The woman in the mirror : alternative models of subjective constitution in popular film.

Abstract

This thesis explores alternative models of subjective constitution depicted in three popular films. Working primarily within a psychoanalytic framework, the thesis examines representations of subjective constitution in the films The Bride of Frankenstein, Vertigo, and The Black Dahlia. Beginning with a discussion of the models of normative subjective constitution posited by Lacan and Benveniste, the thesis explores the ways in which three films subvert normative models of subjective constitution, which involve two normatively constituted subjects within a binary relationship, by depicting relationships between one active, controlling subject and one passive controlled subject. These subversive models of subjective constitution produce one subject with a dangerously narcissistic ego ideal and one subject void of any ego ideal apart from the first subject's projections. The dynamics of these alternative forms for subjective constitution open up important questions about subjectivity in general. In the process of answering those questions, the thesis explores postmodern critiques of subjectivity and attempts to reconcile efforts to understand subjective constitution with postmodern considerations of the death of the subject.