Slavoj Žižek, Film Theory, Masturbation, and Casablanca

Slavoj Žižek,
Film Theory,
Masturbation,

and Casablanca

In the stunningly brilliant comic book analysis comic book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud proposed that the "grammar" of sequential-art was the "phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole" or "closure." What he meant to posit with this slightly obscure additive is that if the visual signs and cues within the panels amount to a comic's "vocabulary", than the way we put all those separate panels together into a single story or narrative stream is a comic's "grammar." McCloud further proposes that the space between each panel - known as "the gutter" - is instrumental to this grammatical structure.

What the gutter does for comics is excite the imagination and the intellect in order to create assumptions, based on what we understand of the world as well as the specific comic book world in question, that help us reach a sort of closure. The gutter is a both a literal and non-literal gap. On the pages, the gutter is an empty space that distinguishes independent panels. However, in the language of comics, the gutter is a spatial, temporal, perspective, and philosophical gap. It challenges us to decide where the narrative is trying to take us, or perhaps, where we would like it to take us [1].

This is why I always felt that "the gutter" was a perfectly ingenious title: the gap between each panel must ultimately be filled with and satisf ied by our imaginations. It's the dark, obstructed pathway of the underground sewage, filth collected by the torrential rains from above, violently churning dead rats mummified in yesterday's headlines. Potentially, we could impose any number or degree of our own fantasies into a comic book world, and that is despite the artist's intended narrative stream. Of course, the artist is aware of our conditioning and realizes that if he wants to express a coherent story of singularity, he must encode his work with instructions.

McCloud briefly acknowledges the similar role of closure in the filmic arts, however he describes the act of connecting the gaps as more or less seamless: "in movies, our minds effortlessly connect each frame to those preceding and fo llowing it." Largely, this is true. The frames of a film are abundant and, at the same time, invisible due to the speed at which they are projected and then discarded (and then projected) onto the same space. Still, the sort of conscious and active engagement involved in reading a comic is not entirely absent in the grammer of cinema (as any movie-goer should realize).

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek presents to us a very specific case of this active engagement: In the Hollywood classic Casablanca, leads Bogart and Bergman are seen in a passionate embrace. The film fades out and into a shot of the Casablanca tower. After about three or so seconds, it cuts back to Bogart and Bergman, apparently continuing their conversation. There are multiple signs which seem to suggest contradictory conclusions. On one hand, it appears obvious that the three second gap was actually a much longer (or not so much longer, circumstantially) period of fucking (or love making). Bogart smokes a cigarette; further, who can argue with the phallic symbology of the Casablanca tower? Yet, on the other hand, the three seconds could be literal in that it appears the same exact conversation is continuing. This is not a simple case of censorship. This is, arguably, a case of the author exciting our repression, while, inversely condemning the idea (by means of already established social institution).

Somehow, there is a perversion here that exceeds even that of explicit fucking. When an author shows two people fucking, the audience is compelled to engage in that specific narrative. So, we think about fucking. Yet, we are imposed upon by the real purveyor of filth, the artist; we have a scapegoat. But, aha! When an author so masterfully censors his piece to make even the nature of implication (of fucking) ambiguous, the audience is compelled by nothing more than their fantasy. This is when, as Žižek would argue, the true fantastical and masturbatory instance of censored cinema occurs. This is when we engage ourselves at a unique ideological level.

According to Žižek, this is a model for the functioning of ideology itself (specifically that of Hollywood censorship). It enforces, by means of symbolical normative language, an ideal. Yet, at the same time, it must, if it cares to be heard, allow a gutter. An audience is a composite of their fantasies and repressions, and they will, inevitably, be attracted to the dual relationship between the streets above and the sewers below. And, when we're given an opportunity, in film, to consciously and ideologically evaluate a gap, our fantasies have an opportunity to communicate with the screen - and, sometimes, the screen will serve as flooding waters, raising the waves of the sewers below, bringing an odor to the surface that is perversely pristine. This is an opportunity worth much introspection, experimentation, and discourse. This is the active fantastical imagination of the pervert's cinema.