Fl t§1 1:,1ti t, ri t t 1l .

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OXFORD READINCS IN FEMINISM
f i ittiiti:tr, .r,,.1 j., itt,,. ttttt | ',1 itllt,\
l,liti,l l,t i,,tn,r i lrit.,rrr
i e i:tit:i=,t, ,i,iri ',t tt ilt t.
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It nutlttttt tnttl lblitics
,,lrtr'rl lry z\trtrc Phillips
l't ttr i r t is r t t und History
ctlitctl lry Joan Wallach Scott Edited by
l;cntinisnt and CulTural Studies E. Ann Kaplan
eclited by Morag Shiach
Feminism and Pornograplry
edited by Drucilla Cornell

Feminism and the Body

edited by Londa Sclriebinger

OXFORD
\INIVERSITY PI(RSS
DAVID N. RODOWICK

Cinema', in Philip Rosen (ed.), Narratite, Al)parqtus, Ideology (New York:

Columbitr University Press, I986), 120-129.
18. Whether a term like'fetishistic scopophilia'has a ptecise sense in the context
of Freudian theory or whether it mllst rest a]§ an intelesting neologism on
Mr-rlvey,s par.t is also uncertain. In Freud's own imPortant essay on'Fetishism'
LSE 21: 152']571 there is no evidence to charactelize this
perversion as a
'-passive' lbrm of looking. On the contrary, it is cl-raracterizecl by a profound
deg.ee of psychical activity. Moreover, tl-re point that is most important for
ffi Masochism and the Perverse
Pleasures of the Cinema

Gaylyn Studlar*
pràud, and indeed most important for any theory of ideology, concerns the
problem of lchspaltung or the splitting of the ego where the subject simul-
ianeously holds-contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. contraf), to the
view pr.omoted in contemporary fi1m theory, the splitting of tl-re ego is not a
'r'esuli' of the castration complex, nor is this phenomenon peculiar only to
fetishism. Fetishism is only the cleiirest example of this phenomenon. In short, This study oflèrs an alternative model to the current discourse that
the splitting of the ego is for Freud a more general and widespreircl condition, emphasizes voyeurism aligned with sadism, the mare controlling gaze
representing one of the ego's strongest means of clefense 1gâinst t1'âumatic
as the only position of spectatorial pleasure and a polarized notloir of
.*rrt. of all ki.r.ts. See hii late essay, 'splitting of tl.re Ego in the Process of
Defènse', SE 23 : 27 5-27 8. sexual difference with the female regarded as 'lackl In 1978, christine
19. For an interesting discussion of this concept in relation to film. See Thicrri' Gledhill wrote of the need to broaden the focus of feminist fihn
I(untzel, Le Dfilemcnt A View in Close Up', trans. Bertrand Attgst, Camera theory, to question guiding theoretical assumptions and to confront
Obscurct,2 (lall 1977) 5l-65' the complexity of 'woman's place' within patriarchal clrlture.L In the
context of feminist-psychoanalytic approaches to Iilm, the hegemony
of the Freudian-Lacanian-Metzian moder has, unfortunately, ied,ced
rather than enlarged the field of questions that feminist tLeory has
asked about specific forms of enunciation in classic narratiye cine-u
and the possibilities of subject positio,ing. while I do not assume to
displace the dominant model, there is I berieve an obvious call to
question some of the assumptions that have shaped current trends.
My alternative model is derived from Gilles Deleuze's Masochism:
An Interpretation of Coldness and Cruelty.2 Deleuze employs a
psychoanytic-literary approach to the novels of Leopold von'sache.-
Masoch, the namesake of masochism, to challenge basic Freudian
tenets-regarding the sado-masochistic duality and the etiology of
masochism as a response to the father and castration fear, If the
{uali-
tative differences between sadism and masochism are disregardeà and
only the pain/pleasure content is considered, then the two
ferversions
might well be considered to be compleme,tary as Freucl Àaintained,
but Deleuze shows that only when masochism's formal patterns are
recognized as reflections of a unique underlying psychoanàlytic struc-
ture can the perversion be correctly defined as a <iistinct clinical entity
or as an aesthetic:

* Gaylyn studlar, 'Masochism and the perverse pleasures of the cinema, from
euarterly
Review of Film and video studies (1984), reprir.rted by permissir» of the author.

202 203
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

Masochism is above all formal and dramatic: this means that its
peculiar cunts, asses, and mouths; when applying his lips to the cunt, he wants copious
pleasure-pain complex is determinecl by a particular kind of formalisrn, and urine; when at the mouth, much saliva; when at the ass, abundant farts.T
it, .*p.ri.r.,.. of guilt by a specilic story.l
Even when Sade chooses a woman as 'heroine', she still acts out the
Deleuze considers masochism to be a phenomenology of experience criminally misogynistic impulse that is not satisTred with merely
that reaches far beyond the limited delinition of a perverse sexuality' objectiÿing or demystifing women but must destroy them. In the
Similarly, the masochistic aesthetic extends beyond the purely clinical masochistic text, the female is not one of a countless number of dis-
reaim into the arena of artistic form, language, and production of carded objects but an idealized, powerful figure both dangerous and
pleasure through a text.
-Masoch'. comforting. Fetishization, fantasy, and idealizing disavowal replace the
comparing ancl sade's novels, Deleuze conclttdes that
frenzied Sadian destruction of the female. While Sade's incessantly
Sade's intentLns, formai techniques, and language are completely at
active libertines challenge the limits of human endurance and evil
ocldswith those of Masoch. These <lifferences are but a reflection of in endlessly repeated cycies of sex and violence, the masochistic
differing psychoanalytic determinants. The sadian discourse- world barely suggests sexual activity or violence. Deler:ze remarks: 'Of
denotaiive, scientific, unblinkingly direct in its obscene imperatives Masoch it can be said, as it cannot be of Sade, that no one has ever
and descriptions-creates a fantastically cruel heterocosm based been so far with so little offence to decency.'n In the masochistic
exclusively on the rule of reason. The governing sadistic fantasy
.beyond all laws" says aesthetic, dramatic suspense replaces Saclian accelerating repetition
à*fr.rr.a'in Sacle's work exalts the father
world of action, intimacy between mutually chosen partners replaces the
DËleure, ancl negates the mother.a 1n contrast, Masoch's fictive impersonality of masses of libertines and victims, idealized eroticism
is mythical, persüasive, aesthetically oriented, and centerecl around
the
her replaces the obscenity that threatens to burst the lin-rits of conven-
icleaiizing, mystical exaltation of love for the punishing woma-n' In. tional language in an attempt to match the unattainable, destructive
ideal forin as representative of the powerful oral mother, the female
irr
Idea of Evil.' If Sade's writing is 'structurally linked to crime and sex'
the masochistic scenario is not sadistic, but must inflict cruelty in
love
as Roland Barthes has said,t') then the work of Masoch reveals a formal
to fulfill her role in the mutually agreed upon masochistic scheme. and narrative pattern structurally linked to self-abasement and
Masoch writes in a typical passage from his most famous novel''Venus pre-Oedipal desire.
in Furs': The formal structures of the masochistic aesthetic-fantasy, dis-
To love and be loved, what joyl And yet how this splendour pales in avowal, fetishism, and suspense-overlap with the primary structures
con.r-
woman who treats one as a that enable classic narrative cinema to produce visual pleasure. These
parison with the blissfuI torment of worshipping a
ptaything, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who nrercilessly tramples similarities raise fundamental questions about the relationship of
one underfoot.s cinematic pleasure to masochism, sexual differentation, processes of
identification, the representation of the female in film, and other
As Deleuze notes, the paraclox of the masochistic alliance as exempli- issues in which a model derived from Deleuze's theory olTers a radical
fiecl in Masoch's \{ork it the subversion of the expected patriarchal alternative to those Freudian assumptions that have been adopted by
positions of power/powerlessness, master/slave, with the ultimate most of psychoanalytic filrn theory.
purado" being the slave's (the male',s) willingness to confer power to The key question is:Why replace the line of thought represented by
the female.6 Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, with its stress on the similarity
An excerpt frorn Sade's One Hundred and Twenty Days of So-dom between the structures of sadism and visual pleasure, with an emphasis
illustrates tÈe blatant absurdity of equati,g sadism and masochisnr on rnasochism's relationship to visual pleasure? What are the
on a literary level, and, as Deleuze shows, on a psychoanalytic level as advantages?
well: By focr"rsing on the pregenital period in the development of desire
This libertine lequires a dozen women, sixyoung, slx old and if
'tis possible, six and sexual identity rather than on the phallic phase emphasized in
of them should be mothers ancl the other sir daughters. He pun-rps out their Freud's studies, a consideration of the masochistic aesthetic and film

204
 MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES
GAYLYN STUDLAR
period. Whether due to the child's experience of real trallma, as Bern-
shifts attention to a stage of psycho-sexual life that has been an over-
hard Berliner asserts, or due to the narcissistic infant's own insati-
looked determinant in the 'sadistic' model of cinematic spectatorship.
The 'masochistic model' rejects a stance that has emphasized the phal-
ability of demand, the pleasure associated with the oral mother is
joined in masochism with the need for pain.'o The masochistic fantasy
Iic phase and the pleasure of coltrol or mastery and therefore offeIS an
cannot by its very nature fullill its most primal desire-'dual unity and
alternative to strict Freudian models that have proven to be a dead end
the complete-symbiosis between child and mother'-except in the
for feminist-psychoanalltic theory. In trying to come to terms with
imagination." As a consequence, death becomes the fantasy solutiorr
patriarchal society and the cinema as a construct of that society,
to masochistic desire.
iurrent theoretical discourse has often inadvertently reduced the
The mother assumes her authority in masochism on the basis of her
psychoanalytic complexity of spectatorship through a regressive phal-
own importance to the child, not, as Freud maintained, because the
iocentrism that ignores a wider range of psychological influences on
father figure must be 'hidden' behind her in order to deflect the
visual pleasure.
homosexual implications of the male subject's fantasy. Roy Schafer
The approach presented here brings together two lines of theo-
identifies the child's fear of losing the mother as the primary source of
retical wôik previously separated: (1) the analogy between the cine-
her authority.rs Rooted in the fear of being abandonèd by tire mother,
matic apparatus and the dream screen of the oral period of infancy
masochism obsessively recreates the movement between concealment
p.r.rr".i ty Jean-Louis Baudry and Robert Eberwein,lr and (2) the
and revelation, disappearance and appearance, seduction and rejec-
ionsideration of representation of the female, identiûcation, and sex-
tion. Posited as 'lacking nothing', the mother is allied with the child
ually differentiated spectatorship in the theories of Laura Mulvey,
Claire lohnston, Mary Ann Doane, and others'I2 The 'masochistic
in the disavowal of the destruction of the superego. Deleuze main-
tains that the father's punishing superego and genital sexuality are
model' could be viewed as an .rttempt to use the former approach to
symbolically punished in the son, who must expiate his likeness to the
address the concerns ofthe latter,
father. Pain symbolically expels the father and 'fools' the superego. It
Freud dealt with the question of masochism in several essays; his
views on the perversion changed over the years, but he was consistent
is not the son who is guilty, as in Freud's theory, but the father
who attempts to come between mother and child.te In Deleuze's view,
in his belief that Oedipal conflict was the cause of the perversion. Guilt
fear of the castrating father and Oedipal guilt cannot account for
and fear of castration by the father led the male child to assume a
masochism's paradoxical pain/pleasure structure. His denial of the
passive position in order to placate the father and win his love. Being
importance of castration anxiety to the perversion's formation con,
ùeaten by the father (or the female who provides the father's disguise
stitutes a revision of Freudian theory that stancls in agreement with
in the conscious fantasy) was 'not only the punishment for the forbjd-
Michael de M'Uzan and Theodore Reik. M'Ijzan deduces from clinical
den genital relation with the mother, but also a regressive substitute
observation that the masochist 'fears nothing, not even castration,.20
for ii'. The punishment acquired 'libidinal excitation', and 'here',
In his lengthy stady Masochism in Modern Mqn,inwhich he details the
Freud declared,'we have the essence of masochism'.13 Freud developed
social rather than sexual manifestations of masochism, Reik parallels
a theory of masochism as a primary drive expressing the Death
M'Uzan's assessment: castration anxiety is not of major significance in
Instinct but was continually drawn into realfirming the comple-
the etiology of the perversion."
mentary status of masochism and sadism. He stated that, in the for-
It should be noted that Deleuze positions the male as the fantasizing
mer, the heightened saclism of the superego was retained in the libido
subject of his construct. In this respect, his model might be regarded as
with the ut 'victim'. In sadism, the Death Instinct was deflected
"go
outwards.,i Deleuze believes the superego/ego activities of sadism and
sexist, although he notes that the female child can take the same pos-

masochism are completely different, but, more important to a study of

ition in relation to the oral mother.22 Deleuze's model may also be
approached from another perspective that makes it more applicable to
masochism and fllm, he makes the mother the primary determinant in
a consideration of spectatorial response to film. The masochistic fan-
the structr-rre of the masochistic fantasy and in the etiology of the
tasy may be viewed as a situation in which the subject (male or female)
perversion.t' Both Iove object and controlling agent for the helpless
assumes the position of the child who desires to be controlled. within
àhild, th. mother is viewed as an ambivalent figure during the oral
206 207
GAYLYN STUDLAR
MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

(while not a simple paradox of the dazzling yet androgynous female who is simultaneously
the dynamics of the fantasy. The sadistic.fantasy
the subject takes the.posi- moral and amoral, eminently proper yet irredeemably decadent.
reversal of instinct or aim) is one in which
tion of the controlling parent, who is not allied with the child (object) As a result of their multiple layers of paradox, fascinating ambiguity
ln u ,rrt.,ully agreeJ upo, putt of pleasure/pain.but who exercises of emotion, and almost transcendental visual beauty, Von Sternberg's
(within the fantasy) a sadistic power over an ttnwLlltng vlctlm'-' lilms have again and again inspired attempts to explain their structure
Masochism subverts traditircnal psychoanalytic notions
regarding and meaning. They have just as frequently served as examples in theo-
and father's roles in the retical treatises dealing with the representation of the female in narra-
the origins of human desire and the mother's
.t ita'r"pty.fric development. A theory of masochism that emphasizes tive cinema or questions concerning the unconscious determinants of
pr. O.àipuf conflicts ànd pleasures invites consideration of responses visual pleasure. Among the most important of these is Laura Mulvey's
io film by spectators of bàth sexes that may conflict with conscious use of Von Sternberg's films to illustrate the concept of fetishistic
cultural arrr.lmptio.ts about sexttal difference, gender identity'
and the scopophilia in her milestone article, 'Visuai Pleasure and Narrative
r.furu,lon of identification from object cathexis' A theory of maso- Cinema'. To her, Von Sternberg's Morocco tlpifres the kind of visual
of most psychoanalytic style and narrative structure which traps the female into a position of
chistic desire also questions the complicity
'to-be-looked-at-ness', of passive exhibitionism that oppresses women
fi1- th.o.y with phallocentrism as a formative instance in structuring
i;.;rry urra ,.opl. pleasure. lt also questions the pre-eminence ofIna for the sake of the patriarchy's fetishistic aims. Mulvey regards such a
pleasuie based ôn i position of co-ntrol rather than submission. female fetish as 'reassuring rather than dangerous'.2s Although sub-
identi-
,ugg.rtirrg that the oràl mother could be the primary figure of scribing to Mulvey's thesis, Mary Ann Doane has referred to Dietrich's
fiüiion irrd po*., in clinical and aesthetic manifestations of maso- image as exempliÿing the 'excess of femininity . . . aligned with the
chism,Deleuze,stheoryofmasochisticdesirechallengesthenotion femme fatale .. , and . . . necessarily regarded by men as evil incar-
scopic pleasure must center around control*never identifi- nate'.26 Contrary to Doane, it is Dietrich's androgynous quality that is
ifrut-ut. most often noted, and Carole Zucker has argued (with justification)
cation with or submission to the female'
that Dietrich's morality is 'impossibly exalted' in the Von Sternberg
This article is derived from a book-length study of the films of_]osef films.27 Adding to the controversy is Robin Wood's attempt to counter

von sternberg that uses practical criticism to examine the masochistic Mulvey's analysis of the role of the female in the films' narrative strat-
elements of egy and visual style. He argues that Von Sternberg is 'fully aware' of
aesthetic in fijm and the relationship between the formal
the aesthetic, the films' psychodynàmics, and the specific forms of the female's position as object for the male gaze and uses this as 'an
With theii sr-rbmissive male masochist, the oral mother articurlated theme' in Blonde Venus rather than an end product.2s He
"ÀuLpf.^uie.
.mbodied in the ambivalent, alluring presence of Marlene Dietrich, has not, however, countered Mulvey's fundamental premise: that
and their ambiguons sexuality that has often been linked to visual pleasure in classic narrative cinema is based on the workings of
'sado-
masochism' ani'degradation',2n the Von Sternberg/Dietrich collabor- the castration complex.
ations offer themselves as a prime case study ol' the masochistic Rather than develop a detailed textual analysis, this examination of
aesthetic in film.
the masochistic aesthetic and film explores the wider theoretical
within the context of the post-modernist critique of realism, von implications of masochism to cinematic pleasure. I will very briefly
Sternberg,sfilmshavebecomethecenterofincreasinginterest.They examine these implications in regard to five crucial issues: (1) the
ur. ...uiio.,s of sublime visual beauty and sensuality; dreamlike female delined as lack, (2) the male gaze defined by control, (3) the
for cause and function of disavowal and fetishism, (4) the clream screen,
chiaroscuro and stifling decorative excess form the backdrop
melodrarna pervaded b"y a diftrse sexuality' As maly. critics have and (5) identification, particularly identification with the opposite sex.
remarked, the films are poetic but not symbolic' melodramatic
ancl

even tragic, but markeà by a detached, ironic humor' In thesc

narratives dominate<l by passion, even passion takes on a curiously

^films
distancing col<lness, The featuring Marlene Dietrich add
the

208
GAYLYN STI]DLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

'subversive' desire that afhrms the compelling power of the pre-

THE FEMALE AS LACK Oedipal mother as a stronger attraction than the inormalizing, 6rce
of the father who threatens the alliance of mother and child.
The female as cinematic image is often considered to be an ambivalent The repetition of loss, of suffering, does not deter or confuse maso-
spectatorial pleasure for the male because she signifles the possibility chistic desire but inflames it, as graphically demonstrated in von
of castration. She represents difference, nonphallus, lack. Undoubtably, sternberg's The Devil Is a woman. His health broken, his career ruined
the tension between attraction and fear is an ambivalence underlying by his involvement with 'the most dangerous \^/oman alive,, Don
much of cinema's representation of the female, but it is an oversim- Pasquale protests that he gains 'no pleasure' in telling his frie,d
plification to collapse the entire signifrcation of woman to phallic Antonio about his road to ruin. It becomes obvious that he not only
meaning.2e enjoys telling his story, but the retelling itself is the impetus for a new
Within masochism, the mother is not delined as iack nor as'phallic' round robin in Don Pasquale's masochistic pursuit of concha perez.
in respect to a simple transference of the male's symbol of power, She He ailows himself to be shot in a duel to satisi/ Concha,s desire for
is powerful in her own right because she possesses what the male another man (Antonio). Lying on his deathbed, he attains what he
lacks-the breast and the womb.3o Active nurturer, first source of love desires most, Concha and Death, one in the same both, still suspended,
and object of desire, hrst environment and agent of control, the promised, but withheld. The eternal masochistic attitude of waiting
oral mother of masochism assumes all symbolic functions. Parallel to and suspended suffering is maintained in all its tragedy ancl comic
her idealization is a degrading disavowal of the father. 'The father is abs_urdity to the very end of this, the iast von ste;nberg/Dietrich
nothing,'says Deleuze,'he is deprived of all symbolic function.'31 collaboration.
The infant's fantasy goal of re-fusion, of complete symbiosis with The ambivalence of separation/union from the mother, formalized
the mother is necessarily informed by ambivalence. The promise of in- masochistic repetition and suspension, is an ambivalence shared by
blissful reincorporation into the mother's body and re-fusion of the all human beings. contrary to the Freudian view of familiar dynamics,
child's narcissistic ego with the mother as ideal ego is also a threat. in which the mother has little psychological impact on her .i,ild.",r',
Only death can hold the final mystical solution to the expiation of the development, Deleuze, Schafer, Robert Stoller, Nu.rcy Chodorow, and
father and symbiotic reunion with the idealized maternal rule. The Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel regard the mother,s influence and her
masochist imagines the final triumph of a parthenogenetic rebirth authority as major factors in the child's development. The child's view
from the mother.32 of the powerful,loved, but threatening female during the pre-Oedipal
Deleuze associates the good oral mother of masochism with the stage is not obliterated by later stages of life-including the male's
'ideal of coldness, solicitude, and death', the mythic extremes that p1lage through the castration complex.3, Hans Loewald sr,rggests that,
crystallize her ambivalence." The female reflects the fantasy of the while the identification with the powerful pre-oedipal
desiring infant who regards the mother as both sacred and profane,
-otl-., is fun-
damental to the individual's organization of ego-reality, this same
loving and rejecting, frustratingly mobile yet the essence of rhythmic identification is the'source of the deepest dread'.31 lanine chasseguet-
stability and stillness. In the masochist's suspension of the final'grati- Smirgel goes so far as to suggest that the contempt for women F-reud
fication' of death, the obsessive return to the moment of separation believed was an inevitable male reaction to the perception of female
from the oral mother must be reenacted continuously as the maso, 'castration'_is actually a pathological ancl defensive ,"rponr. to mater-
chistic fort/da game of desire that is the meeting point between fantasy nal power.37
and action.sa Masochistic repetition sustains the paradoxical pain/ In returning to the fantasies originating in the oral stage of devel-
pleasure structure of the perversion's psychodynamics and reflects the opment, the masochistic aesthetic opens the entirety of film to the
careful control o[ desjre so necessary to sustaining the masochistic existence of spectatorial pleasures divorced from issues of castration,
scenario even as it expresses the compulsive aspect of the fixation in sexual difference, and female lack. current theory ignores the pleasure
infantile sexuality. Overriding the demands of the incest taboo, the in is phylogenetically older than the preasure of
submission that
castration complex, and progress into genital sexuality, masochism is a mastery-for both sexes. In masochism, as in the infantlle stage of
210
211
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

helpless dependence that marks its genesis, pleasure does not involve
mastery of the female but sr"rbmission to her. This pleasure applies to THE CAZE
the infant, the masochist, and the film spectator as weil. Psychoanalytic
film theory must reintegrate the powerful maternal image that is While the pleasures of the cinematic apparatus as dream screen have
viewed as a complex, pleasurable 'screen menrory' by both male and been associated with oral phase pleasr-rre by Jean-Louis Baudry and
female spectators, even in the patriarchal society.3s As Janine Robert Eberwein, the pleasures of viewing the female image in film
Chasseguet-Smirgel asserts: have consistently been linked to the phallic phase, the castration
complex, and the resulting physiological 'needs' of the male spectator.
Now the wonlan as she is depicted in Freudian theory is exactly the opposite ol
The strurcture of the look is one of the most important elements in
the primal maternal imago as she is revealed in the clinical material of both
defining visr"ral pleasure, According to Laura Mulvey, narrative film is
sexes ... the contradictions ... throughout Freud's work on the problem of
sexual phallic monism and its consquences, force us to take a closer notice of
made for the pleasure of the male spectator alone, who 'indirectly'
this opposition between the woman, as she is described by Freud, and the possesses the female through the look, or rather the relay of looks
mother as she is known to the Unconscious. . . . If we underestimate the created by the camera, the male star's gaze and the spectator's own
importance of our earliest relations and our catheris of the maternal image, gaze.The woman is the bearer of the'burden of male desire', which is
this means we allow paternal law to predominate and are in flight from our 'born with language'. She crystallizes the paradox of 'the traumatic
inlant ile dependence.r" moment' of desire's birth-the castration complex, because she repre-
sents sexual difference. The male spectator escapes the castration
Castration fear and the perception of sexual difference have no
anxiety the female image evokes either by a sadistic voyeurism
importance in forming the masochistic desire for complete symbiosis
(demystiÿing the female) or through fetishistic scopophilia. The latter,
with the mother. The polarities of female lack/male phallus and the
a'complete disavowal of castration', turns the female into a fetish, the
narrow view that the female in film can only ftrnction as the object
signilier of the absent phallus.'1
of a sadistic male spectatorial possession must yield to other Mulvey's deterministic, polarized model leads to a crucial 'blind
considerations.
spot' in her theory of visual pleasure, which has been noted by D. N.
The ferr-rale in the masochistic aesthetic is more than the passive
Rodowick. In 'The Dilficulty of Difference', Rodowick argues that
object of the male's desire for possession. She is also a figure of identi-
Mulvey avoids the logical conclr-rsion of her own theory that would
fication, the mother of plenitude whose gaze meets the infant's as it
necessitate pairing masochism, the passive submission to the object,
asserts her presence and her power. Von Sternberg's expression of the
with fetishistic scopophilia. Because of the 'political nature of her
masochistic aesthetic in film offers a complex image of the female in
argument', Rodowick concludes, Mulvey cannot admit that the
which she is the object of the look but also the holder of a'controlling'
masculine look contains passive elements and can signify sultmission to
gaze that turns the male into an object of 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. In
rather than possession o/the female.a2
Morocco, Private Tom Brown (Gary Cooper), a notorious'ladykiller', is
In eliding a possible male spectatorial position infbrmed by maso-
redr"rced to the passive 'feminine' position as object of Amy Jolly's
chism, Mulvey is forced to limit the male gaze to one that only views
appraising, steady gaze. Amy throws him a rose, which Brown then
the female as a signifier of castration and an object for possession. In
wears behind his ear. Operating within the limitations of the patri-
reducing spectatorial pleasure to the workings of the castration com-
archy, the Dietrich character in these films displays her ability to
plex, Mulvey also ignores the existence of pre-Oedipal desires and
fascinate in confirmation of what Michel Foucaurlt has called 'power
ambivalences that play a part in the genesis of scopophilia and fetish-
asserting itself in the pleasure of showing off, scandalizing, or resist-
ism as well as masochism. In Mr"rlvey's construct of immutable polari-
ing'.an In response to the male gaze, Dietrich looks back or initiates
ties, the female 'can exist only in relation to castration'; she is either
the look. This simple fact contains the potential for questioning her
the 'bearer of guilt' or the 'perfect product'.a3
objectification.
Cinematic pleasure is much closer to masochistic scopic pleasure
than to a sadistic, controlling pleasure privileged by Mulvey and also
212 213

Ê _l
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

by Christian Metz. In Metz's The Imaginary Signifier, the voyeuristic masochist, who is bound to the regime of pregenital sexr"rality.
separation of subject/screen object is used to align the spectator with Masoch's heroes are forever swooning into a fàint before the blissful
sadism. 'Voyeuristic desire, along with certain forms of sadism,' says moment of consummation. Closing the gap between the desiring
Metz, 'is the only desire whose principle of distance symbolically and masochistic subject and the object actually threatens the narcissistic
spatially evokes this fundamental rent.' Metz believes that all voyelrr- gratification of the masochist who 'gives nothing' and cannot endure
ism is sadistic to a degree and compares cinematic voyeurism to the 'anxiety [of giving] that must accompany orgasm'.47 Masochistic
'unauthorized scopophilia' and its prototype, the child viewing the clesire depends on separation to gllarantee the structure of its ambiva-
primal scene.nn lent desire. To close the gap, to overcome separation from the mother,
Contrary to Metz, Jean Laplanche has shown how the spectatorial to fulfill clesire, to achieve orgasm means death. The contracted,
position in the primal gaze is aligned with masochism, not sadism. mutual alliance of the masochistic relationship guarantees distance/
Laplanche considers masochism to be the 'fundamental fantasy'. He separation. Unlike sadism, which depends upon action and immediate
compares the infant's position to that of 'Odysseus tied to the mast or gratification, masochism savors sllspense and distance.
Tântalus, on whom is imposed the spectacle of parental intercourse.' The spectator at the cinematic dream screen regresses to a similar
Corresponding to the perturbation of pain is the'sympathetic excita- state of orality as the masochist and also experiences a loss of ego-
tion . . . the passive position of the child . . . [that] is not simply a body boundary. Spectatorial pleasure is a limited one like the infantile
passivity in relation to adult activity, but passivity in relation to adult extragenital sexual pleasure that defines the masochist. Like the maso-
fantasy intruding within him."5 Parallel to Laplanche's description of chist, but unlike the sadist, to remain within the confines of normal
the prirnal scene is Masoch's'A Childhood Memory and Reflection on spectatorship and not become, as Stephen Heath says, 'a true voyeur',0*
the Novel'. Ten-year-old Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, hiding in his the spectator must avoid the orgasmic release that would effectively
aunt's beclroom closet, hears his aunt welcome her lover: 'I did not destroy the boundaries of disavowal and disrr"rpt the magical thinking
understand what they were saying, still less what they were doing, but that defines his/her oral, infantile, and narcissistic use of the cinematic
my heart began to pound, for I was acutely aware of my situation . . . ' object. The spectator's narcissistic omnipotence is like the narcissistic,
The husband interrupts the lovers' rendezvous. Madame Zenobia infantile omnipotence of the masochist, who ultimately cannot con-
begins to beat him. She then discovers Leopold and whips him.'I must trol the active partner. Immobile, surrounded in darkness, the spec-
admit,' Masoch writes, 'while I writhed under my aunt's cruel blows, I tator becomes the passive receiving object who is also subject. The
experienced acute pleasure.'06 Not sr"rrprisingly, Von Sternberg's films spectator must comprehend the images, but the images cannot be
also contain many scenes that evoke the situation of the child witness- controlled. On this level of pleasure, the spectator receives, but no
ing or overhearing parental intercourse. In Shanghai Express, Doc object-related demands are made.
Harvey eavesdrops on the 'negotiations' between Lily and the nefari-
ous General Chang. Like the passive child who sees/overhears the
primal scene and fantasizes both discovery and punishment, Doc is
threatened with punishment for his curiosity and his desire: General FETISHISM AND DISAVOWAL
Chang decides to blind him. In The Scarlet Empress, Alexei loves
Catherine but is forced by her to prepare the royal bedchamber for The masochistic aesthetic appears to be a major site for developing a
the arrival of her lover, General Orloff. Alexei assumes the role of the critiqr"re of theories of visual pleasure that hinge on the role of castra-
child-spectator. tion fear in the formation of male spectatorial pleasure. Masochism is
If Sade's novels are taken as the prototype of sadistic object rela- not associated with castration fèar yet fetishism is an integral part of
tions, then it is obvious that the saclist is driven to consume or destroy its dynamic. Disavowal and fetishism, the two common matrices of
the object in order to bring about the directly experienced pleasure of masochism and cinematic spectatorial pleasure, do not always reflect
orgasm for himself. This negation cannot be exercised merely through the psychic trauma of castration and sexual difference defined as
the sadistic 'look'-the active gaze. Orgasm is not the goal of the feminine lack.
214 215
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

Recent psychoanalytic research into the pre-Oedipal period indi- DREAM SCREEN
cates that disavowal and fetishism are operative much, much earlier
than the phallic stage and are not necessarily used as a defense against Masochistic fantasy is dominated by oral pleasure, the desire to return
castration anxiety. Of particular importance to the visual pleasure and to the nondifferentiated body state of the mother/child, and the fear
masochism is the view that fetishism and masochism evidence the of abandonment (the state of nonbreast, nonplenitude). In a sense,
prolonged need for primary identification with the 'almighty pre- these same wishes are duplicated by the film spectator who becomes a
Oedipal mother'.ae If the mother/infant relationship is disturbed when
child again in response to the dream screen of cinema. This dream
the child's body boundaries are not well established, fetishism based screen affords spectatorial pleasure in recreating the first fetish-the
on the disavowal of her loss may develop as a defensive maneuver to mother as nurturing environment. The spectator at the cinematic
restore the mother's body, permit passive infant satisfaction, and pro-
dream screen regresses to a state that Baudry says is analogons to the
tect primary identification.so
oral period.sT Like the fetish objects that follow, the dream screen
In summarizing various findings, Robert Dickes states that most restores the sense of wholeness of the first symbiotic relationship as it
pregenital research stands in direct opposition to Freud, i.e., that 'the restores the unity of the undifferentiated ego/ego ideal, It functions
fetish represents more than the female phallus'.sl Dickes believes that like a 'good blanket' reuniting the spectator/child with the earliest
the traditional view of the fetish as 'a talisman in relieving phallic object ofdesire that lessens the anxiety ofthe ego loosened from body
castration anxiety' is a'late stage of the development . . . ordinarily. . . bounciaries,5s
never reached'.s2 Most children, regardless of sex, use transitional In restoring the hrst sleep environment of the dream screen, the
objects to soothe the separation from the mother. If the child cannot
cinematic apparatus re-establishes the fluid boundaries to self. In'The
accommodate itself to this separation, the transitional object may be
Unrememberable and the Unforgettable: The Passive Primal Repres-
retained and lead to fetishism. While Socarides believes fetishism 'may
sion', Alvan Frank discusses the psychic benehts of hallucinatory
have no etiological connection with phallic or genital sexuality', Wulff
screen/breast experiences that create an absence ofego boundaries and
concludes that the fetish 'represents a substitute for the mother's permit the regression to earlier perceptual modes.se The cinema may
breast and the mother's body'.1' also offer this type of psychic reparation in the re-creation of a screen
Fetishism and disavowal are not exclusively male psychoanalltic phenomenon that gives access to the unremembered 'memories' of
manifestations, but males may be much more likely to develop such earliest childhood experience.
perversions because of problems in resolving gender identity (crossing
The dream screen as the first hallucination of gratification is an
over from primary to same-sex identification) unrelated to the exist- essential notion to considering cinematic pleasure. Through imagina-
ence of any sexually differentiated scopic drive.5a Female perversion
tion the child creates the mother and the breast. lust as the fantasized
does exist; however, the extreme forms, in particular, are less 'visible'
breast cannot offer real nourishment or interaction with the mother,
than the male version because the female can 'hide' impaired sexual the cinematic apparatus cannot provide intimacy or fusion with real
function.ss As a result, females may, as Charles Socarides believes, tend
objects. The spectator must disavow an absence: the dream screen
to exhibit 'forms of fetishism not obviously associated with genital offers only partial grâtification of the symbiotic wish. The object/
functioning', for example, ritualistic preparations for intercourse.s6 screen/images cannot be physically possessed or controlled by the
Although it is naive to assume that the iclentif,cation of female sco- spectator. The spectator's 'misapprehension' of control over cinematic
pophilia or fetishism would open a gap for the female spectator within images is less a misapprehension than it is a disavowal of the loss of
dominant cinema, the pregenital origin of these manifestations calls ego autonomy over image formation.
into question the views that use them to exclude the female from the
fundamental structures of cinematic pleasure or even from the possi-
bility of libidinalized looking.

216 217
 GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES

IDENTIFICATION Socarides, Zilboorg, and others have linked the male's fetishization of
the female to this same urge to restore the wholeness of bisexuality-
In restoring the pre-ego of primary narcissism, the cinema encourages of having both male and female sexual characteristics. In Socarides's
a regression characterized by all the possibilities of identilication and view, the male's identification with the pre-Oedipal mother expresses
projection resembling the infantile mechanisms operative in perver- itself in 'the wish for female genitalia, the wish for a child, and the wish
sions. The pleasures of perversion depend directly on a splitting kind to undo the separation from the mother'.6s Cathexis and identification
of ego defense to solidiÔ, identity.60 By satisfying the compulsion to are simultaneous in the dual aim of the bisexual urge.uu The ability to
repeat archaic stages of life, the artiflcial regression of the cinema simultaneously desire and also identiÿ with the opposite sex has
enlarge_s and reintegrates the ego through different forms of ego- important implications for film spectatorship. When opposite-sex
reality.6l The cinematic spectator experiences infantile forms of object identification has been considered, it has most often been regarded as
cathexis and identification normally repressed. Among the most a problem for the female spectator rather than as a potential pleasure
important aspects of the release of repressed material are the pleasures available to both sexes. The'masculinization' of the feminine spectator
of re-experiencing the primary identification with the mother and the has been discussed by Mary Ann Doane and Laura Mulvey in terms of
pleasurable possibilities of gender mobility through identification. the female spectator's identification with the male position. In their
Loewald regards identification with the mother as essential to eg<_r view, this trans-sex identification is the result of the female's lack of a
formation and the structuring of the personality: spectatorial position of her own other than a masochistic-female/
object identiflcation.6T Neglected are the possibilities of male identifi-
. . . the primary narcissistic identity with the mother forever constitutes the
cation with the female (even as an ideal ego) or his identification with
deepest unconscious origin and structural layer of the ego and reality, and
a'feminized' masculine character.
the motive force for the ego's 'remarkable striving toward unification,
Like the wish and counterwish for fusior-r with and separation from
synthesis'.62
the mother the wish to change gender identity, the 'attempt to identifir
While the male's pre-Oedipal identification with the mother is with and to become both parents', cannot be fulfilled in reality',"*
repressed in adult life, for both male and female, same-sex identifica- Laplanche has stated that fantasy is one means of achieving the goal of
tion does not totally exclude opposite-sex identification.63 The wish to reintegrating opposite-sex identification.u' Otto Fenichel believed that
be both sexes-to oyercome sexual difference-remains. scopophilic pleasure was dependent on taking the position, not of the
Although Freud recognized the bisexuality of every human being, observed same-sex participant in intercourse, but the opposite sex.70
he continually returned to an emphasis on the polarity between Through the mobility of multiple, fluid identifications, the cinema
masculine and feminine-a polarity that has infiltrated feminist- provides an enunciative apparatlls that functions as a protective guise
psychoanalytic approaches to film. Recent research has revealed the like fantasy or dream to permit the temporary satisfaction of what
vital importance of psychic androgyny (bisexuality) to understanding Kubie regards as'one of the deepest tendencies in human nature'.7l
sexuality, identity, and the search for pleasure. In his study, 'The Drive Because pleasure in looking and, especially, looking at the dream
to Become Both sexes', Lawrence Kubie details two prominent aspects screen of cinema and the female involves pregenital pleasures and
ofbisexuality: (1)the reverse of penis enr,y, and (2) the urge to become ambivalences, the role and reaction of the sexually differentiated spec-
both sexes: tator must be approached in a completely different light. The pregeni-
Overlooked is the importance of the reverse and complementary enly of the tal pleasures of perversion are not limited to the enjoyment of the
male for the woman's breast, for nursing as well as his enry for the woman,s male spectator, nor available to the female only if she abandons maso-
ability to conceive and to bring forth babies . . . from childhood and through- chistic identification with the'female object' and then identifies with a
out life, on conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels, in varying pro- male spectatorial position defined only by control.
portions and emphases, the human goal seems almost invariably to be both Prompted by the need to delineate the relationship of masochism
sexes with the inescapable consequence that we are aiways attempting in every and its formal structures to current psychoanalysis, a reconsideration
moment and every act both to affirm and deny our gender identities.6a of the role of pregenital states of psychic development holcls great
218 219
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERYERSE PLEASURES
promise for opening new areas of exploration in the study of specta- Papers on Metapsychology, ed. Philip Rieff (New York: Macmillan, Collier
torial pleasure. Many of the assumptions adopted by film theorists Books, 1963), 190-93, for Freud's Iirst essay to use the Death Instinct theory as
from Freudian metapsychology or Lacan seem inadequate in aÇÇount- an approach to the clinical and theoretical dilemmas. See also 'Instincts and
ing for cinematic pleasure. To understand the structure of looking, their Vicissitudes' (1915) rn General Psychological Theoy,25 and'Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality', Standard Edition of the Çomplete Psychological
visual pleasure must be connected to its earliest manifestations in
Works, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-66), vii, 159*61.
infancy. As Edith Jacobson's work implies, as well as that of Stoller, 14. Freud,'The Economic Problem in Masochism', 190-91.
Bak, Loewald, and others, the visual pleasure experienced in archaic 15. Deleuze, 50-54. See also Bernhard Berliner, 'On Some Psychodynamics of
stages is not automatically negated by later stages of the child's devel- Masochism', Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 16 (1947), 459-7 1; Gustav Bychowski,
opment.72 The close resemblance of the cinematic apparatus to the 'Some Aspects of Masochistic Involvement', Journal of the A:merican Psycho-
analyric Association, 7 (April 1959), 248*73; E. Bergler, The Basic Neurosis
structures of perversion and, specifically, to masochism warrants fur- (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1949) for other views that locate masochism's
ther investigation beyond the limitations imposed by current theor- genesis in the mother/child relationship. See Deleuze, 111-12, on superego/
etical discourse if the nature of cinematic pleasure is to be understood ego.
in its full complexity and psychological significance. 16. Berliner, 'Libido and Reality in Masochism', Psychoanolytic Quarteily, 9
(1940),323-26, 333. Deleuze believes that the oral mother of masochism is
tl-re good mother who takes on the functions of the two 'bad mothers of
Notes masochism', the uterine mother and the Oedipal rnother. In the process,
the functions are idealized and, as Deleuze expiains,'This concentration of
1. Christine Gledhill, 'Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism', euarteily functions in the person of the good oral mother is one of the ways in which
Review of Film Studies,3 (Fall 1978), 457-93. In her t9B4 revision of this the father is cancelled out' (p.55).
article for Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (Frederick, Md.: AFI- 17. Bychowski,260. The issue of why pain is necessary to masochism's dynamic of
University Publications of America, 1984), Gledhill rearticulates her original pleasure is still one of tl-re most controversial in psychoanalysis. See Abram
critique. Kardiner, Aaron Karush, and Lionel Ovesey, 'A Methodological Study of
2. Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: An Interpretation of Coldness ond Cruelty (New Freudian Theory III: Narcissism, Bisexuality, and the Dual Instinct Theory',
York: George Braziller, 1971); Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, 'Venus in Furs', Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorclers,l29 (1959),215*22. See also Deleuze,
trans. Jean McNeil, in Deleuze. 1 08*109.
3. Deleuze,95. 18. Roy Schafer, 'The ldea of Resistance', International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,
4. De\euze,52. 54 (t973),278.
5. Sacher-Masoch, i29. 19. Deleuze, 95. 'Again, while the sense of guilt has great importance in maso-
6. Deleuze,80. chism, it acts only as a cover, as the humorous outcome of a guilt that has
7. Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, The i20 Days of SocJom and Other already been subverted; for it is no longer the guilt of the chilcl towards the
Writings, trans. and ed. Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver (Nerv york: father, but that of the father himself, and of his likeness in the child . . . When
Grove Press, 1966), 577. guilt is experienced "masochistically," it is already distorted, artificial and
B. Deleuze,31. ostentatious' (p.95). Deleuze's theory-that the father is the guilty one-is
9. Deleuze, 16-19. See also Roland Barthes, Sade/Loyola/Fourier,trans. Richard not as unusual as it might frrst appear. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and
Miller (New York Hill & Wang, 1976),31*37. the Cooked, trans. Johan and Doreen Weightman (New'ôrk: Harper & Row,
10. tsarthes,34. 1969),48.
11. lean-Louis Baudry,'The Apparatus', Camera Obscura, I (Fall 1976), 105-26; 20. Michael de M'Uzan, 'A Case of Masochistic Perversion and an Outline of a
Robert Eberwein,'Reflections on the Breast', Wide Angle,4: 3 (1981),48-53. Theory', International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 54(1973), 462.
12. Laura Mulvey, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen, 16 (Autumn 21. Theodore Reik, Masochism in Modern Man,trans. M. H. Beigel and G. M.
1975), 6-18. Claire Johnston, Nores on Women's Cinema (London: Society for Kruth (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1941),428.
Education in Fiim and Têlevision, 1973),2-4; Mary Ann Doane, 'Misrecogni- 22. De]rerze,59-60.
tion and Identity', Cine-Tracrs, l1 (Fall t9B0), 28-30; Doane, 'Film and the 23. See Victor Smirnoff, 'The Masochistic Contract', International lournal of
Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator', Screen, 23 (September- Psycho-Analysis, 50 (1969), 666-71, for an analysis of masochism heavily
October l9B2),74-87. indebted to Deleuze's work, but which discounts the role of pain and
13. Sigmund Freud,'A Child is being Beaten' (1919), in Sex and tht psychology of emphasizes the role of the contractual alliance in the perversion. I must
Love, ed. Philip Rieff (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1963), 117. See acknowledge my own debt to Marsha I(inder for suggesting this expansion of
'Tlre Economic Problem in Masochism', in General psychological Theory: Deleuze's model.

220
221
GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM AND THE PERVERSE PLEÂSURES

24. Robin Wood, 'Venus de Marlene', FiIm Comment,14 (March-April 1978), 60. analysis snd the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press,
25. Mulvey, 14. 1978); Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, ed. )oyce Trebilcot (Totowa, NJ:
26. Doane, 'Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator', 82. Rowman & Allanheld, 1984). While my brief consideration of Freud in this
Doane refers to Dietrich's image as a stage performer. She takes Silvia Boven- article necessitates a generaliT-ation about his stance on women, it should be
schen's comments in 'Is There a Feminine Aesthetic?', New German Critique, noted that he did consider the influence of the mother, but, as demonstrated
1I (Winter 1977), 130, and uses them to support her remarks on excess in his theories on masochism and various other symptomatologies, the father,
femininity. Bovenschen actually associates Dietrich with an 'intellectual penis enry, castration fear, and the emphasis on the phallic stage (and corres-
understatement' and refers to her becoming a 'myth' despite 'her subtle dis- ponding disinterest in pre-Oedipal or pregenital stages) effectively displace,
dain for men'. The complexity of Dietrich's image as discussed by Bovenschen ihe mother from his work. See Viola Klein, The Feminine Character: History of
does not stlpport Doane's use of her statements to associate Dietrich with'an an Ideology (New York: International Universities Press, 1949).
excess of femininity'. David Davidson has placed Dietrich's Lola character in )6 Hans Loewald, Papers on Psychoanalysis (New Haven: Yale University Press,
The Blue Angel within the tradition of the 'amoral woman'. He makes some 1980),16s.
interesting remarks on the'threatening' sexuality of these female characters in 37. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, 'Freud and Female Sexuality: The Consideration
relation to Mulvey's theory. of Some Blind Spots in the Exploration of the Dark Continent'' International
27. Carole Zucker, 'Some Observations on Sternberg and Dietrich', Cinema lour- Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 57 (197 6), 19 6.
ral, 19 (Spring l9B0),21. Masochism's ambivalent stance toward the female 38 Robert Dickes discusses the fetish as 'screen memory' in 'Fetishistic Behavior:
ensures her alternation betv/een coldness and warmth, sacrifice and torture, A Contribution to Its Complex Development and Signif,c ances' , Journal of the
but, as Deleuze points out, the female in the masochistic scenario is not American Psychoanalytic Association, ll (1963), 324*30, See also Anneliese
sadistic, she 'incarnates instead the element of inflicting pain in an exclusively Riess, 'The Mother's Eye: For Better and for Worse', The Psychoanalytic Study
masochistic situation' (p. 3B). It is rarely the sexualized female who is judged of the Child, 33 ( 1978), 38l -40s.
guilty in Von Sternberg's fllms, but the representative of the superego and the 39. Ôhasseguet-Smirgel, 281. Ethel Spector Person has suggested that infantile
father. dependence may be the key to power relations in sexualiry: 'the limitations to
28. Wood,61. seiual "1iberation", meaning liberation from power contaminants, do not
29. Claire Pajaczkowska discusses this point in 'The Heterosexual Presumption: A reside in the biological nâture ofsexuaiity, or in cultural or political arrange-
Contribution to the Debate on Pornography', Screen,22 (1981), 86. ments, and certainly not in the sex difference, but may lie in the universal
30. Deleuze, 56. Although the mothering agent might be considered to be a condition of infantile dependence' (p. 627 ). See 'sexuality as the Mainstay of
socially cletermined role rather than a strictly biological one, this alternative Identity: Psychoanalytic Perspective', Signs, 5 (Surnmer 1980).
definition does not seem appropriate to this particular application ofDeleuze 40. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol' 1. An Introduction, luar,S.
and pregenital research. Interestingly, it has been suggested that in the pre- Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 10B-9.
genital stage, sexual difference is not an issue to the child except in terms of 41. Mulvey, 13-14.
breast/nonbreast. 42. D. N. Rodowick,'The Dilîculty of Differen ce', Wicle Angle, 5:l (1982), 7 -9.
31. Deleuze, 56. 43. Mulvey, 11, 14.
32. Deleuze, 80-B t ; Bychowski, 260. 44. Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl
33. Deleuze, 49. The female in the masochistic scenario is a femme fatala but a Wiliiams, Ben Brewstef, Alfred Guzzetti (Bloomington: Incliana University
very specific kind. Her danger supersedes her portrayal as an'amoral', sexual- Press, l9B2),59*63.
ized female wlro tlrreatens social control. The 'mystery' of the femme fatale of 45. Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanaÿsis, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman
masochism is the mystery of the womb, rebirth, and the child's symbiotic (Baltimore: lohns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 102.
bond with the mother. She represents the dialectical unity betr,veen liberation 46. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, 'A Childhood Memory and Reflection on the
and death, the bonding of Eros with Thanatos that places the former in the Novel', Appendix I in Deleuze, 232-33.
service ofthe latter. 47. Sylvan Kéiier, 'Bocly Ego during Orgasm', Psychoanaÿtic Quarterÿ,21 (April
34 See Kaja Silverman, 'Masochism and Sub;'ectivily', Framework, 12 (1980), 2. 19s2),160, 193.
Silverman's discussion of the masochistic use of the fort/da game is most 48. Stephen Healh, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
valuable; however, I cannot agree with her generalizations about cultural 19B1),189.
pleasure/instinctual unpleasure or with her reading of Freud (especially con- 49. P. l. Van der Leeuw'The Preoedipal Phase of the Male', The Psychoanalytic
cerning transference of drive expression to a contrary drive). She aiso Study of the Child, 13 ( l95B), 369. See also Robert C. Bak, 'Fetishism', Jottrnal
approaches the idea that fetishism is lelated to identif,cation (p. 6), a notion of the Am er ic an P sy cho an aly t i c As s o c i atio n, I (19 53 )' 29 l.
worth exploring in detail. 50. Van der leeuw, 352*74; Charles Socarides, 'The Development of a Fetishistic
35 Schafer, 278. See also Robert Stoller, Sexual Excitement (New York: Simon ancl Perversion: The Contribution of Preoedipal Phase Conflict', Journal of the
Schuster, 1979); Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering Psycho- American Psychoanalytic Association, B (April 1960), 307-9; Bak, 291. Bak

222 223
 GAYLYN STUDLAR MASOCHISM ÀND THE PERVERSE PLEASURES
maintains that the normal male child thinks it is possible to identiÿ with Mothering, on the splitting technique of ego defense, primary identification,
the mother and emulate her positive power (i.e. bear a child) whiie also and the orai stage, 60.
repairing the separation from her (through fetishism) without endangering
61. Loewald, 16-17.
phallic inregrity (p. 286). Joseph Solomon, 'Transitional phenomenà anà 62. Loewald,17.
Obsessive-Compulsive States', tn Between Reality and Fantasy: Transitional
63. Freud,'A Child is being Beaten', 129; Robert Stolier, 'Facts and Fancies: An
Objects ancl Phenomena, ed. Simon A. Grotnick, Leonard Barkin, and Werner
Examination of Freud's Concept of Bisexuality', in Women and Analysis, ed.
Muensterberger (New York: Jason Aronson, l97B),250-51, associates fetish-
Jean Strouse (New York: Grossman, 197 4), 357 -60.
ism with the child's sense of body intactness derived from the mother.
64. Lawrence Kubie, 'The Drive to Become Both Sexes', in Symbols and Neurosis,
51. Dickes,320.
ed. Herbert J. Schlesinger (New York: International Universities Press, 1978),
52. Dickes,327.
195,202. See also Zilboorg and Kittay.
53. M. Wulff, 'Fetishism and Object Choice in Early Childhood,, psychoanalytic
65. Socarides, 307; Gregory Zilboorg, 'Masculine and Feminine; Some Biological
Quarterly, 15 (1945), 465-70. Socarides, 309. Brunswick, Lampl-de Groot, and Cultural Aspects', Psychiatry,T (1944),257*96; Eva Feder Kittay, 'Womb
Jacobson, Kestenberg, Socarides, and a number of others link feiishistic per- Emy: An Explanatory Concept', in Tieblicot, 94-128.
version to the pre-oedipal period. Most conclude that fetishism has [ittle Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1954),260.
66.
connection to the phallic period or genital sexuality in its formation, but this
67. Doane,'Fi1m and the Masquerade',74-BB; Laura Mulvey'Afterthougl'rts on
does not mean that a fetish cannot represent the phallus. wutff qualifies the
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", inspired by Duel in the Sun', Frame'
linl< between childhood fetishism and adult fetishism by noting the incon-
work. l5ll6l17 (Summer 198 l), l2-15.
sistences in their relationship and the need for further research. Griselcla
68. Kubie,211. See also Loewald,268-69.
Pollock has pointed out in 'What's Wrong with Images of Women,, Screen of Psychoanalysls (New York: W. W.
69. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, The Language
Education,24 (Autumn 1977),25*33, that Freud's theory of fetishism (as
Norton, 1973).243-46.
adopted by Mulvey in particular) cannot account for vaginàl imagery in 70. Otto Fenichel, 'scopophilic Instinct and Identification', tn Collected Papers of
pornography.
Otto Fenichel: Pirst Series (New York: W. W. Norton, 1953),377 .
54. Ralph Greenson, 'Dis-Identifi,ing from Mother: Its Special Importance for the
71. Kubie, 21 1 .
Boy', International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49 (196g), i7O_74; see also
72. Edith Jacobson, The Self and the Object World (New York: International
Nancy Choclorow 'Family Structure and Feminine personality,, in Woman,
Universities Press, 1964).
Culture, and Society, ed. S. Rosaldo ancl L. Lamphere (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1978), 50; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 2g1-84. In ,Film
and the Masquerade', Doane insists that the female is 'constructed differently
in relation to processes oflooking' (p. B0).
55. Socarides, 304. See also Stoller, Sexual Excitement, 7-13; Freud, ,The
Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman,, rn Sexuality and
the Psychology of Love',133-59.
56. Socarides,304.
57. Baudry, 125. 'It rnay seeln peculiar that desire which constituted tl.re cine-
effect is rooted in the oral structure ofthe subject. The conditions ofprojec-
tion do evoke the dialectics internal/external, swallowing/swailowed, iating/
being eaten, whicl.r is characteristic of what is being structured during the oràl
phase. . . . The relationship visual orifice/buccal orifice acts at the same time as
analogy and differentiation, but also points to the reiation of consecution
between oral satisfaction, sleep, white screen of the dream on which dream
images will be projected, beginning of the dream.'
58. Judith s. Kestenberg and Joan weinstock, 'Transitional objects and Bocly-
Image Formation', in Between Reality and Fantasy,82.
59. Alvan Frank, 'The Unrememberable and the Unforgettable', The psycho-
analytic Study oJ the Child,24 (1969),56. See also Ernst Kris, ,On preconscious
Mental Processes', in Organization and pathology of Thought, ed. David
Rapaport (New York Columbia University press, 1951), 493.
60. w. Gillespie, 'Notes on the Analysis of sexual Perve rsion' , International lournal
ofPsychoanalysls (1952),397. See also Loewald, 268-69,40i-2. See Chodorow,

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