In the film ‘The Blue Angel’ a scene is built with three layers. This is extremely useful for the symbolic Laconian interpretation. The professor has gone to the nightclub, the situation of forbidden desire to catch his students who openly enjoy this pleasure. In the first instance Marlena Dietrich climbs the spiral staircase which the professor is not allowed to fully ascend. Though she drops her knickers down, landing on his head. A foretelling of future enjoyment, but at this stage the knickers representing jouissance as the pleasure is not yet mastered but exist in a state of forbidden excess. Meanwhile the professor must reside in the central space where games of authority and mastery are played out. During a chaotic sequence the professor finds himself defending Marlena Dietrich’s honour in a fight with a sea captain. The captain exits and returns with a policeman. The professor is forced to hide in the cellar where he discovers the original object of his master signifier.. the students. Previously hidden from the professor, now the master and students are stored together. As the master encounters the object of his mastery desire, that which creates him, the student (slave), the excess master jouisance forces the master to the surface, dragging with him the sublimated components. He drags the students up to the surface and berates them. The act of supreme mastery over the students exerts his authority over both the sea captain and the policeman, who then leave. The students also run off but are now released from their sublimated state and engage in open taunting of the professor and acts of open impudence. One begins to smoke in front of him and refuses to stop when the professor demands it. The students have become shameless. The professor also becomes shameless and considers if he can now live a joyous life. This is represented by the canary that died in the first scene suddenly bursting back into life and song. The professors maid had thrown the dead bird into the incinerator with the words “that bird had stopped singing long ago.”. The master had symbolically brought to light the truth of his students misdemeanour, but in the process raised them out of their subterranean pleasure. The release of this truth had Brought about the catastrophe of the Sphinx. As Oedipus answers the riddle and the sphinx breaks into a million pieces, so does truth produce an entropic effect. Not disappearing but returning in a greater chaotic form. Thus the direct encounter with truth results in greater disorder and eventually the tragedy of Oedipus (none of the following events were possible without first destroying the monster of truth). And so it goes with the professor, entering the forbidden realm of his students, the Blue Angel nightclub, revealed the truth of his students misdemeanours but also setting in motion the path of tragic destruction. All revolving around the process of bringing to the surface that which should remain beneath in order to access the vault of heaven. The living quarters of Marline that she dropped her knickers from are eventually accessed through this process and she suggest he can always live here “why not , I have no wife”. It is her canary, the live one that sings and performs the miraculous rebirth. He can now drink his coffee with three sugar cubes rather than one. The masters immediate contact with the jouissance of pleasure creates the excess which is combined with the excess found in master dialogue jouissance. This is bound to form the conditions for disaster.
In the film ‘The Blue Angel’ a scene is built with three layers. This is extremely useful for the symbolic Laconian interpretation.
The professor has gone to the nightclub, the situation of forbidden desire to catch his students who openly enjoy this pleasure.
In the first instance Marlena Dietrich climbs the spiral staircase which the professor is not allowed to fully ascend. Though she drops her knickers down, landing on his head. A foretelling of future enjoyment, but at this stage the knickers representing jouissance as the pleasure is not yet mastered but exist in a state of forbidden excess.
Meanwhile the professor must reside in the central space where games of authority and mastery are played out.
During a chaotic sequence the professor finds himself defending Marlena Dietrich’s honour in a fight with a sea captain. The captain exits and returns with a policeman.
The professor is forced to hide in the cellar where he discovers the original object of his master signifier.. the students.
Previously hidden from the professor, now the master and students are stored together.
As the master encounters the object of his mastery desire, that which creates him, the student (slave), the excess master jouisance forces the master to the surface, dragging with him the sublimated components.
He drags the students up to the surface and berates them.
The act of supreme mastery over the students exerts his authority over both the sea captain and the policeman, who then leave. The students also run off but are now released from their sublimated state and engage in open taunting of the professor and acts of open impudence. One begins to smoke in front of him and refuses to stop when the professor demands it. The students have become shameless.
The professor also becomes shameless and considers if he can now live a joyous life. This is represented by the canary that died in the first scene suddenly bursting back into life and song. The professors maid had thrown the dead bird into the incinerator with the words “that bird had stopped singing long ago.”.
The master had symbolically brought to light the truth of his students misdemeanour, but in the process raised them out of their subterranean pleasure. The release of this truth had Brought about the catastrophe of the Sphinx. As Oedipus answers the riddle and the sphinx breaks into a million pieces, so does truth produce an entropic effect. Not disappearing but returning in a greater chaotic form. Thus the direct encounter with truth results in greater disorder and eventually the tragedy of Oedipus (none of the following events were possible without first destroying the monster of truth).
And so it goes with the professor, entering the forbidden realm of his students, the Blue Angel nightclub, revealed the truth of his students misdemeanours but also setting in motion the path of tragic destruction. All revolving around the process of bringing to the surface that which should remain beneath in order to access the vault of heaven.
The living quarters of Marline that she dropped her knickers from are eventually accessed through this process and she suggest he can always live here “why not , I have no wife”.
It is her canary, the live one that sings and performs the miraculous rebirth. He can now drink his coffee with three sugar cubes rather than one.
The masters immediate contact with the jouissance of pleasure creates the excess which is combined with the excess found in master dialogue jouissance.
This is bound to form the conditions for disaster.