The following discussion will largely cite the ideas in this paper
"Bite by despair, my corpse. If the wait is too long, I'll have to be buried... bleak, pale, lonely." "I'm afraid of many things. Birds, storms, elevators, injections. Now, my mind is full It's all about the fear of death." After watching the film, we will find that Cleo, the heroine, is in a mood of anxiety and fear almost all the time, which is largely derived from death, or Yes, the "absence of existence" of man, so I will cite Sartre and Lacan's point of view on the occurrence of anxiety and the subject, and try to interpret Cleo's emotions in the film.
In the history of Western philosophy, emotion is often regarded as irrational, and irrational is marginalized by mainstream philosophy. It was not given meaning until after Kierkegaard, and when existentialism reached a height of human existence. In Kierkegaard's view, emotions (such as anxiety) are more prioritized than rationality. We can see from his three stages of life, the jumps in life, and his choices that Kierkegaard's philosophy is right and wrong. In Heidegger's view, in Being and Time, he defines anxiety as the basic modality of this being in the world, and this "anxiety in the face of death is the very essence of Dasein itself, The unconditional, unsurpassed anxiety that can be faced".
Sartre inherited the teachings of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. In Sartre's "Outline of the Theory of Emotions", he called "the sudden fall of consciousness into something magical and called emotion", the relationship between consciousness and the world There will also be drastic changes in the whole that will be accompanied by the generation of emotions. In Being and Nothingness, he goes a step further and clearly highlights the status of anxiety as the basic emotion of human existence. Anxiety is related to the absence of existence, that is, anxiety becomes anxiety in the face of nothingness itself, and people will become conscious in anxiety. to its freedom.
In the movie, we can see Cleo's anxiety about death, that is, the impending absence of existence. Anxiety has become the basic state of Cleo's existence, because for the first time she faces nothingness itself, and we can also feel her "Consciousness suddenly fell to something magical", she began to worry about its existence, in the film footage, it was shown as the extensive use of mirrors and reflections, these mirrors can be understood as the reality and future existence of Cleo's present, Dasein Nothingness can also be understood as a means to highlight his anxiety, but there is no doubt that Cleo is experiencing the sense of nothingness and the unreality of existence described by Sartre. So she began to realize her freedom and began to rebel against the life before, before, as a radio singer, Cleo lived in the male gaze wherever and whenever, "beautiful butterfly, don't fly away", this is Cleo's understanding of herself is just a beautiful specimen made by men, but after experiencing anxiety, she began to wake up and rebel against her first boyfriend, the boy who composed the music for her, and her consciousness changed dramatically. The changes in her life, the lack of existence and emotional anxiety make her pay more attention to herself and her freedom, so she can meet the "returning veteran" who really brings her happiness.
mirrors in movies
Lacan does not define anxiety as being in the face of nothingness as Sartre did in Being and Nothingness, but does the opposite and understands anxiety as anxiety in the face of the absence of this nothingness. In other words, in Lacan's view, what is really worrying is not nothingness, but where there should be nothingness and absence, a certain "uninvited guest" suddenly appeared, and the vacancy itself, which was originally the fulcrum of human existence, was occupied. In the movie, we can also find this "uninvited guest", that is, cancer, the continuation of the existence that should remain empty, but cancer appears, and people suddenly find that their own unnoticed existence is itself occupied, so Clay Ao started to worry.
Freud was the first to discover his anxiety and the above-mentioned surprise in the face of "uninvited guests." Freud stated: "And there is no doubt that it belongs to that which induces panic, anxiety and fear, and it is equally certain that the word is not always used in a well-defined sense at the same time, so that it is In most cases it basically coincides with what is causing the anxiety." So, what makes what was once familiar and intimate become anxious and surprising? Freud thought that there was repression, and the return of the repressed. If something in everyday life inadvertently evokes the corresponding repressed in the unconscious and makes it suddenly appear in consciousness, then this unexpected return and inappropriateness of the repressed in conscious mental life accompany it. The over-presence of , the familiar everyday things become the strange things that can cause anxiety.
In the movie, this feeling of "surprise" is expressed as a novelty to this world and a resistance to this world. This kind of long-term repression that is not realized by people will inevitably lead to extremely strong impulses. The performance in the film is to get rid of the long-term control of the assistant, to get rid of the boyfriend's repression, and to get rid of the emotions of the two men who wrote the song. the draining, the consumption of it. These two made Cleo finally feel the vanity and coaching of the individual, so she stayed away from these "strange things" and turned to female friends who could truly relax her, and finally met her that would make her happy and forget her own existence. the "soldier"
Lacan always emphasizes the acquired experience of the absence of being, and regards this absence of being as the source of desire. In Lacan's view, on the one hand, the experience of anxiety witnesses the subject's ** in the face of the capitalized Other, that is, the trauma and absence of the subject's existence; a”, that is, the object that initially brought pleasure but was forced to cede—forces the subject of desire to face the lack of its existence, and strongly pushes the subject of desire to continue to maintain its desire and existence in the absence of its existence. In the last 30 minutes of the film, the "soldier" who is able to speak and speak is always with Cleo, and together with her face the final diagnosis. In my opinion, the "soldier" has largely become a projection of Cleo's "object a". She felt in the "soldier" the desire that has been suppressed for a long time in the past, and her past has been affected by various This intertwined desire and power controls, but now that she feels her original desire, the trauma is over, the truth is no longer important, she finally confronts her anxiety and ends the film in the tumbling of desire.
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