essentially a process of alienation: the infant and embarrassment. However Pete’s girlfriend Sheila is not only at- realises that its ideal imaginary self is separate from who it really is. tractive, patient and doting, but she is also very sexual when Pete wants The ego is formed at this moment when the infant is alienated from her to be, and he has no trouble performing. Fred is a lone musician, but fascinated with its imaginary image.12 while Pete is a car mechanic. Pete’s boss and workmates are friendly Through the relationship between the subject and reality that is and Mr Eddy is a generous tipper who also fulfils every motorist’s created by the mirror image, there are distortions of the ego’s repre- dream when he beats up a tail-gaiter. The world of Pete Dayton is the sentation of reality since everything has been filtered through a prism ideal world that Fred would desire. But because it exists only in the of inversion.13 The imaginary is the first order that the infant experi- imaginary order, it is unstable, and gradually Pete becomes more and ences. It is formed on the illusion that the ego has autonomy, which more disturbed as elements from Fred’s life in the symbolic order be- the subject aspires to after feeling helpless, incomplete and insuffi- gin intruding. cient.14 The conflict between the actual fragmented self and the im- Because the imaginary is false it will eventually collapse leaving aginary unified body creates rivalry between the imaginary body and the individual in a crisis of identity like Fred experiences. The subject the actual self. This conflict also affects the way the subject identifies can only be understood as existing in a series of unstable tensions. with other human beings. Since the infant first discovers itself as an ‘The ego might give a feeling of permanence and stability to the sub- external image, it will also confuse this external image of itself with ject, but this is an illusion’.20 In Fred’s case the imaginary world of the images of other subjects.15 Hence the infant not only defines itself Pete collapses because the real begins to intrude due to Fred’s feeling from its own mirror image, but by the actions and behaviour of other towards his wife Renee. In the imaginary world Renee is represented subjects around it. by Alice Wakefield who is identical to Renee but her features, such as Fred suffers from this ‘paranoiac alienation’ since he misinterprets her blonde hair, are emphasised to make her appear like a classic femme his self with his reflected image, and his reflected image with the im- fatale. Lynch deliberately sets her up this way because Fred is suspi- age of the other.16 The result is that he perceives the external world to cious and blames Renee for all his problems in the same way the femme be an extension of his mind. Hence the house he lives in is a physical fatales in film noir have traditionally been accused of bringing about manifestation of his consciousness. During the party scene the Mys- the downfall of the male characters. tery Man claims to have been invited inside Fred’s house; he is cor- The relationship Pete has with Alice is the imaginary version of rect, since he represents the evil and violence that Fred has invited Fred’s actual relationship with Renee. Alice is blamed for the destruc- into his thoughts. The meeting between Fred and the Mystery Man tion of Pete’s ideal world. It is she who seduces him, which results in coincides with Fred’s first impressions of Andy who flirts with Renee, Sheila, his ideal girlfriend, leaving him and his being exposed to the which Fred assumes is proof that Andy is sleeping with Renee. The violent and seedy underworld of Mr Eddy. The things that Fred sus- Mystery Man also claims to have met Fred before which alludes to pected Renee of are actually done by Alice. Fred’s murder of Dick Laurent, which happens later in real time but During the first section of Lost Highway Fred briefly enters the earlier in film time. imaginary world and pictures Renee and Andy sneaking out of his The mirror stage ends once the subject contains the imaginary or- jazz club together. When Fred actually meets Andy, and takes an obvi- der as their counterpart, as well as the ‘primordial jealousy’ that re- ous dislike to him, Fred interrogates Renee about him. She innocently sults from displacing the ego onto the other.17 The imaginary order, or answers that they are friends and he once offered her a job, the details ego, leaves the individual with an ideal self that believes itself to be of which she cannot remember. When Pete asks Alice the same ques-

48 • Metro Magazine 118 the mirror maze, which is smashed, cre- ating more mirrors, is another clue to Michael’s entry into the imaginary. When he encounters Elsa her appearance and voice is exaggerated to make her appear totally evil and manipulative, in contrast to how she appears during the rest of the film. Like Alice, these traits have been projected onto her by Michael. While Gilda is a portrayal of men ac- cusing women for crimes they are not guilty of, The Lady From Shanghai and Lost Highway subjectively reveal to the audience how these women are con- structed in the imaginary world of the male characters. While Gilda escapes unharmed, Elsa and Alice/Renee are murdered, falsely accused by deranged tion she answers the same way, but then elaborates that the job in- men. volved prostitution and pornography. Hence in the imaginary world Fred’s possessive behaviour towards Renee can be understood by Alice/Renee conforms to Fred’s wild suspicions about her. When Alice Lacan’s notion of the phallus in relation to the Oedipus Complex. Lacan tells Pete about her first experience with Mr Eddy, who in the imagi- advanced Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex by introducing the nary world is in charge of the pornography industry, the film flashes notion of the Name of the Father. Rather than the infant viewing the back to show a visual representation of what happened. Although Alice women as literally castrated and hence lacking, the infant sees the tells the story, Pete/Fred has visualised it according to his imagined woman as subordinate to the father because she possesses the father’s ideal of what happened. In the flashback Alice is threatened at gun phallus, symbolised by the social institution of marriage. Hence the point to strip and then perform oral sex on Mr Eddy. As the scene mother carries the Name of the Father which gives her the father’s progresses she begins to enjoy it, a fact Pete confirms with her after- authority over the infant as well as accounting for the father’s author- wards. The image of Alice enjoying violent sexual abuse could only ity over her.23 come from Fred’s deranged imagination. The Name of the Father is a symbol of authority that is repre- Alice, both dangerous and desirable to men, comes from a long sented in the symbolic and makes the symbolic possible since it pos- line of femme fatales who have been blamed for destroying the lives sess all the agencies that places restrictions on the infant’s desire, such of the male heroes of film noir. Lost Highway, like some films noir as the threat of castration as punishment for infringements of the law. before it, critiques this view that women cause the problems and the It is an essential point of anchorage for the subject, without which downfall of men. Alice’s make-up and costume, and the way Lynch there is a hole in the symbolic universe.24 Without the presence of the frames her, are all reminiscent of Rita Hayworth’s character Elsa in Name of the Father, the subject wants to be the father and hence pos- The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1948). Both Alice and Elsa sesses a woman to replace the mother figure and keep her in chains. have the fluorescent blonde hair and the pin-up girl wardrobe; they This phallic uncertainty is a disturbed, but common, state of mind that pose as if in an advertisement pandering to the male gaze.21 Both Welles leads to misogyny, which leads to sexual violence.25 and Lynch are using exaggerated representations of the femme fatale Fred is lacking the authority of the Name of the Father, hence he is to comment on the male construction of women, Lynch more explic- obsessed with totally possessing Renee, and will react violently to- itly so since Alice is literally Fred’s imagined ideal of Renee. wards her or anybody else who threatens his authority over her. Her Like Lynch, Welles portrays the deceitfulness of the femme fatale friendship with Andy upsets him so that, as Pete in the imaginary or- as something imagined by the male hero. Lucilla Albano argues that der, Andy is killed by them both. In the symbolic order Fred actually Elsa is a guilty character, which suggests that the character Rita kills Renee and Dick Laurent, the man she has an affair with. It is safe Hayworth plays in Gilda (Charles Vidor 1946) is also guilty. Welles to assume that Renee actually has an affair with Laurent since we see incorporates deliberate references to Gilda in The Lady From Shang- them having sex when Fred has transformed back to the symbolic. hai: he uses the same lead actress, the same song, “Amado mio”, and However Laurent is just an ordinary guy who was a mutual friend of the same interplay between appearance and reality.22 However, Welles’ Renee and Andy’s, as opposed to Mr Eddy, the over-the-top pornogra- references to Gilda seem more likely to achieve the opposite effect of pher, crime lord, who acts as a father figure for Pete during the film’s that film. By drawing on the audience’s knowledge that Gilda was an imaginary phase. unusual femme fatale because she was innocent, he implies Elsa is The lack of the Name of the Father in the psychotic subject ex- also innocent. Like Lost Highway, The Lady From Shanghai is filmed poses them to endless encounters with the real. It lies beyond the sym- subjectively from the point of view of the male hero, Michael. To- bolic order and hence is always foreign to them as well as being the wards the end of The Lady From Shanghai as Michael becomes para- most forceful element in their world. The hole in the symbolic order noid and delirious, his external reality changes into a fun-house to created by the absence of the Name of the Father releases voices and represent his departure from the symbolic order into the imaginary hallucinations from the real.26 The real in Lost Highway is represented order. Like Fred transforming into Pete, Michael entering the fun-house by the Mystery Man who is an ‘essential object which isn’t an object is a representation of the imaginary order taking over. The presence of any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and

Metro Magazine 118 • 49 the symbolic order that lets the real come through to haunt him. It is of course the Mystery Man who has a video camera, and films both mur- ders. Fred relives his murder of Laurent and literally tells himself what has happened over his intercom, but he has still not faced the reality of his wife’s murder. Lynch uses the thematic and stylistic conventions of film noir to critique male dominance over women and the tradi- tional image of assertive women as dangerous femme fatales who threaten society. In Lost Highway, it is in fact misogynist men like Fred who, in their attempts to possess women, threaten civilisation. The film ends with Fred physically in his cell, but mentally hurtling all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence’.27 When Pete down the dark highway of lost identity. is making love to Alice and she says to him ‘You’ll never have me’, the imaginary world of him possessing her and Fred is thrust back into Originally published in Apocalypse Whenever, The University of the symbolic. The imaginary has been torn away, exposing Fred in his Melbourne, 1997. isolation to the rest of the world, exposing the world as something ‘originally, inaugurally, profoundly wounded’.28 Fred is left in the real Endnotes order that falls outside of the imaginary, but cannot be labelled or nomi- 1 Malcolm Bowie, “Symbolic, Imaginary, Real and True”, Lacan, Harvard University nated either and therefore falls outside the symbolic order. Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp.111-112. The Mystery Man represents the real because he is the violence 2 ibid. p.92. and inspiration for the murders that Fred will commit. Although these 3 ibid. pp.92-93. drives are part of Fred - the Mystery Man is Fred - such desires are 4 ibid. p.94. alien and horrifying to him. Murder is not something he has come to 5 Jacques Lacan, “Tuche And Automaton”, The Four Fundamental Concepts Of terms with in the symbolic order, nor is it something he imagines. Psycho-Analysis, The Hogarth Press, London, 1977, p.55. When Pete does accidentally kill Andy in the imaginary order, he suf- 6 Bowie, op. cit. p.99. fers a disturbing hallucination of Renee and Laurent, whom he has 7 ibid. p.103. killed as Fred. In the imaginary order Pete has not committed Fred’s 8 Jacques Lacan, “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in crimes, so that when Pete encounters violence he is horrified, just as psychoanalytic experience”, Ecrits: A Selection, W.W. Norton & Company, New he is when he receives the imagined phone call from Mr Eddy and the York, 1977, p.2. Mystery Man. While the imaginary order has constructed Dick Laurent 9 Bice Benvenuto & Roger Kennedy, “The Mirror Stage, (1936)”, The Works Of Jacques Lacan, Free Association Books, London, 1986, p.54. as the horrific Mr Eddy, and hence taken away the guilt that Fred has for killing him, the Mystery Man appears as an unstable element from 10 John Muller & William Richardson, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”, Lacan And Language: A the real order. After Pete speaks to the Mystery Man, his imaginary Reader’s Guide to Ecrits, International Universities Press, New York, 1982, p.29. world begins to disintegrate. His parents literally disappear, later he 11 Lacan, “The mirror stage”, op. cit. p.3. has the hallucination in Andy’s house, and finally he returns to the 12 Benvenuto & Kennedy, op. cit. p.55. symbolic order as Fred. 13 Muller & Richardson, op. cit. p.31. The symbolic order of the final part of the film is firmly grounded in the intrusion of the real embodied by the Mystery Man. The Mys- 14 Benvenuto & Kennedy, op. cit. p.56. tery Man appears in the first part of the film during Andy’s party and 15 Muller & Richardson, op. cit. p.31. as a vision after Fred had unsuccessfully attempted to make love to 16 ibid. p.33. Renee, indicating that Fred had already killed Laurent, but was in de- 17 Lacan, “The mirror stage”, op. cit. p.5. nial. In the last section of the film Fred has come to grips with the fact 18 Benvenuto & Kennedy, op. cit. p.60. that he has killed Laurent. He was unable to escape from his guilt in 19 Muller & Richardson, op. cit. p.34. the imaginary order of Pete Dayton, so he has projected his violence 20 Benvenuto & Kennedy, op. cit. p.62. onto the Mystery Man. The Mystery Man hands Fred the knife that 21 J.P. Telotte, “Narration, Desire and The Lady From Shanghai”, Voices In The Dark: cuts Laurent’s throat and then actually shoots him dead. After the cam- The Narrative Patterns Of Film Noir, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1989, era pauses on Laurent’s dead body it returns to the shot of Fred and the p.67. Mystery Man, except the Mystery Man has now disappeared and it is 22 Lucilla Albano, “The Accessibility of the Text: An Analysis of The Lady From Fred holding the smoking pistol. This direct link allows the audience Shanghai”, Off Screen: Women & Film In Italy, (eds) Guiliana Bruno and Maria Nadotti, Routledge, London, 1988, p.130. to assume that Fred also killed Renee. In the scene preceding the dis- 23 Elizabeth Grosz, “Sexuality and the Symbolic Order”, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist covery of her death, Fred disappears into the darkness of their house, Introduction, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990, pp.70-71. but emerges as two shadows that move towards her bedroom, one 24 Bowie, op. cit. p.108. shadow belonging to Fred, the other belonging to the Mystery Man as 25 Stephen Frosh, “Masculine Mastery and Fantasy, Or the Meaning of the Phallus”, the embodiment of Fred’s violence. Psychoanalysis In Contexts: Paths Between Theory And Modern Culture, (eds) Lost Highway is essentially a story about a man who kills his wife Anthony Elliott & Stephen Frosh, Routledge, London, 1995, p.187. and her lover, is sent to jail and spends the rest of the film trying to 26 Bowie, op. cit. pp.109-110. deny the act. Fred’s retreat into the imaginary order of Pete is fore- 27 Jacques Lacan, “The Dream of Irma’s Injection (Conclusion)”, The Seminar of shadowed by his statement about not liking video cameras because he Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego In Freud’s Theory And In The Technique Of likes to remember things his own way ‘not necessarily the way they Psychoanalysis 1954-1955, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p.164. happened’. His destruction of the Name of the Father leaves a hole in 28 ibid. p.167.

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