Month: August 2013

4. The Subject Supposed to Know and the ‘Magical Negro’ The ‘Magical Negro’ is a cinematic cliché in itself. The term was coined by director Spike Lee to denote a cinematic trope in which a black character has a special – often mystical – insight or ability, which is then imparted to a white character. […]

3. Horror Movies and the Mirror Image Here’s a horror story in just two sentences: This sends a chill down most spines. The ideas that it plays on – the duplication of the image, that specular representations can’t be trusted, that one’s image is actually someone else’s – are ideas that Lacan explores again and […]

2. The Male Exception Case in point: Zodiac, The Usual Suspects, all Bond films, almost all movies about unsolved murders committed by men, and virtually any superhero film of the last 10 years   For the second of the cinematic clichés in this series we need to invoke Lacan’s formulas for sexuation from Seminar XX: Immediately […]

1. The Absent Father Case in point: Man of Steel I start this short series with what is perhaps the most consistently ubiquitous and easily noticeable of all cinematic clichés to harbour Lacanian overtones. To name just a few of the biggest films of the past 12 months, Man of Steel, World War Z, Skyfall, […]