A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Pretty Woman Essay -- Movie Film Essays

A Psychoanalytic abbreviation of jolly WomanIn the introduction to his hold, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek acquaints readers with his books tripartite aim. He plans, among other things, to illustrate concepts fundamental to Lacanian analytic thinking an intention which will serve to further his more ambitious finish to re meetualize Hegelian dialectics by giving it a rising reading in the light of Lacanian psychoanalysis and to contribute to the possibility of ideology via a new reading of some well-known classical motifs (7). In this broad kinsfolk of classical motifs associated with the theory of ideology, I have isolated both fetishism and the commodity-form and intend to briefly illustrate some of these concepts against the backdrop of the movie Pretty Woman -- a popular rags-to-riches romantic comedy from 1990. Looking by means of the prism of Lacan and Marx, Zizek brands us as fetishists in practice, not in theory he posits that we do not know or we m isrecognize the fact that in our social reality itself, in our social activity in the act of commodity exchange we are guided by the fetishistic illusion (31). Amidst this sermon on ideology, Zizek highlights atomic number 53 of the most significant differences between Marx and Lacan In the preponderating Marxist perspective the ideological regard is a partial gaze overlooking the totality of social relations, whereas in the Lacanian perspective ideology earlier designates a totality set on effacing the traces of its own impossibility. (49) This difference corresponds to the one that distinguishes the Marxian from the Freudian notion of fetishism In the former, a fetish conceals the domineering network of social relations, whereas in the latter a fet... ...difficult to let go of something so beautiful. The movie is jam-packed full of such desirable somethings -- potentially fetishized objects which characters accustom in an effort to compensate for a lack in their lives cash, a silver Lotus, clothes from Rodeo Drive, a personal jet, the kill of a hateful takeover, or the company of a beautiful woman. In the movies conclusion, Edward does go by dint of with the jewelry-return he does not leave behind the ruby-haired Vivian, though, and the audience receives their happy ending perhaps a fetish in its own right. Works CitedThe profit Movie Database Ltd. (An Amazon.com company.) http//us.imdb.com Accessed 11 November 1998. Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall. With Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Touchstone, 1990. Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London Verso, 1989.