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'.
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