Divergent Reveiw: Reading Beatrice/Tris Through Lacan's Mirror Stage

Beatrice at mirror in Abnegation gif

Beatrice gets her hair trimmed the second day of every third month. At that time she may look in the mirror for a minute or so. That's FOUR times a year she gets to see her image in a mirror, from the chest up.

Beatrice at Mirror at Abnegation

Beatrice entering aptitude test room sneaking a look at herself

Tori: What's with Abnegation and mirrors.
Beatrice: We reject vanity.
Tori: Yes, I know. Sit down.

Here's a clip of that scene with commentary by director 
Neil Burger

So now you have seen that she lies in the chair and looks to her left that is a mirror, seeing herself. She gets up, walks over and sees herself standing for the first time - that is 

her entire physical body for the first time, not just from her chest up for a few seconds.

She gestures by raising her right hand as her image mirrors her in the mirror.

Reading through Lacan's Mirror Stage:

This EVENT takes place at six months usually. The mother plays with her baby in front of the mirror as the baby experiences an image that also waves its arms, jiggles its legs, moves in the excitement of its image, before words, before walking, before experiencing any SELF. 

Jacques Lacan

Beatrice - and Tobias and Caleb - have never experienced the Mirror Stage in the development of the SELF - the ego.

Beatrice has experienced herself as not selfless enough for Abnegation. She doesn't fit in. She doesn't belong.

How is it possible to feel or be selfless if you don't have a self.

Caleb fakes it by assuming a false self.

Tobias constructs a self at Dauntless.

A ZEN story:

A student goes to the zen master wanting to lose his ego.

ZEN master: First bring me an ego to lose.

___________________________________________________________________

"This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject." (Lacan ECRITS)

Lacan likens the EVENT to Kohler's Aha! of the ape grasping the stick to get the banana, the beginning moment of intelligence.

The moment as GESTALT!

____________________________________________________________________________

Beatrice has just experienced herself completely in the mirror then looks to her left, where she is multiplied into infinity.

This is an EVENT!

For Beatrice it has never occurred until the Aptitude Test when she experiences the 

EVENT of the Mirror Stage,

which sheds its light on the formation of the I  the Imago that ancient term - as experienced in psychoanalysis. (p.118 Ecrits)

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

Turning to the left she sees herself multiplied into infinity and turning around again multiplied.

And there are multitudes of images of Beatrice. 
To echo the Walt Whitman quote, "I am multitudes." 
That there is no one person you are. There are changes and they can be made.

Turning around behind her to respond to the command "Choose"

Choose (Now we have had 3 Beatrices)

Beatrice says, "Tell me." She doesn't understand. Choose what as she looks at the luscious raw steak and shiny knife on the pedestal surface.
"Choose before it's too late."
And then it is too late as the growling ferocious dog comes at her and she looks at the now empty pedestal tables. She has missed her chance by refusing to choose.

But how can one choose between options if there is no SELF to do the choosing?

Now she must respond to the simulation - aptitude test - with her instincts, responding to what occurs. Trusting herself to choose now since she is alone with the situation in the simulation. Only now does she experience a self that responds instinctively, rather than complying obediently to demands.

As the multiple ferocious dogs get ready to attack multitple Beatrices, Beatrice assumes the position of satyagraha - passivity in the face of violence. At this moment all the multiples disappear and there is just one Beatrice who now responds in multiple ways to the problems in the Simulation. At this moment Beatrice experiences a SELF who chooses, and who chooses instinctively. 
In a few moments Beatrice has embraced the entire Mirror Stage.

In other words we have TWO egos (at least), if you will. Or rather an unexplainable, pre-linguistic core of a bodily and mental and emotional self that has no words to define it. Just a GESTALT. Identity is irrelevant here. And on this "self" is built the social self, our many identifications, our tweaking of it to present ourselves to our world, our presented and performative self to others.

Exiting from the simulation Tori tells her she must trust herself. The test didn't work on her, she is divergent.

She leaves the building and on the way home sees some "factionless" outside rummaging through the dumpsters. A woman is there that she looks at. For the first time Beatrice sees the Other as a person, not a nameless outcast. And the factionless woman turns, knowing that she is not only being looked at, but that Beatrice SEES her, and she feels shame, quietly walking away from her gaze.

At home she will reflect Caleb's questioning of her result in the test by inverting his question,
"What were your results?"
And Caleb smiles.
Beatrice has felt her SELF and its will to know/power
She will continue questioning at the dinner table.

The infant repeats the Mirror Stage up until 18 months and then tires of it. The chimp tires of it almost immediately as the mirror is empty.
Beatrice repeats it during dinner at home as she turns her spoon over and regards her face in the curved reflection of her spoon. 

Lacan discusses the non-verbal, pre-verbal imago as the unalterable core of the self before all social identifications are piled on top of it, obscuring it to our knowing, enabling us to forget it.
And this is where Lacan brings in the concept, that again ancient concept, of
THE DOUBLE. THE SHADOW. The reflection in the mirror

Reading through Baudrillard-LINK Beatrice will encounter her DOUBLE as Tris, when in a life threatening situation, during her fearscape. She is not alienated, as we are, from her DOUBLE, but converses with it as primitive cultures do.
This isn't real.

Returning to Lacan, the SELF in The Mirror Stage begins to repeat and to imitate others, building up with social identifications a social or second self. Beatrice after entering Dauntless begins by observing how others are running down the stairs, climbing to the platform, getting on the train, jumping off onto the roof.
Copying the others.

And then comes the moment, the EVENT for Beatrice. 

Eric: Who's it gonna be?
Beatrice: Me.

And Beatrice climbs clumsily up on the ledge, gathers her courage, and she jumps first.
Upon landing in the net, Four lifting her out and suggesting a new name, she becomes 
TRIS

She has condensed the Mirror Stage into 2 days.
She now begins the journey of building a social self in Dauntless where she will meet her Double a number of times.
First in warning in fearscapes, then in joy as she "flies" down the zipline and sees herself reflected in the windows of the buildings, 

lastly when expecting to be shot, in acquiescence, at her moment of impending death. The Double appears at the moment of Death. Her Double is silent as she looks at her reflection in a puddle of water as Narcissus did.

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that psychoanalysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

William Burroughs Naked Lunch: Review of David Cronenberg's Film Plus+++

The film:

Burroughs NYC apartment in the 50's copies the exact colors of places like this at this time. The particular shade of green used on walls, hallways, countertops, almost brings back the smell of them. The dull browns of peeling wallpaper, the dirty cream of window moldings and doors locates that pervasive depression one experienced in these spaces.  And yet the slanting light of an afternoon sun in winter along the wall makes you catch your breath with its beauty. You are looking at an Edward Hopper painting.

This is due to his cinematographer,

Peter Suschitzky 

with whom he has worked since the 80's. It seems once Cronenberg has worked with someone, that someone becomes a permanent member of his support crew, and if an actor or actress,  becomes a focus for Cronenberg's artistic plans for the future. Cronenberg has said a number of times that an actor or actress has become someone he wishes to work with and has found his own screenplay reveals his interest in that person in a particular part.

For the reasonably minor but important role of Kiki (Joseph Scorsiani) in Naked Lunch, actors from all over the world were considered and then he found Kiki   right at home in Toronto. Such a nuanced face and body movement for the queer Arab young man, breathtaking. Not until John Lone does M. Butterfly for Cronenberg will we see the like. That a director takes such artistic interest in just the right person for a minor role illuminates his choice of Rob Pattinson for the role of Eric Packer in his upcoming Cosmopolis. He has not chosen Pattinson for his huge media splash, but for deeper artistic reasons beyond his beautiful face; his seductive intelligence and wit reflected in the camera perhaps? Certainly not as a beautiful prop as Francis Lawrence used him in Water For Elephants.

Judy Davis is a wonder in this film. Her luscious ironic mouth always enhanced by that precise color of red lipstick worn in the 50's. Not the purplish hue of Pink Lightening, but a deep bright outrageous red. But I forget the Revlon name of the color. And listening to Cronenberg's commentary you just know he knew that about that color. Her every nuance is captured: mouth, darting eyes, shifting body language you rarely see, she is so superb that one just knows Cronenberg did not have to utter one word of direction to her, which is the way he prefers to work. He is not an authoritarian director at all. So scrap all of the Scummit Twilight directors of the month from your minds, right here, right now, and I am including Bill Condon, the affable recent one for Breaking Dawn, who is going to get spotlighted by the brilliant distribution politics of juxtaposition with the Bel Ami trailers. See screen shot gifs here. (July 23-11 posting) Thank god I don't have to download them here. They are slow slow slow. Now you are warned. But they are lovely, and make Breaking Dawn look less so.

Paul and Jane Bowles

Characters Ian Holm as Paul Bowles and Judy Davis, who plays Burroughs wife Joan and Jane Bowles incite you to know more about the work of each of them if you don't already. Jane Bowles is an unrecognized genius and fanfic could learn much from her perverse exploration of character in her stories. She is a dark read. A similar to Lovecraft read in fact. And the evil, beautifully evil Julian Sands.

More Julian Sands images from Naked Lunch

Badmouthing CGI Cronenberg turns to puppetry. Burroughs recurring characters, the Mugwumps, Cronenberg's Talking Typewriters are real, the actors can relate to them, as they cannot to a green screen. The Arabic tyewriter feels like a precursor of eXistenz's (1999) Module. The Mugwumps (youtube link) are so beautifully detailed that being told only two of them remain makes you want to scream. Preserved and shown as art and auctioned on ebay would bring a hunk of money for the next Cronenberg film. Evidently he disregards the commercial value of his beautiful puppets. They are not used as props as Benjamin and Pirandello deplore, which Francis Lawrence extolls, but are real entities in his films. I could find no gifs and would even upload against my preference to their slow page loading if one were available. But here is one from youtube. Anyone who has ever seen a performance of Bread and Puppets will immediately understand what I just wrote. And damn I forgot to mention the cenipieds.

From Bread and Puppets Web Page

Peter Weller as Burroughs  is as perfect as one can get. He also comments on the commentary and as a Burroughs devotee, asked to play in the film, as did Roy Scheider who plays Dr. Benway. Each person is so perfect a choice, so perfect an actor that no one outshines anyone else. So we see how they got to Cronenberg. Cronenberg has commented in the past how actors come to him when they hear of his projects and how he envisions a particular actor as he begins to work on a project. His casting is personal and artistic and seductive. If you research box office success you will find he does not qualify. If you research awards from his peers and film festivals, he glistens at the top. I think we have the Canadian Film Board to thank for a great deal of his longevity in film. They have been supportive of his work from early on. Contrast that with the emphasis on first weekend box office here in the states and it is obvious why our Hollywood films splash and suck and burn then turn up on the 25 cent yard sale tables. While a Cronenberg film still generates DVD sales, reviewing, references, and accolades in film study programs throughout the world. And on blogs like this.

And it cannot be overlooked how Cronenberg in his screenplay, in just a few sentences in a diner, encapsulates the crucial influence Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg have had on American writers. How does Cronenberg do it!
Well as
a filmmaker, do you want critical acclaim or splash? Very rare to get both. Here's hoping Cosmopolis will do that for Cronenberg.

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