I was up too late again last night. And I watched a rerun of Frasier, back from season 1. Here’s a YouTube clip of the episode:
Around what equates to the 2:30 mark on the video above, I started waxing Lacanian. I don’t think this is anything new, but I’m just gonna make some notes here.
So, first, Lacan posits that, at the point a child (subject) enters into a relationship with language (a system of signification, the Other), something is lost. That something is chiefly jouissance, commonly interpreted as sexual pleasure, but more accurately described as enjoyment. Freud’s pleasure.
So take this scene as a metaphor, like my sleep-deprived brain did. Frasier loses money (and Lacan used money as an example of jouissance in “Position of the Unconscious,” so it’s not that much of a stretch to equate money with jouissance in this scene). What has he been sold in exchange? A fake painting. An empty signifier.
The fact that the presumed painter of this piece decries it as a forgery is also interesting, just because it means that the painting (or signifier) takes on a life of its own, apart from the artist’s original intent (or lack of intent). It becomes, in the context of the episode, a commodity. (yes, I could bring in Zizek and, by extension, Marx, but I have a headache so I’m not gonna do that now. Maybe in a later article.) A signifier. The only thing Frasier (the subject) cares about is the money (jouissance) that was lost.
So, there’s an evolution in this episode: the painting evolves from object (the thing which the subject desires, in this case, standing in for Frasier’s desire to raise his social standing) to signifier (after it is revealeed as a forgery, it is merely a painting, not the painting), until it is finally accepted–admittedly begrudgingly–as a valid signifier.In the end credits, Frasier hangs the painting, as if it were real. The fact that it is hung in a restroom takes away none of its significance. The painting is still given a place as a painting.And that’s what happens in Lacanian psychology–the signifier never fills the need it was intended to fill, but it still has to take it’s place as what it’s intended to be.
That was as clear as mud. But then, I guess like any good literary theory, it raises more questions than answers.
