Gone Girl: the ultimate Lacanian film about the “big Other”, desire, and class

    Although the film Gone Girl (David Fincher 2014) started and ended with a close shot at Amy’s beautiful blond head, which then turns around to display her inscrutable smiling face and eyes, accompanied by a male voice in the background asking what is apparently the key question of the film—and I paraphrase—“What really goes on in the mind of the other in a marriage?”, this theme of the irreducible otherness of the other, the impossibility of genuine trust and transparent communication in a relationship, in my opinion, is probably the least interesting of the manifold themes the film offers up for us to savour. Of course, at a basic level, the film indeed tells a story about how a relationship developed so “perfectly”, into an enviably happy marriage, but then turned not just sour but positively horrific; it tells how two people who seemed so deeply in love could in fact have not the faintest clue as to what the other truly is. But this reading is simplistic and therefore boring because it assumes that there is a “truer” identity behind the surface—the “truer Amy” is supposed to be what many viewers of the film might call a “control freak”, someone who wants everything to go according to her perfect plan, for which she would do anything to manipulate people’s opinions and behaviors. This interpretation then reduces the film to a story about a manipulating and vengeful woman and her deeds (which also invites the accusation of misogyny), and the much greater richness in the film is lost.

    With such relatively uninteresting interpretations cleared off the way, I propose that Gone Girl is the ultimate film—in my impoverished film viewing experience—about the Lacanian ideas of the “big Other” and desire. Indeed, one almost feels as if the story was written with Lacan’s theory as its underlying theme and structure. One is tempted to wager that the author of the original novel, Gillian Flynn, has had many a sticky finger in Lacan’s works before she wrote the story. Let me be upfront with my arguments: the view of the big Other (“big Other” stands for the symbolic order, the fictional universe, and also commonsense and public opinion) is all that matters to Amy, and Amy is simultaneously a character in the symbolic fiction and also herself the author of that fiction; desire is a desire to be desired; in other words, one desires the big Other’s love, desire, and approval.

    Earlier on in the film, we learn that Amy was a very privileged young women who also served as the real-life inspiration for the widely popular and loved character of her mother's fiction series “Amazing Amy”—Amy's symbolic double. What Amy could not achieve in her real life, Amazing Amy pulls off effortlessly. So although Amy “gave up cello at eleven”, Amazing Amy became a virtuoso; although Amy never did cheerleading or was never good at it, Amazing Amy “entered the Varsity”. As Amy said at one point: “She [Amazing Amy] is always a step ahead of me.” Obviously, here we have a perfect instantiation of Lacan’s classic “mirror stage” scenario: Amazing Amy represents Amy’s ego-ideal in the Imaginary order. Amy is the infant who looks into the mirror and sees her more complete, more accomplished image. Just as in the "mirror stage" scenario, it is the (m)other's gaze from aside that affirms and secures this rival-identificatory relationship between the ego and its ideal, even more so in this case: it is in fact the (m)other who authors the entire fictional space, spins the symbolic web which holds Amy's position in it. As the film progresses, reference to Amazing Amy disappeared, and all is now focused on Amy herself; this is because, by doing the crazy things she did, she has clearly transcended real life and entered the very realm of fiction itself; in other words, for most of the film, Amy has become Amazing Amy, as we viewers were indeed held in awe at what she did. The ego and its imaginary ideal have merged into one, and to this extent, we must say that the film has a perversely happy ending!

    The point that all that matters to Amy is the world’s view, and not some so-called “inner truth” or “real” state of things is one that I believe I need not labor on too much. “We are the happiest couple I know”, Amy wrote in her diary. Of course, this statement implies a comparison – “happiest” compared to how other couples she knew appeared. The point is: for Amy all that matters is how her relationship with Nick appeared to the world, to the “big Other”. It is as if she wants the top prize for being the happy couple. Appearance is essence, at least for Amy; and the view that there is something more true/authentic about Amy hidden behind a façade is one to be utterly resisted. This also explains what appears to me to be the crucial turning point of film, namely, the point at which Amy, taking refuge at Desi’s luxurious villa, saw Nick going on national TV to tell the world lies (“I love my wife” “I love you, Amy”…) to save his reputation and try to win the public’s sympathy. Most clearly, Amy was transfixed when she saw and heard Nick tell those lies—she gorged on ice cream and appeared totally mesmerized by what Nick said. I argue that this was the moment at which Amy made the decision—her most risky and daring one yet—to kill Desi in order to return to Nick. (One must remember, that Amy ended up at Desi’s place was not in her original plan, and therefore, a new plan had to be made.) It mattered not the slightest whether Nick was actually lying or not; since his words were said during a show that reaches “tens of millions” of American TV viewers, it is truth for Amy, and Amy liked it very much—it was exactly what she wanted. Thus, the lies that Nick told the world, mediated through the “big Other” of the TV networks and hence public opinion, became the truth that amazing Amy would kill an innocent person for.

    The reason that Amy was willing to take such a risky step—after all one must remember that Amy was never even completely sure that her revenge on Nick was going to succeed because she included “kill self” as one of her options—was because what Nick said fitted her fiction too well; it was exactly what she desired. And what did she desire? Precisely Nick’s love and desire; and what perhaps matters more is that this love and dedication from Nick has to be sanctified by the “big Other” of public opinion—it has to be witnessed on national TV and therefore become a matter of public record. Here we see the Lacanian rule that “desire is a desire to be desired” working on two levels: Amy desires Nick’s desire, and because Nick told the world about his love and admiration for Amy, she also stands to win the world’s love and approval. This is the ultimate temptation that Amy could not resist, and poor Desi became the sacrifice.

    Here, in my opinion, one confronts one most interesting puzzle in the film. Why Nick? Why can’t Amy get over Nick? Doesn’t Desi also offer desire and love, and therefore the possibility to satisfy Amy’s desire for an other’s desire? Obviously, Desi’s desire for Amy is undying and intense, after they broke up for so many years. Furthermore, being a wealthy and cultivated person, Desi seemed far superior to Nick and therefore an unquestionably better “match” to Amy. While they had breakfast at Desi’s fancy villa, Amy confirmed Desi’s greater cultivation—that he could discuss with her 18^th century classical music and 19^th century paintings. Objectively speaking, then, by opting for Desi, Amy will be in even more enviable and perfect a couple in the world’s eyes, so why does Amy still go for Nick in the end? Here, the theme of class enters the scene. One small detail is worth paying attention to: after breakfast, Desi leaves for work; Amy sends him to the door, kisses him while biting his lips, then also roughing up his hair and untucking his shirt, adding aggressively: “This is how the boys wear it!” The comparatively uninteresting way to read this is that Amy was again being the “control freak” that she is, namely, she wants her partner to look exactly the way she fancies. But an alternative reading is that “the boys” stand for people of the lower classes—whose rough, masculine demeanor and style represent to Amy, a higher class woman, an inexplicable attraction; and of course Nick was very much that rough boy from countryside Missouri of lower birth compared to Amy whose parents are handsome upper-class New Yorkers. Here, we glimpse the ideological kernel of the film: Amy’s desire for others’ desire is the upper-class’s desire for the lower classes’ desire. We have various common words for this desire in the vocabulary of capitalism/neoliberalism: aspiration, ambition, etc… It is this desiring gaze cast by the dominated class upon the dominant class that is the ultimate object of desire for the latter. We recall that when Nick went on the national show, he did confirm this: Amy was the best; she brings out the best from him; he couldn’t appreciate how fortunate it was for him, a lower-class, relatively uncultivated person, to have someone like Amy as his partner… This was the desire Amy would kill for.

    At the core of the film, there is arguably a fundamental paradox. Namely, on the one hand, Amy is undoubtedly the Nietzschean super(wo)man who remorselessly manipulated and exploited others and yet remained completely beyond touch, beyond law or punishment; on the other hand, her success involves her assumption of a role that is very much still structured by normative gender ideology. In one of the last scenes of the film, she acts the perfect housewife who cooks breakfast in the morning for the husband. All that she wants is to live the perfect happy married life as defined by dominant social expectations. In other words, for the “correct” appearance, she would do anything; all her agency is exercised to serve the structure. This paradox pertaining to Amy, in the final analysis, is perhaps also the dilemma confronting God. As Schelling said, God had to create the world in order to avoid His own madness; He creates the world only to be Himself relegated to a restricted position and capacity; He becomes the hidden God (Dieu caché); in short, God created a world not to be a master over, but in order to avoid the madness that would result from His infinite powers. Same with Amy: for someone of her abilities, if she did not take refuge in a purely symbolic - one could even say alienating - position authored by her (m)other, her only option would have been madness. This is why not only the film has a “happy ending”, Amy is most definitely not a mad woman either.