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 18th
century classical music and 19th 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.
