Unmaking the remake: Lacanian psychoanalysis, Deleuzian logic, and the problem of repetition in Hollywood cinema

Repetition is inherent to cinema. From the complex interweaving of genre cycles and<br/>Hollywood stars to the elementary mechanism of film projection (twenty-four times per<br/>second): cinema is repetition. It is perhaps little wonder then that psychoanalysis is often<br/>thought of as one of the discourses with which to write about film in the 20th century.<br/>However, this thesis problematises both cinematic repetition and psychoanalytic film theory,<br/>stressing that each is haunted by a spectre: the remake, and the film-philosophy of Gilles<br/>Deleuze, respectively. Despite its critical opprobrium, I explore the remake not only as a<br/>viable object of cinematic scholarship, but one necessary in moving past the impasse of film<br/>studies identified by Timothy Corrigan (1991) as ‘historical hysteria’. My research turns to<br/>Deleuzian film theory as a counterpart, rather than replacement, of the predominant Lacanian<br/>model. This is, however, neither a defence of the remake nor of psychoanalysis, but, rather, an<br/>attempt to submit both to a radical reassessment that, as Lacan says, aims at giving you a<br/>‘kick up the arse’ (1998:49).<br/><br/>Eschewing the ‘example’ as a remnant of film theory’s current collapse in form, I suggest two<br/>‘case studies’ for consideration, augmented by a cache of film references: (1) Gus Van Sant’s<br/>shot-for-shot remake (1998) of Alfred Hitchcock’s original Psycho (1960) as a ‘symptom’ of<br/>Hollywood’s self-cannibalisation; and (2) George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (1993), a<br/>Hollywood ‘auto-remake’ of his own Dutch original, Spoorloos (1988), as a ‘fetish’ of<br/>Hollywood’s desire in the European ‘Other’. Rather than expose Deleuze to a Lacanian<br/>framework I subject the one to a reading of the other in a möbius relation, turning them<br/>inside-out, so to speak. Mediating these two thinkers is Slavoj Žižek, a cultural theorist whose<br/>own ‘filmosophy’ is revealed from amongst his often frenetic writings. In so doing, I expose a<br/>dark underside to Hollywood repetition, one which provides some new tools for<br/>understanding the popularity of cinema’s most critically neglected discourse.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Southampton

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Varndell, Dan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Williams, Linda Ruth