Love Slave

I really enjoyed Dr. Anthony Reed’s lecture, “Slavery’s Interior--Cinema and the Performative Traumas of History”. Looking at representations of race through the context of “perfomative traumas” was much more inclusive than simply looking at race in the media.

Dr. Reed explained that the slaves are portrayed as being innocent and the enslavers, guilty. The enslavers either have a change of heart or they are defeated. This made me think of Conchita and Žižek’s idea of the masochistic man being enslaved by the women. The women, or the enslavers, are not defeated in the typical villain sense when it comes to stories of sexual desire. Instead, the women is conquered and this obviously happens when the man finally has sex with her.

In further comparison, when Dr. Reed defined slavery as “the art of keeping alive someone who would rather die”, the idea of being slaves to love becomes even more ridiculous. Even as the masochistic slave, the man is inherently in control. When he feels that he is so in love, to the point where he wants to die, he is the only one keeping himself alive. The woman is a pseudo-enslaver. The man can successfully enslave himself, the woman is just there for show. This is clear in Conchita. Two different actresses can play the same role because it doesn’t matter. She is just for show. The real love is all in the mind of the beholder, the slave.