This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Out of the past reading Lacan and film noir Tyrer, Ben Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 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OUT OF THE PAST: READING LACAN AND FILM NOIR Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at King’s College London by Ben Tyrer Department of Film Studies King’s College London September 2011 1 Abstract This project proposes a new reading of the constitution of the critical category of film noir in terms of Lacan’s theorisation of the retroactive construction of meaning. The thesis contends that, despite a turn away from Lacan in Film Studies, psychoanalytic theory must not be abandoned and – rather than regressing to questions of film, language and psychoanalysis articulated in the 1970s (Metz, Screen) – aims to plot a new trajectory, alongside theorists such as McGowan and Žižek, for such inquiry into the cinema. The relationship between psychoanalysis and noir is itself well-trodden ground; however, the major interventions (Kaplan, Krutnik) have been oriented towards questions of gender, leaving unexplored the possibility of noir’s relation to Lacan’s theory of signification. Specifically, this thesis engages the historiography of film noir (Naremore, Vernet, Elsaesser) with Lacan’s theory of the point de capiton to work through the implications for a theory of discursive construction suggested by the registers of the Symbolic, Real and Imaginary. This thesis engages film and theory to discover not simply what Lacan can reveal about noir but crucially what noir can reveal about the structure of meaning. The project also explores various noir tropes as they raise theoretical questions: of particular interest are films such as Double Indemnity (1944) and D.O.A. (1950) that are concerned with the retroactive production of knowledge. In addition, the roles of contingency and necessity in such a relationship to the past are investigated, and both the ontology of noir as a category and the structures of film noir narratives – such as Gilda (1946) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – are explored in terms of the Lacanian theory of sets and concepts such as lalangue and suture; an extended reading of The Maltese Falcon (1941) explores the Lacanian notion of fiction; and the idea of noir as genre is understood in terms of the function of the master signifier. 2 Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................................................page 6 List of Abbreviations................................................................................................page 7 A Note on Terminology..........................................................................................page 10 Introduction: Into the Past/Out of the Past..............................................................page 11 1. Film Noir/Film Theory/Psychoanalysis: Parallel Histories....................page 13 2. Contra Lacan...........................................................................................page 19 3. In Defence of a Lost Cause?...................................................................page 22 4. Theorising Noir.......................................................................................page 26 5. Lacan and Noir: Encore..........................................................................page 29 Chapter 1. Film Noir as Point de Capiton: Retroactive Temporality and Symbolic Structure..................................................................................................................page 41 1. Noir and Retroactivity.............................................................................page 41 2. Psychoanalysis and Retroactivity............................................................page 51 3. The Point de Capiton..............................................................................page 58 4. The Noir Category and the Point de Capiton.........................................page 67 5. Double Indemnity, the Graph of Desire, Metalepsis...............................page 75 6. Gilda, The Killers, and the Meaning of the Letter..................................page 83 Chapter 2. Film Noir Doesn’t Exist: Impossibility, Definition and the Point of Failure.....................................................................................................................page 91 3 1. Tuché, Automaton and Noir Narrative………………………………...page 91 2. The Fault in the Noir Universe.............................................................page 103 3. The Lack in the Critical Other..............................................................page 116 4. Approaching the Real (Encore)............................................................page 126 5. The Set of “Woman”.............................................................................page 135 6. A Topology of Noir (I)..........................................................................page 144 Chapter 3. The Boundaries and Meaning of Noir: Suture, Metaphor and the Historical Imaginary..............................................................................................................page 154 1. The Set of Man......................................................................................page 154 2. A Topology of Noir (II)........................................................................page 164 3. Film Noir and the Historical Imaginary................................................page 176 4. The Noir Metaphor……………………………………………………page 189 5. The Noir Point de Capiton (Reprise)……………………..…………..page 200 Chapter 4. The Idea of Noir: Narrative, Signifier, Genre.....................................page 210 1. Open Endings, Sutured Narratives: Tying Up Loose Ends..................page 210 2. The Maltese Falcon = √-1.....................................................................page 223 3. The Necessary Fiction of Noir..............................................................page 237 4. Neo-Noir, Genre and the Master Signifier............................................page 258 The Moment of Concluding..................................................................................page 272 Appendix 1............................................................................................................page 288 4 Appendix 2............................................................................................................page 290 Filmography..........................................................................................................page 291 Bibliography..........................................................................................................page 296 5 Acknowledgements To Sarah Cooper, whose unending support and infinite patience helped bring this project into the world. To Hector Kollias, for reminding me that Lacanians squabbling are “like dogs pissing in the street”. To Ginette Vincendeau, in whose undergraduate class on noir the idea for this project first