"Kissing Jessica Stein"

“I like the way your hair goes around your head like that.” - a very charismatic blind date in "Kissing Jessica Stein". Reading the New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten, “Online Dating: Sex, Love, and Loneliness”, reminded me of all the reasons why I have never really been keen to online dating. I understand that it is difficult to meet people if you work long hours or you aren't in environments where you would meet new people, but I always felt that dating sites were limiting. Aside from the possibility that people wouldn't be completely honest, you are deciding what types of people you will meet. The sites funnel through people based on silly questions, like what your favorite kind of food is or what color eyes you prefer, and you miss out on everyone else. And there is no guarantee that the types of people you like will like you. I, personally, have been surprised by the types of people who I’ve been attracted to. Sometimes there is no real comprehensive reason for liking a person. If Jessica Stein had joined a dating site, I’m sure she wouldn't have ever gotten the chance to be with Helen because she more than likely would have glanced at Helen’s dating profile and kept moving. People limit themselves to “types” without ever thinking of all of the people that they are missing out on having possible relationships with. Even if people have to work through their differences, they could still experience fulfilling relationships. At the end of Kissing Jessica Stein, for example, both Jessica and Helen remained friends. Even though their relationship had ended, they were happy and they taken something away from the experience. “Kissing Jessica Stein” also made me think about the documentary turned MTV series “Catfish”, a show about people who are not very honest about themselves when they romance others via the internet. When Helen made the ad in the personals, her friend was telling her why it was important to pick a quote and weed through certain types of people (namely those who are unintelligent). Helen was marketing herself based on what she wanted the other person to be like. Although this case isn’t as extreme as the ones in “Catfish”, it makes a very interesting point. We want to see all of our best qualities in the other person. But, what if we don’t actually have these qualities or what if our worst qualities outshine them? Are we being fair to the other person? Are we being fair to ourselves? We all want someone worthy of us, but we don’t think about what it is we have to offer. Prior to the discussions and readings we've done in the first half of this class, love, especially within films and books, seemed esoteric to me. In my mind, things like infidelity, especially extramarital affairs, were black and white. I didn't think that romantic love existed; I considered it glorified lust. I've always been rather cynical. To be honest, I still don’t believe in the concept of romantic love, and I still hold my principal views on many of these things, but I've grown to acknowledge that it’s wiser to adjust to situations because love and desire are much more complex than simply ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It was very interesting to see love within different contexts. It’s nice to have a new framework of thought when I watch or read romantic stories. Even if I disagree with some of the concepts expressed in some of the reading, its advantageous to have those ideas floating around in my mind. I’m really excited for the lecture part of the class because I would like to see the versatility of love.

Annie Ernaux's "Simple Passion"

 

I really enjoyed the narrative of “Simple Passion”. It was frank and honest. Many times, when people speak or write about love or love affairs, they are not very candid. Ernaux mentions that she feels that writing should mirror “the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.” Yet, this is a tall order to fill. It seems as if people are constantly holding back their exact and perhaps indescribable feeling and thoughts. So how do you transform writing into something that evokes the same impressions as sex? Ernaux writes, “I do not wish to explain my passion- that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify- I just want to describe it.” Which she indeed does, but maybe this is a hurdle that many people can’t overcome.

It is easy for people to feel that their thoughts, urges, feelings, and actions- especially in retrospect- were ridiculously uncharacteristic of them and inexplicable. Reading “Simple Passion” made me think about how much better so many stories about love would be if we got to hear the gritty, tumultuous, real emotions of the characters. Not the pretty, “the smell of her hair”, “the color of his eyes”, “I think about him all the time”, “I dream about her every night” drab that is so present in most literature, but the true, unflattering and incomprehensible thoughts of people deep in love. But, I can’t help but wonder if people can ever really escape the face-saving behavior that prevents them from being completely honest with the thoughts and urges going on inside their head when they desire someone. This could be a part of the reason why people fear homosexuality and transexuality or any type of sexuality that isn’t the “norm”. The labels themselves are ways to explain away urges that people don’t want to come to terms with. If people were more honest and open with the complexities of their desires, they might find solidarity in it.

        Ernaux has showed that, as is true with many of the character we read about in class, desire is all consuming. It affected every aspect of her life. But the greatest thing that Ernaux’s story shows is that it was almost entirely self inflicted. I’m starting to think that desire is unlike love in that involves only the self; one single person interacts with the feelings (brought on by another person) within themselves. Yet, having love without desire is like having a car without gas.

"Love, Love, Love" by As Tall As Lions

Lyrics:

Have I ever told you before
I think you're beautiful when you're sleeping?
I have faith you watch me in my slumber, too.
If I'm all that you're looking for,
tell me, why is there a river streaming
down your face?
Sometimes makes me wonder
all about you
love, love, love.

After some time it's something i find true. 
Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.
So many days I was afraid of love.

What if nothing is just that and
suffering's the only thing we're good at?
Dreaming, picture that a whole world in a slumber.
But don't get too attached to the living,
even every single memory's fleeting.
That's a fact, being torn asunder.
But to my surprise, no reason
why, one day I woke up and realized.

After some time it's something i find true. 
Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.
Too many days I was afraid of love, love, love, love, love..

Give it to me,
love, love, love, love.
Give it to me,
love, love, love, love.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.
I'll keep you in my focus with love and affection.

The song starts with the question, “Have I ever told you before I think you're beautiful when you're sleeping?” I always thought that this was interesting because usually when people describe the person they love in songs they talk about the way they do things or the way they move. Here, the singer is admiring his lover in her sleep, but it is more than just her sleeping face that he’s admiring. A person is perfect when they are sleeping because they can be everything that you want them to be, they don't speak or do things that would ruin your image of them. They are just lying there, beautifully.

The very next line of the song is sung in the background, “I have faith you watch me in my slumber, too.”  Because this line is almost hard to catch if you aren't listening closely, the meaning changes slightly here. The singer was very confident in his feelings for his lover, but it seems that his feelings might be somewhat unrequited because he says “I have faith”. He doesn't know for sure whether or not his lover is reciprocating his feelings at the same depth as his. He also uses the word “slumber” which is a much stronger word than sleep. It makes it seem that he is so enraptured with his dreams of her that he isn't just asleep; he is in a deep impenetrable “slumber”, reluctant to wake.

But, further in the song he goes on to say “But to my surprise, no reason why, one day I woke up and realized...”. Eventually, he wakes up from this dream, this fantasy he's had of his lover and the love that they share and begins to see the reality of love. He sings “Love's not a grave, it won't decay on you.” He is saying that love isn't a sorrowful place to visit, like a grave. Past loves shouldn't be seen as something you lock away in a cemetery with the fear that if you don’t it will always haunt you. He realizes that love isn't something to constantly fear even though it can sometimes be a scary thing. 
I really like this song because it asks you to wake up from this fantasy you have of the person you love. If you're in love someone, don't love them from within the safety of your dreams and fantasies because you fear the outcome of your feelings. Just love. "Every single memory's fleeting", so if you don't love them for them as opposed to who you imagine them to be, you will completely lose track of who they actually are.

I think this song speaks to what we've learned from many of the books we've read for class. There were many characters who were afraid of love, or fled from it. There were even characters who refused to see the reality of their relationship and, instead, indulged in their own fantasies. Madame Bovary, for example, was unable to see how uncommitted Rodolphe was in their relationship because she was so caught up in the excitement of the rebelliousness of the affair itself. Ricardo refused to let go of his mysterious fantasy of the Bad Girl, even after meeting her father and learning about her childhood. Many characters seem to fear the reality of the person they love or even having one constant love, as if their feelings will grow to fade or “decay”.

The Bad Girl (Week Two)

Ricardo isn’t all good, in the same way that the Bad Girl isn't all bad. Sure, he always followed  the rules and did what was asked of him, but within the framework of his relationship with the Bad Girl, I don't think he was the saint that his friends make him out to be.He loved passionately, but he also loved selfishly. The roles reversed slightly during the second half of the novel. At the beginning, Ricardo seemed the victim of fate. He was destined to always love a woman who wouldn't love him back. Yet, as the story progressed, I found myself feeling less and less sorry for Ricardo. It was always about him and what the Bad Girl was doing to him and how much he suffered, when there was clearly something wrong within the Bad Girls psyche.There was something not quite right with the Bad Girl from the beginning-- her lies and escapism-- and this was proven when she is hospitalized for the physical and mental abuse that she encountered with Fukuda. Perhaps the most alarming thing about the whole ordeal was that she wanted the relationship that she had with Fukuda. And, although her childhood situation is explained a little at the very end of the story (and we finally find out what happened to her sister!) there are still many aspects of the Bad Girl that are left a mystery.
Ricardo loved the Bad Girl in the best way that he knew how, but there were still some things that the Good Boy did that I found to be, for irony's sake, bad. Whenever he met up with the Bad Girl he had an unrealistic illusion of how she was going to be. He would slip into denial about what kind of person she really was and he'd tell himself that this time things would be different while being paranoid and neurotic the entire time. So, of course she would always disappoint him, always be the bad girl. How could she not? She was always just herself and Ricardo could never learn his lesson.
I found it to be absurd that the doctor had to tell Ricardo not to have sex with the Bad Girl after her operation. Why would you even have to say it?, I thought to myself. Why would Ricardo have sex with someone he treasures who just went through so much sexual trauma? Besides, just a few pages ago he was saying how he doesn't really need sex. Evidently I was wrong. Ricardo did a mediocre job at controlling himself-- he couldn't even wait the entire two months that the doctor recommended, which, if you ask me, isn't close to enough time.
Although the Bad Girl was indeed bad, acknowledging that some of the things that she did to Ricardo were hurting him, there were also things that showed her humanity. Her relationship with Yilal, for example, made the Bad Girl seem almost childlike, innocent and kindhearted. I sincerely believe that many of the Bad Girl's problems originate from a very dark event in her past and that she has very little control over what she is doing, even though she knows that she is hurting Ricardo.
I believed that they truly loved each other, they just didn't seem to know how to give one another the kind of love that they needed. Ricardo wanted to love the Bad Girl tenderly, in his simple husband-wife-stable-family way. The Bad Girl needed more roughness and excitement, perhaps she needed a constant change or challenge to keep her feeling happy and alive.

The Bad Girl (Week One)

Ricardo reminded me of a lesson I learned in my Intro. to Psychology class. If one person in the relationship shows more love or adoration than the other, the relationship won’t work. The other person will feel one of three things: he or she will feel smothered, they will feel inadequate in their abilities to show affection, or they will lose interest in the relationship because their ego has been boosted and they no longer have a reason to stay with that person (they think that they can snag someone better). I think that Lily (or ex-guerrilla fighter, or ex-Madame Arnoux, or ex-Mrs. Richardson, or whoever she is- this aspect of her character reminded me very much of Conchita from "That Obscure Object of Desire") falls into the latter category. She teases Ricardo constantly about the sappy professions of love that he is constantly spewing at her. He seems pathetic to her and this reassures her that if one man can feel this way about her, then surely another (richer) man can also fall in love with her. Because he gives her no challenge, she quickly loses interest in him. Ricardo, on the other hand, loves that she mistreats him. He seems to dwell on her cruel actions, making them into overly dramatic and grossly romantic gestures. But, for Lily, he is simply a safe place to return to after she destroys one relationship after another. And in order to keep him around she gives him sex.

I first thought that Lily was just one of those girls who was so full of herself that she thought that all she had to do was lie there. She acted as if she was gracing him with her presence. She made him wait and beg for her and decided exactly when it was time to oblige. But there is something very odd about her passiveness. Lily, in many ways, likes to stay in control of the situation when it comes to her trysts with Ricardo. She decides where and when they will meet. When he finds her in London, she even pays for the hotel. So it is almost ironic that she would be so passive. It seemed, at first, that she was just being cold. She wanted to keep Ricardo at a distance; she didn't want to give any indication that she loved him. But their affairs, though fragmented, lasted for years at a time and while in London, they began to engage in pillow talk. There is a certain intimacy expressed when Ricardo talks about all of the impassioned conversations they had post-coitus. So I began to feel that her passiveness and coldness was in regards to the act of sex itself.

Ricardo mentions that it is not until after they have had sex many times that it stopped feeling like she was a virgin. She also asks him to perform oral sex on her before intercourse in which she covers her eyes with her arms in concentration. She tunes out everything as if he wasn't there. It seems that sex for her is very detached. Her pleasure is displaced from his (maybe even because of his). His part of the sexual experience acts only as “irrigation”. Which, in and of itself, is a strange choice of words. It gives the sex a sort of peculiar, practical purpose other than the pleasure of connecting two bodies.

Her passivity also acts as a catalyst of his desire. He never really obtains what he really desires- sex with Lily -because during sex, she acts as if she isn't really there.

"Solaris" and "I Am Love"

Solaris:

Solaris had a very interesting concept of desire. When the movie first began, I thought it was going to be a horror flick. The way that the people on the spaceship described the phenomenon made it seem as if there was some type of monster on the ship terrorizing them. I was even more convinced of this when George Clooney’s character, Chris, arrives on the ship only to find dead bodies and the only two people left acting strangely.

I was amused to find that the people on the ship were actually being terrorized by their own desires. The oddest part of the entire situation, in my opinion, was not that the people that they desired most to see were being physically manifested, but the fact that when they were finally able to see these people, they couldn’t handle it.

My favorite line in the movie comes at the beginning when Chris is asked to go to the ship to help. The man in the video says “the obvious solution would be to leave, but none of us want to.” I think that this line speaks to a lot of what we have read about desire in our class. People don’t know what they actually want, and when they think they do, they resort to masochistic measures to obtain it. Even with his wife telling him that she was not human, Chris wanted to be with her. He practically made himself sick trying to keep her alive, and at the end he sacrificed his own life because he didn’t want to leave her. And because he was being told that he couldn't have her, he wanted her more.

On a less dramatic scale, at a party I attended the other day, my friend was talking about her boyfriend, which she does often. She said that for the first time in her life, a boyfriend had denied her sex. My other friend responded, “And that only made you want him more, right?” and she said “Absolutely!” They had immediately started joking that he had denied her with the purpose of making her want him more, but it stuck me how the actions of the people that we desire, even if the actions are insignificant to person doing them, affect us so much. So I guess it is understandable how the significant actions, such as Chris’ wife’s suicide, would change his psyche completely.

I Am Love:
I am going to start off by saying that I love Tilda Swinton. Aside from being an incredibly intelligent person, she has this amazing talent to express more with a simple glance into the camera than most actors can with hundreds of lines. You know exactly who the woman she is portraying is within the first couple of minutes of the movie, as if you had known her beforehand, which works to engross you even more when her character begins a transformation.
I really enjoyed I Am Love because, unlike many books and movies about desire, the desire expressed by Tilda Swinton’s character, Emma, seemed to be more empowering than damning. I think that "I Am Love" is similar to Madame Bovary in that the story is not so much about the act of adultery as it is about the female pursuit of happiness in a patriarchal society. It is not about Emma being a bad person or a good person, but a person; capable of evolution and revolution, restlessness and desire.

In her interview with Charlie Rose, Tilda Swinton mentions that prior to the film Emma is happy, but when Emma sees that her children are changing and transforming into adulthood, she beings to change as well. I think that her change came when she found the letter from her daughter. The letter expresses this deep infatuation that her daughter has with another woman and I think that this impacted Emma greatly. There were hints of her impending change when she was introduced to her son’s girlfriend, but I think that her daughter’s love captivated her more because it was non-traditional, adventurous, and recklessly steadfast. I think that she wanted to emulate the type of love that her daughter had developed. She wanted a love that she could actively participate in, a love that wasn't so stagnant. Antonio offers her this type of love. She is able to express all of the different sides of her personality and culture that she was forced to hide away before.

At one point in the movie, Emma says “‘Happy’ is a word that makes me sad.” But I think she is referring to the facade of happiness that she had become accustomed to wearing, in the same way that she had become accustomed to the name “Emma”. When Edoardo dies, Emma no longer has a reason to keep up the facade or hesitate. His death is all the more reason to enjoy life and chase her desires.

Madame Bovary (Week Two)

Rodolphe’s box called to mind images of Law & Order. Of course Rodolphe isn’t exactly killing anyone, but his box of bloodied handkerchiefs, love letters, garters, masks and hair isn’t exactly dissimilar to what you might find in a serial killer’s house. Well, I suppose he is a serial adulterer. He keeps mementos or souvenirs of the previous women that he has had affairs with and uses the objects to recall memories of them; to reminisce. That also shows how much each women meant to him. To him, their worth equals a little piece of paper that they sent him, or a piece of hair they gave him. When they are all reduced to objects, no one woman stands out from the other.

Rodolphe is a sexual egoist and a narcissist. He prides himself on the fact that when he sets his sights on a woman, like he did Emma, he can have her and that when he is done with her, he can break-off the relationship easily while knowing that she is crying for him. He is also so full of himself that he is convinced that he can control and manipulate every aspect of the relationship to the very end. He even goes so far as to drip water onto the letter he is going to send to Emma to make it seem as if he were crying. He is taking joy in playing his role in a play that he has created for himself. Everything besides the sex (well, maybe even the sex, who knows) was an act and he kept all of these objects as a symbol of a job well done, just like a stage actor might keep a bouquet of roses given to him after a performance.

Yet, I don’t think I dislike Rodolphe as much as I probably should because Flaubert has forced me to really dislike Charles. Part two, chapter eleven was the icing on the cake when it came to Charles’ failures. The entire chapter was dedicated to highlighting the inadequacies of Charles. The fact that he choose to do the surgery knowing full well of his own limitations simply because he was blinded, yet again, by his ignorant love for Emma, is no longer him just being eager to please, but completely negligible. It’s not a very charming quality anymore. His idiocy furthers when he assumes that Emma is upset because of a “nervous illness”.

Now, I no longer feel pity for him because his wife refused to love him. And I no longer feel the slight animosity I felt towards Emma before for being so unhappy. Sure, Rodolphe was insincere towards Emma and used her, but he had those intentions from the very beginning. I think it’s almost worse that Charles is oblivious to how much of a putz he is.

Not only was Charles the only one who didn’t suspect that Emma was having an affair, he allowed her to ruin him financially. Even when he is given chances to take control- for example, when he found out that the piano teacher didn’t know Emma, or when his mother tried to get him to take back power of attorney over the finances, or even when he finds the letter from Rodolphe- he still manages to do nothing. He even lets her stay behind with Leon! At this point he’s not just a pushover anymore. He is laying on the ground and begging people to walk all over him. And when he finally comes to terms with the fact that Emma was unfaithful (which he refuses to do until after she dies), he choses not to blame Emma or Rodolphe, but fate. FATE!

And still, Flaubert took it a step further by making Charles’ death a beautiful scene in the garden. There were rays of light and jasmine perfumed air and shadows cast by vine leaves. It was picturesque. Death was the only thing that he did successfully.

Madame Bovary (Week One)

At the beginning of Flaubert's “Madame Bovary”, I had mistaken the story as being Charles Bovary’s. The reader is introduced to his upbringing, his brief debauchery in early adulthood, and, most importantly, his first marriage.
In the Zizek video we watched in class (“Why be happy when you can be interesting?”), Zizek uses the classic example of a man who dreams of what it would be like if his wife were to disappear or die and he was able to live happily with his mistress. This happens to Charles. He starts to fall in love with Emma and when he really starts to feel the weight of his marriage to a wife he doesn’t really love- POOF- she dies and he is able to propose to Emma. The very same things happens in Nabokov’s Lolita. Humbert Humbert is thinking of ways to get rid of his wife (lolita’s mother) so that he can live happily with Lolita and voilà, she's hit by a car and dies instantly. Zizek says that if the wife actually does leave the picture, there is no such happy ending, which is the case for Humbert, who tells the entire story from death row. But it seems, for the time being, that Charles is happy in his ignorance...
Emma Bovary is suffering from continual doses of reality. She is so caught up in the fictional stories that she had come accustomed to that she doesn’t know how to be content with her life. She had thought, at first, that Charles would be to her what gallant knights were in her stories. But Charles is just a gentle country doctor. He is easy to please and quick to give compliments, which, of course, is not what she wants. Almost as if she were a child, she slips into an excessively long tantrum.
Then Emma thinks that she’s in love with Léon. She uses him to emotionally torture herself. Even Léon has tricked himself into thinking that he doesn’t just want her for her body. But then Léon leaves and she slips back into her perpetual angst which had been momentarily quelled by her delusions about Léon. He leaves town without having had sex with Emma, and then another guy comes around and does have sex with her and she forgets all about Léon, proving that she didn't really love Léon to being with.
Which leads us to Rodolphe. He, for a time, was my favorite character simply because his honesty was a breath of fresh air. After he had met Emma, he was thinking of ways to have sex with her, and then get rid of her. He’s despicable, no doubt, but it was the first time a character didn’t delude themselves into thinking they were in love or make excuses to stay in an unhappy relationship other than the fact that it created a much needed barrier to their desire.
After having had sex with Rodolphe, Emma, ironically, started to appreciate her marriage a bit more. She thought that she wanted to live happily with her lover, but now that she has a lover, she can’t remember why she wasn’t happy with her marriage in the first place. Yet, it’s clear that Emma’s life will take a turn for the worse. She isn’t being very diligent at hiding her secret trysts with Rodolphe, and if we are to follow the pattern of every other story of passion, lust, and adultery, she’s probably going to die. Soon.

Celestina (Week Two)

The death of Celestina perturbed me a bit. She was the harbinger of death and disaster simply by definition of what she stood for, but it never even occurred to me to think about what might happen without this walking allegory for desire.  

Sempronio and Parmeno were obviously fed up. They had known that she was a greedy opportunist but they had still trusted her enough to make a deal with her. They helped Celestina by introducing her a as this wise, sympathetic women in order to extract money from Calisto while knowing that she was calculating and distrustful. What were they so upset at if they had known what kind of woman she was from the start? Unless, they had been mad at themselves for trusting her.

This scene reminded me of a part of Zizek’s chapter “Courtly Love, or, Women as Thing” that we read a few weeks ago. Zizek explains that at a certain point, when the person is displeased with the other’s role in their “relationship”, they act out in irrational violence. Sempronio and Parmeno may not have desired Celestina, but they did desire the money that she had promised them. They had known from the beginning that they probably weren’t going to get the money, but they kept up the act and killed Celestina when she became a threat to the illusion, proving that the desire for riches can be just as dangerous as lust.  

Celestina died at a pivotal moment in the story. Calisto and Melibea were finally both aware of their mutual feelings for each other. Although, Calisto took some convincing. He was in complete disbelief that Melibea had feelings for him, almost as if he didn’t want to believe it. Which makes sense. He desires Melibea so much that she has become a goddess to him. She is high on a pedestal, untouchable. If his feelings were to become requited, the illusion ends. She is no longer this holy being that he can only drool over. She becomes tangible and ends his suffering, which destroys the idealistic prison of desire that Calisto had created for himself.  

It is almost as if the tight grip of what Calisto thought that he wanted had slowly dissipated with the death of Celestina. But, still, the cycle continued. Sosia was tricked by Areusa  into telling her where and when Calisto was going to meet with Melibea. He divulged all the information because he thought that Areusa fancied him, which he later came to realize was a mistake. Areusa had planned Calisto’s death, which only seemed to heightenher Melibea’s desire for him. So much so that she killed herself.  It was almost as if Areusa had taken Celestina’s place because desire never dies.

Celestina (Week One)

     After reading the first half of Celestina, with the ideas from last week's class still fresh in my mind, I switched on the television and began watching “Singin’ in the Rain”. I immediately felt a calculating and cynical cog start to turn in my mind, a feeling that I haven’t felt any of the numerous other times I’ve watched this movie. The handsome Don Lockwood, played by Gene Kelly, that I once found so charming and romantic suddenly became the stubborn, lovesick Calisto. And Kathy Selden, played by Debbie Reynolds, the illusive Melibea. The more Kathy insulted Don, the more he chased after her. The more he chased after her, the more she liked him. 
     Don takes Kathy to a movie set, sets up the lights and the wind and the sunset background. The perfect scene to his perfect illusion. He creates an atmosphere where Kathy- her hair blowing in the wind, standing above him on a latter- is the ideal goddess, beautiful and out of reach. Not unlike when Calisto first sees Melibea in a garden; in an eden, where she stood innocent and pure.
     This isn’t the only instance, obviously, where concepts and characters from Celestina could be compared to movies or stories of romance. Fortunately though, “Singin’ in the Rain” is devoid of prostitutes (or it would have been a completely different movie...)
     Celestina also introduces a different spectrum of problems that a delusional love causes. The story shows how an obsessive love affects not only the person in question, but also the ones around him. Pármeno, for example, is hurt when Calisto allows his passion to blind him to reason and he does not listen to Pármeno’s advice. Instead, he berates him for getting in the way. Similarly, Melibea’s servant is frustrated because, even though she is looking out for Melibea’s well being, she is ignored.
     Yet, Pármeno falls into a similar cycle with his love, Areusa. He is guilty of doing the same things that he warned Calisto not to do. He offers up whatever he has to Celestina if she can make Areusa take notice of him, which she does in an unnerving way. Celestina practically bullies them into having sex with each other. The biggest surprise was not that Celestina was pushing them to have sex with each other, but that they complied relatively easily. Celestina basically sold Areusa to Pármeno and, as is stated in the supplemental reading on desire (From Twilight Moments to Moral Panics), prostitutions was only considered a “minor sin”.
     The biggest question Celestina has left me with thus far is whether or not to detest the old woman, Celestina. She is, without a doubt, an opportunist. She manipulates men and sells young women without batting her eyes. She thinks only of the profit and uses whatever means to achieve her goal. But, is she completely at fault? She is simply utilizing the selfishness of a society set on fulfilling their desires with prostitution and money. The characters allow themselves to become so consumed by their desire for others that they leave themselves vulnerable to be taken advantage of by Celestina. 

Ventadorn, Žižek, and "That Obscure Object of Desire"

I think that Žižek essentially mapped out the content of both the poetry by Bernard de Ventador and the movie, "That Obscure Object of Desire". There is definitely a correlation in the ways that women are portrayed in both. Žižek starts out the essay by explaining that the woman is not seen merely as a fellow human being but as something ethereal. He writes that the woman is seen “as the sublime object” which causes a “shift from raw sensual coveting to spiritual longing”. She is no longer a woman, but a celestial being, incapable of compassion or sentimentality.

In "That Obscure Object of Desire", there were two different actors playing Conchita, and they each had their own functions. There is (and to not get confused, I’ll call them by number) Conchita 1, who is played by Carole Bouquet, who functions as a sort of other-worldly, ethereal being, and Conchita 2, played by Ángela Molina, who functions as a passionate vise.

In the scene when Mathieu first takes Conchita to his house, Conchita 2 tells him how she first fell in love with his kind eyes. They can’t keep their hands off of each other. When Conchita 2 goes into the bathroom to do some pre-coital preparations, Conchita 1 comes out and says “Look at how lovely I am” into a mirror and sports a chastity corset. Conchita 2 lights the flames while Conchita 1 rejects all of his advances, which leads to another part of Žižek’s essay: Masochism.

Žižek writes that the masochistic relationship that the man has with the woman is decided by the man. He writes, “It is the victim who initiates the contract with the master (woman)...It is the servant, therefore, who writes the screenplay-”. Žižek explains that the man sets up the situation to satisfy his own masochistic desires, the woman simply plays along. This is exemplified in the movie when Mathieu approaches Conchita and chooses to continually pursue her. The things that she does to ‘hurt’ him are done in response to his desires. He sets up each situation, Conchita follows through. She continually rejects his sexual advances, but this is what he wants. Without consummating their relationship, Conchita remains this ethereal image of a woman that he has of her and he gets to lengthen the time spent pining over her. What’s important is not having Conchita, but chasing after her.

This is also evident in Bernard de Ventador’s poetry. In poem 21, the narrator says “Good lady, I ask you for nothing/ but to take me for your servant,/ for I will serve you as my good lord,/ whatever wages come my way.” The man simply wants to be dominated by this woman. This is a similar theme in many of the poems. They are predominantly about his love for her,“My pain seems beautiful,/ this pain is worth more than any pleasure”. They have very little to do with the girl herself, but rather the desire that the man feels from the illusions that he has created of an unattainable woman.

Yet, at the same time, Žižek points out that the man “never really gives way to his feelings or fully abandons himself in the game”. The man maintains one foot outside of the illusion so that when things have run their course, he can easily detach himself from this masochistic scenario and maintain control.

When Mathieu is telling the story to the other people on the train, it was almost as if it were second hand. Yes, there were times when he seemed aggravated while retelling something horrible that Conchita did, but only minimally. He can tell the story as if it were second hand because he was never fully in it. Similarly, Žižek writes that the man has another way of maintaining control: “I set out to beat the woman and when, at the very point where I think that I thoroughly dominate her, I notice that I am actually her slave- since she wants the beating and provoked me to deliver it- I get really mad and beat her.”

After Conchita comes to apologize for seemingly rejecting his love completely and fornicating with another man right in front of him, he takes her into a back room and beats her. When she first asks to talk to him, she is Conchita 1, the goddess. When he beats her, she is Conchita 2, the source of passion. After the thrashing, she takes back control when she claims that it was all a test and the fact that he felt enough to hurt her means that he loves her; that she, in fact, wanted him to beat her. The same thing happens after he dumps water on Conchita on the train. At the end of the movie, she returns the favor, making him, once again, her “slave”.

These aspects of desire make it seemly impossible to really love another person unselfishly. The lovers in the movie and in the poems love simply to satisfy their own feelings of desire. They do not love the true person standing in front of them, perhaps because they can’t contemplate that a real person even exists. Sure, desire is indiscriminate and unpredictable, but that isn’t to say that is lacks strategy. From what we’ve learned from Narcissus and Lacan, we use desire to fill in the empty space within us; to provide for what we lack. But is it possible to successfully fill in that space with an illusion? And, subsequently, is it possible to ever love someone for who they really are? So far, all signs point to 'no, probably not'.

Song of Songs, Narcissus, and "The Mirror Stage"

Song of Songs:
        It seems like the strongest link between the lover and the beloved in this poem is desire. The beloved is the lover’s object of desire. The lover is constantly in the act of loving the beloved and the beloved constantly seeks love from the lover. The lover says things like, “your eyes behind your veil are doves”, “your lips are like a scarlet ribbon; your mouth is lovely”, and “you are a garden locked up”. The beloved responds by saying “Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.” These lines create an image of the lover admiring the beloved and the beloved offering herself to him. It is the same when the woman takes the role of lover. She admires her beloved: "Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest  is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.” The lover is taking and the beloved is giving. They each seem to have their own specific roles in this love.
        By using eroticism, this poem does not leave as much room for interpretation as a poem depicting purely emotions of love might. It is easier for a reader to decipher feelings of desire than feelings of love. Some people might not have experienced love, but everyone experiences desire (sexual or nonsexual) on a daily basis. If the Old Testament intended to share a broader idea, eroticism would be the best way to get that idea across.

Narcissus:
        Narcissus falls in love with his image reflected in the water. But, his image is not just a simple reflection. Along with this image came all of the feelings of desire. He saw this seemingly perfect being in front of him but was unable to touch it. He was stuck in the limbo of lust, eternally unable to satisfy it. He was not in love with himself; he fell in love with an “insubstantial hope”. It is written that he was “fired by the sight, and excited by the very illusion that deceived his eyes.” Much like Echo and the others that loved Narcissus to no avail, they simply could not give up their love, even if it was unrequited and would be virtually fruitless. Even if it wasn’t his reflection that he became infatuated with, it wouldn’t matter. What mattered to Narcissus was fulfilling his own needs to feel desire and be consumed by it.This type of love is selfish and self-destructive, as is ultimately exemplified by Narcissus’  death.

 Lacan:
        During the “Mirror Stage”, one’s own reflected image creates a sort of gestalt within his own existence and the reality around him and this is what creates the “I”. In other words, one begins to believe that the “I” is existing to complete the reality of the world around them. When someone gets older, the “I” from the mirror stage morphs to function as the “I” we use to express our “primordial jealousy”, as if to say “I” am an integral part of this existence just as “you” are.
        I do see some literal similarities in the Mirror Stage and Narcissus, such as Narcissus leaning into his reflection, which is described as an inevitable event when experiencing the Mirror Stage. There is also the idea that Narcissus is pining after an image of himself which, in the text, is described as being nonexistent. This is reaffirmed with the concept of the Mirror Stage (assuming my interpretation of the mirror stage wasn't a complete flop). There is no self, therefore he can not be in love with himself, and if he is not in love with any person, then he is in love with some ideal or emotion.