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Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s

Mulholland Drive

Article · November 2012

DOI: 10.5195/cinej.2012.58

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Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive
Murat AKSER
Kadir Has University, [email protected]
Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.58 | http://cinej.pitt.edu

Abstract

This is a reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive through psychoanalytic approach of Lacan from the

perspective of formation of fantasy and shifting identities. Lynch constructs his films consciously choosing

his themes from the sub(versive/conscious) side of human mind. Mulholland Drive has been analyzed

several times from different approaches ranging from gender (Love, 2004) to narratology (Lentzner, 2005;

Mc-Gowan, 2004; Cook, 2011). This detailed textual analysis intends to rationalize Lynch’s narrative

structure through Lacanian terms in reference to Zizekian terminology.

Key Words: psychoanalysis, David Lynch, Lacan, Zizek

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative

Works 3.0 United States License.

This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part
of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

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Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive
Introduction1

Around and after 9/11, several films dealing with trauma and memory, and amnesia and identity were released.

Winter Sleepers (Tom Tykwer, 1998), Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001), Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001),

The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002) and Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) are feature dramatic films

about memory loss and how we define ourselves through the events, objects, sensations and perceptions that we

remember (Tubrett, 2001). American avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch also made two strong contributions to

this trend with his films Lost Highway (1998) and Mulholland Drive (2001). Lost Highway dealt with two men

whose identities were linked as each other’s alter egos in a Doppelganger story that paralleled the histories of two

couples, one fantasy and the other real. In Lost Highway, memories and identities transcend bodies in choosing

their host and eventually the fantasies collapse, free from the wills of the men who created them2.

A psychoanalytical approach is one possible way of reading the film. Lynch’s characters are sadistic maniacs,

murderers, and femme fatales, as well as the innocent boys who fall for them. All of these fit well within the

Oedipal triangle of mother, son and the father. Since the 1970s, theories of psychoanalysis have been adapted for

cinema studies. Women and media, reception, and the ontology of the cinematic image were among the first areas

to be scrutinized. The use of texts written by Freud and Lacan provided fresh perspectives for film theorists

(Allen, 1999). The main focus of these theories was the integration of former approaches like semiotics and

feminist film theory. Over time, however, psychoanalytic film theory was met with criticism from other

disciplines and other branches within film studies. Just when the demise of psychoanalytic readings of film

seemed imminent, the Slovenian thinker/philosopher Slavoj Zizek contributed to discourses on popular culture

through an approach that combined philosophy, psychoanalysis and film (Zizek, 1991; 1992; 2001). Zizek’s

approach has been widely accepted, but it should be noted that novel ways of conducting film analysis emerged in

the 2000s (Akser, 2011).

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Rather than using Lacan to explain cinematic processes as proposed by apparatus theory advocates, Zizek reads

film texts according to the Lacanian concepts of the symbolic, imaginary and the Real (Zizek, 2002). His main

focus is on the filmic text, the main universe of the object of analysis. Thus, as he treats film as it is, he is not

distracted by discussions in film studies on such issues as realism, narrative linearity, representation and relation to

life, including viewer participation. In 2000, Zizek gave a lecture at the University of Washington in Seattle on

Lynch’s Lost Highway. In this lecture, Zizek stressed the need to read Lynch in psychoanalytic terms (Zizek,

2000)3. Inspired by Zizek’s reading of Lynch, this essay takes up a psychoanalytic reading of David Lynch’s

Mulholland Drive (2001) and also utilizes some classical Freudian principles as well. Psychoanalysis is largely

concerned with the issue of subject formation. In other words, what cultural studies refer to as identity is

implicated in subjectivity. Mulholland Drive is all about subjectivity and subject formation. Thus, taking

repression of the unconsciousness into account is key to understanding the film.

Mulholland Drive: An Identity Puzzle

David Lynch has become a trademark name in innovation and the macabre. Mulholland Drive was a pilot for a

television drama series for the ABC network in the tradition of Lynch’s previous TV series Twin Peaks. After

being rejected by the TV network and stretched to the limits, it was released as a feature film with multiple

characters and their complicated relationships. As regards the film, the word “drive” cuts two ways. It is the title

of the street where the accident occurs as well as the symbolic “death drive” or “sex drive.”

Mulholland Drive begins with a young woman miraculously escaping from a car crash in a limousine where

armed men were trying to kill her. The young woman, who is in shock, walks down to Beverly Hills and spends

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the night on a lawn. At the break of dawn, she wakes up and notices an old woman leaving her home, and she

sneaks into the housing complex. Just then Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) arrives. Betty is a young blond woman from

Deep River, Ontario who came to Hollywood to be a movie star. Betty’s aunt and uncle own the house which the

mystery woman sneaks into. Betty had moved into this house in Beverly Hills. Soon Betty notices the mysterious

young brunette in her aunt’s house. This woman does not remember anything about her past or who she is.

Inspired by a poster in the washroom, the woman says that her name is Rita (the poster is of Gilda, Rita Hayward).

After searching her bag they find a large amount of money and a mysterious blue key. Rita settles in Betty’s house

and the two begin searching for Rita’s past.

In the meantime a young film director, Adam Kesher, is struggling to make a musical but is not allowed to cast the

main actress because of threats from the mob, the Castigliani Brothers (castration), who are controlled by an

enigmatic boss, Mr. Roque. Although Adam tries to resist these demands, he realizes that the mob seized his

money in the bank and shut down the production company’s operations, and they threaten to kill him if he does

not cast Camille Rhodes, a woman he has never met, for the main role. The film project gets cancelled and his

wife leaves him, and so Adam gives up and agrees. Meanwhile Betty goes to an audition and is offered a first

contract. Her ambition to star in a film leads her to Adam’s set and she comes eye to eye with him. But she has to

leave without auditioning for the main role because she had promised to help Rita find her identity. After meeting

Rita, the two go to a house where Rita’s friend (Diane Sullivan) may live and they meet Diane’s former

housemate. They break into Diane’s house and discover her dead body. At the end of this stressful day, the two

have sex in bed. After midnight, Rita speaks in a dream and utters the words “El Silencio.” The clues lead them to

a Spanish nightclub where, during a performance, Betty takes out a blue box from her bag. When Rita goes back

home and inserts the key in the box, time-space-reality is transformed. This is the end of narrative segment one

(S1) (or Fantasy level 2-F2).

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In segment two (S2), we see that Betty is now Diane Sullivan. In this segment, Diana is left by her lesbian lover

housemate and dreams of a Camilla Rhodes in her place in a fantasy (F-1). In this fantasy, she is a struggling

actress whose aunt dies and leaves her money to live in LA. After failing to get a role, Diane meets Rita and the

two become lovers. Rita becomes the lead actress in Adam’s new film. That night the two get in a limousine and

then their car stops at the party of a film director, who is named Adam. Adam is happy to have an affair with

Camilla and takes pleasure in showing her success and making Diane jealous. Adam announces that he and

Camilla are going to do something that ambiguously sounds like a marriage proposal. In exchange, Camilla gets a

role for Dianne. In anger, Diane hires an assassin (we are not absolutely sure if that is the case) giving Camilla’s

photo and money. In and out of this fantasy in the final scene of the film Diane goes crazy, seeing demons and

Betty’s uncle and aunt shouting with demonic voices.

The Characters and Their Complexes

The film is clearly divided into two segments, which I chronologically refer to as S1 (pre-transformation) and S2

(after Betty is seen as Diane). In S1, Betty, Rita and Adam try to survive in Hollywood. This segment is the deeper

fantasy situated inside Diane Sullivan’s first fantasy connected through the blue box and the key. In S2, in the first

fantasy Diane is the loser whereas Adam and Rita are the winners. From a narrative textual reading, the film can

be read in two ways: Either the naive Betty meets a lost Rita and the two enter a miraculous time-space distortion

where the past becomes the future, connecting a present in which both Betty and Rita shift identities/positions. Or

the second segment could signify the first segment as a “fantasy” in which Diane, feeling desperate after the loss

of her lesbian housemate-lover, first fantasizes about the more beautiful and amorous lover Camille Rhodes who

betrays her. In return, to punish her and the others who mistreat her in her first fantasy, she recreates herself as a

naïve, sexy Canadian (Betty) in the second deeper fantasy embedded within her first fantasy. In this inner fantasy,

Betty takes charge of things, manages a lost (Camille now turned into) Rita and is successful. My analysis focuses

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on this first reading, which is useful approach for film scholars interested in trans-genre bending, the relationships

between narrative and space-time and meta-narrative frame-stories.

Figure 1: Diane/Betty wants to be successful and in a reverse fantasy she gets to shape success as the other (Camille/Rita) to herself.

The Three Women: Elements of Fantasy

If we take Diane Sullivan as the source of these two fantasies and part of the second segment as the framework for

reality, we can say that Diane’s repressed unconscious resurfaces in both fantasy segments. In S2, Diane’s reality

is bleak. She is a loser, and her face and body have lost its freshness. Her lover Camille can manage both Diane

and have sexual relationships with Hollywood figures to achieve her ends. Camille gets the lead role in Adam’s

film and through Camille’s intervention, Diane only gets a minor role. Camille also does everything to make

Diane jealous, such as flirting with Adam. After being left by her real life (anonymous) lover, Diane’s Camille

fantasy realistically reflects all her needs. She is not good-looking or dominant, and of course an amorous lover

will bring her somewhere but she will pay the price by losing her to powerful men and beautiful women.

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In the second level fantasy, Diane’s id and ego are controlled by her superego. Diane rejects those qualities that

she perceives make her submissive and incompetent. She fantasizes herself as Betty, who is fresh and attractive.

She becomes a Canadian, a sign of naiveté, and takes on Anglo upper-class manners. In this fantasy world, Betty

is in charge. Camille, now turned into Rita, is denied her superior identity. Her memory is completely gone; with

her life under threat, a new noir gangster subplot results in the punishment of the director who flirted with her in

the first fantasy. A chart of this transformation will be helpful at this point:

Diane (S2-RF/F1) Betty (S2-F2) Camille (S2-F1) Rita (S1-F2)

American Canadian Mexican Mexican

adulterated naive femme fatale no identity

controlled in charge manipulative controlled

hazel blonde brunette brunette

child mother mother child

In the first fantasy (S2-F1) Camille is Diane’s object of desire. To have her completely, Diane creates a second

level of fantasy, like a dream within a dream (S1-F2). While doing that she represses her identity as Diane to the

unconscious, which leads to the breakdown of her first fantasy because she was too much herself. Thus, the

unresolved conflicts between her unconscious inclinations and repressive demands of the ego resurface in the

second segment of the film as the very first fantasy (as if waking up from the dream-within-a-dream). A new self,

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Betty, is created by repressing Diane. The new self becomes a stranger within; a strange feeling of double-

ness/duality exists when we see Betty of S1 as Diane in S2.

Diane’s fantasy structure operates by displacing an unacceptable element (incompetence, weak personality) onto

the acceptable images of success and beauty. This process of fantasizing condenses different but related elements

into Betty’s image. In this way, Diane turns drives into their opposites to elude censorship. The vulgar and mean

Diane becomes the naive and polite Betty.

Figure 2: Camille looks at Gilda poster. Two characters mirror each other continously.

Switching Identities: Reflection and Introjection

The identity switch of Diane-Betty and Camilla-Rita can be explained through the Freudian concepts of fixation,

splitting, introjection and projection. Reflection in psychology is a reflection of the unwanted aspects of the self to

the other. Through the creation of a second layer fantasy in S1, Diane externalizes her own negative feelings by

assigning them to someone else. She projects an unwanted aspect of her self, naiveté and easy manipulation, onto

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Rita in F2, freeing herself of the burden of being the loser in F1. In return, through introjection Diane shapes her

new self as Betty by adapting a role model outside of herself. This leads to a splitting of the object of anxiety into

two. Diane’s personality is divided and her weak side in F1 is projected onto the Camilla of F1 to make her Rita

of F2. This split translates itself metaphorically into a lock and a key. The key found in Rita’s bag unlocks the blue

box found in Betty’s bag in El Silencio, the place of deep unconscious. When the key fits into this blue box, the

second fantasy framework is broken and collapses into the first fantasy framework. This new narrative segment

begins where we can now see Diane’s true self as the space-time of the film is only once removed from its

framework of reality.

Figure 3: The key to Diane’s fantasies lurks in from time to time.

In S1, Betty is Diane’s premature naive self and has anxieties about entering into the adult world. This results in a

fixation on a premature sexual part, the breast. As soon as Betty and Rita fall in love and have sex, they start

touching each other’s beasts, enjoying the experience. In S2, where we see Diane having sex with Camille, they

try to engage in genital pleasure but Camille is extremely disturbed by this, just like masturbation, which gives a

shock like a blurring of reality and fantasy in her vision.

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Heterosexual encounters are also fantasized as being punishing experiences. In an interesting and complex

narrative in S1-F2, Betty is invited to an audition to play a young woman in love with her father’s friend. Betty’s

casting agent brings her to a room where the producer, the director and lead actor of the film (all male) are holding

auditions for the lead female role of a film. When the lines of the dialogue are practiced by Betty and Rita prior to

the audition, they sound funny, as a dialogue that would not be suitable for two women. During the audition, Betty

and the older actor (a father figure) begin reacting to each other’s moves. The scene comes to life as it becomes a

passionate heterosexual scene where Betty, a young childish woman (daughter), seduces an old man (father) and

pushes him to have sex with her (incest). The aroused actor is surprised and is in pain, unable to finalize the sex

act in real life. This is yet another punishment of men in Diane’s second fantasy.

The narrative complexity is highlighted when we, as the audience, watch this audition inside of the reality frame

of the audition (RF-4). As Diane transforms herself from a loser in F1 into a seductive talented actress in F2, we

experience five reality frames. When we watch the scene in a close-up, it creates a fourth and a deeper level of

reality frame of that fictive scene in a fantasy world created by a fantasizing Diane (and us, the audience, watching

a fictional account of events in a movie theatre) sitting on her bed. The eeriness of the scene increases when we

begin to suspect the simplicity of the audition process (where the director sits in a chair, looking blank, and the

actor and the producer stand up and wait for people to come); this creates a feeling like a fake audition carried out

by the casting agent to test Betty’s talent. Obviously, in this secondary fantasy, Diane wants a quick and simple

way to attain celebrity status. The reality frames of this scene can be schematized as follows:

Our reality as viewer Diane sitting on a bed (RF-1)

Diane’s first fantasy (RF-2)

Diane’s Second fantasy (RF-3)

The audition

The audition scene connects Betty to Diane as Diane’s unconscious begins to come back as a result of pushing the

limits of her fantasy. Adam, the director, has to cast a new actress because his lead actress is not lost (that’s Rita, a

punished Camille from Betty’s first fantasy). Adam’s punishment is to cast someone else, Camilla Rhodes, a

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blonde woman who was forced upon him by the mob. Since all of this was a fantasy created by Diane, the two

fantasies conflict. The need to punish those who hurt her in the F1 conflicts with her desire to become a successful

actress. So an illogical step is taken and Betty quits the audition to check upon Rita who is waiting for her at

home. Before she leaves the audition, Betty and Adam briefly come eye to eye, in a strange an unexplainable

sexual encounter. Signs of hesitation and wonder appear in Adam’s eyes. This may be the moment when Adam

may prefer to cast Betty over Camilla, thus risking his life in the process. Diane’s fantasy is at its peak point. As

Betty she has the ability to seduce the director in her first fantasy, and empowered this way she can prefer to leave

and audition of a lifetime for her lover, Rita.

Figure 4: Play of fantasies in the opening of Mulholland Drive.

Psychosis and Schizophrenia

What Diane did not have in mind was that she thought she could control two layers of her fantasy at the same time

but infact she cannot. When her ego fails, her unconscious takes over the conscious and control breaks down

altogether in Diane’s real life. The content of Diane’s first fantasy is expressed directly without mediation by the

conscious after Diane’s second fantasy breaks down. Diane’s first fantasy is also shattered as she comes in and out

of it near the end, seeing her imaginary aunt and uncle as little demons sneaking under her door.

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The initial point of disturbance that leads to Diane’s psychosis is when she fantasizes that she is dead in S1. As

Betty and Rita search for Rita’s identity, they come across a waitress whose nametag is Diane, an unconscious

reminder to a fantasizing Diane of her true self. Not surprisingly, in all of L.A. there is only one Diane Sullivan

they find in the phone directory. This Diane Sullivan lives in an apartment complex not so different from the one

in which Betty lives. Betty and Rita meet the very same housemate/lover in Diane’s real life. After entering

Diane’s house they discover her dead and stinking body (death wish). This very corpse belongs to Diane herself,

who is fantasizing in the very same bed. Diane’s unconscious surfaces in her real life as she mentally breaks down

and shoots herself. In her first fantasy, he hires a man and gives him Camille’s photo so that he can either kidnap

her or kill her, but we never know which.

Some objects appear as symbols that remind us of these fantasies, such as the black ringing phone that reappears

in Diane’s apartment. The coffee mug is first used to reference to Castigliani brother in F2 it then reappears in a

diner, Winkie’s, where two men talk about their dreams, and finally again in Diane’s house in F1. The ashtray

belonging to Diane’s former housemate/lover reappears in the end of the film to signal that Diane is fantasizing.

In a similar manner, the characters and places from Diane’s first fantasy reappear with differing roles in fantasy

two. In F1 Adam’s mother Coco becomes Betty’s landlady in F2. The cowboy who happens to pass by in Adam’s

party in F1 becomes his nightmare in F2. The glamour girl who kisses Camille in F1 becomes Camille, the mob

girl, in F2. The man who pays the bill in F1 becomes an obsessed man who is shocked by his dreams in F2. This

man is another clue to Diane that her fantasy world is collapsing. The man having breakfast with his friend in a

diner talks about a scary dream and mentions that it seemed to be controlled by someone outside. In addition, the

street signs do not match throughout the film. In F2 Rita comes to Sunset Boulevard whereas Rita orders the cabby

to go to 1612 Havenhurst, stripping Diane’s fantasy of consistency. In El Silencio we are reminded by the

presenter that all is illusion. This comment signals to us and Diane that we are experiencing someone else’s

fantasy.

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Figure 5: Reality collapses on Diane’s fantasy as Camille and Betty clash into each other.

Where Lacan Comes In

The three major Lacanian concepts are the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. The Real is the realm of

impossible enjoyment, the Symbolic refers to the symbolic order of language and communication, and the

Imaginary is the domain of images with which we identify (Zizek 2000: 9).

In Mulholland Drive, Diane is neither happy with her reality nor with her first fantasy. Thus she fantasizes herself

as Betty, creating her own Real. She changes her symbolic order by becoming a blonde, upper-class Canadian

woman in her imaginary (fantasy). In F2 Betty does not hesitate to follow the symbolic order of society. She

seduces men in auditions and flirts with people to get her role. Her social acts form her fantasmic identity. The

mirroring process mentioned often in Lacan’s works goes to such a level that Diane’s projection of Rita later

becomes Betty when she puts on a blonde wig. In F2, the desire for the other is twofold. Diane both desires to be

like Camilla of F1 and wants to satisfy Rita’s needs in F2 (just like the Lacanian child looking at the mirror and

thinking that her reflection is her mother). Because these are fantasmic creations, Diane can know neither

Camille’s (F1) nor Rita’s (F2) innermost desires, and she projects her own desires on Rita, such as the need for

protection. In this way, Betty’s choice to go back home to Rita instead of attending the audition of a lifetime

conflicts in Diane’s mind, as she is fantasizing both for herself and a fantasized Diane in F1 at the same time. The

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opposition between the obscene superego in Diane’s second fantasy conflicts with the Symbolic Law in her first

fantasy. The impossible Real conflicts as Betty’s fantasy world mixes with Diane’s unconscious.

As Diane’s barred subjectivity finds its big Other in Camille in F1, she places herself in this symbolic order by

introjection and projection in F2. For Lacan, ego is constructed through imaginary percepts and narcissistic

fantasies (Rivkin and Ryan 1998: 123). Diane forms a false narcissistic unity with Camilla in F1 and brings out

Betty as the narcissistic self in F2. This narcissism finds its ultimate expression when Betty takes Rita to bed,

looks directly at her (as if to a mirror) and says: “I am in love with you.” Diane’s sense of reality has a connection

with objects in the creation of a new self. Her mirror becomes Rita. The two also have a relationship that

resembles that of a mother and a child. These roles are reversed in Diane’s first fantasy. In F2 Rita is like a

helpless child and a very assertive Betty is in charge of her needs like a mother. In F1, Diane is the child

dependent on Camilla. During this identification with the mother in F2, Betty reaches fulfillment through the

breast, as discussed above as regards this particular tenderness between Betty and Rita when they touch each

other’s breasts.

The fissure, an opening into the reality (beance) is realized through the blue box in Betty’s pocket. This is the

object petit a, the object of desire caught up in the unrealizable search for the eternally lost pleasure (Stam 1992:

127). By assuming her other’s identity in this stage, Diane tries to reach the Real, an impossible wholeness of the

self. Thus the jump from F1 to F2 is joussance, the place of obsession where Diane enjoys the Real enjoyment as

Betty. But since this is impossible to attain in reality, her fantasy world implodes into itself.

Oedipal Triad: Adam, His Wife, Her Lover and the Cowboy

In F2, Adam is the most severely punished person in Diane’s fantasy, possibly for stealing Camilla from Diane in

F1 (along with Camille herself trying to escape from hitmen and losing her memory in this fantasy). The

relationship between the film director, Adam Kesher, his wife, her lover and the mafia is very interesting in

Freudian terms. In F2, Adam shows signs of an Oedipal complex with everyone around him. He shows the

neurotic symptoms of love and jealousy for his wife in F2, which is his punishment for flirting with Camille in F1.

When Adam catches his wife and her lover in their own bed, he does not see remorse in them. Instead, the two

treat him as a child who interrupts his parent’s lovemaking. The lover even beats Adam for interfering in their

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privacy. In this Oedipal triad, Adam, whose name suggests the very first man on earth, is the child who is in love

with his wife (mother) but cannot have sex with her. He is punished by the love (father) that beats him (castration

anxiety).

Another aspect of this is his phallic extension, a golf club. Adam takes his golf club wherever he goes, even to the

meeting with film producer. After he experiences his first major threat (the mafia boss), he goes out and shatters

the windshield of mafia boss’ limousine. This phallic object is extension of Adam’s virility as well, until he leaves

it at home and gets a beating.

Adam also compromises after the more masculine threat of an eternal father, the mafia boss, which results in his

temporary loss of money and influence. Adam’s desire to control people (make films), have sex (with lead

actresses) and have expensive cars are repressions of the unconscious, forcing him to compromise. Adam’s

castration anxiety is personified as the Cowboy figure in Mulholland Drive. This cowboy mysteriously contacts

him and warns him about hiring Camille Rhodes. It is important to note that the cowboy makes Adam repeat the

words: “I know what I want” which signifies an internal psychic dilemma Adam is facing with the cowboy as the

ultimate American male ego-ideal4.

Figure 6: Adam (Justin Theroux) , the film director in Diane’s fantasy, is under constant threat from ‘the father’.

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The big boss (Mr. Roque) is ironically a midget sitting silently in a wheel chair in darkness behind a glass panel.

He never speaks and people come to report to him. Mr. Roque controls the two hitmen brothers and can watch

anything related to him though a device on the wall like an omniscient God. This is Diane’s fantasy of a silent

patriarch who can control Adam’s life. In Lacanian terms, Mr. Roque is pere joissance who represents the

paternal law. The creation of such a powerful external fantasy element can only satisfy Diane’s loss of lead roles

in the films she wants to act in both in F1 and F2.

The Metapsychology of a Meta-Narrative: A Conclusion

If we were to explain the metapsychology of Mulholland Drive, we could say that the reading of this film requires

a combination of the dynamic, economic and topographical aspects of Freudian analysis (Stam 1992:124). It has to

be dynamic because of the psychic phenomena, the conflict of instinctual forces that lead to Diane’s fantasies. It

has to be topographical because physical space is divided in terms of systems (unconscious, preconscious, and

conscious) and agencies (id, ego, superego) to the point that fantasies are built on top of fantasies that blur reality

and later implode. Diane brings her repressed psychic-mental material to a consciously constructed fantasy. She

tries to build a resistance to her disturbing reality by reaching out to her subconscious. A new subjectivity is

formed in a new discourse (of this film) of sounds, voices, pictures, and stories. This is framed by Lynch as a new

discourse within the film medium where we deal with a split subject and object petit a. In addition to her lesbian

fantasies, Diane also imagines Adam and mafia as the representation of male sexual and Oedipal anxieties. Both

fantasy frames end in failure and the destruction of their creator. Betty disappears suddenly at the end of S1-F2

and Rita disappears alongside with her after she opens the blue box, unlocking the fantasy. The Diane of S2-F1

also loses her sanity and possibly it is this going in and out of two the fantasies drives the real Diane to commit

suicide.

Mulholland Drive is indeed a very complex film with a complicated premise. It includes different sets of people in

different narrative segments and fantasies with interesting relationships between couples (Betty-Rita, Diane-

Camilla, Adam-cowboy-mafia, waitress-hitmen-detectives) that allows for different types of approaches other than

psychoanalysis. Yet the psychoanalytic elements form the foundation of the fantasies that find their visual

representation as this film. The application of Freudian and Lacanian concepts to the work of Lynch in general

provides us with a better understanding of what Lynch’s cinema is all about.

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Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.58 | http://cinej.pitt.edu
ENDNOTES:

1
I would like to thanks Mark Wyers for his proofreading the text.
2
Johnny Mnemonic, Dark City (Alex Proyas 1998), Gattaca, The Sixth Day, AI (Steven Spielberg 2001), Impostor
(Gary Fleder 2002), Minority Report (Steven Spielberg 2002) are sci-fi films interested in artificial
construction of identity through cloning, gene and cybernetic technology. Some films were also interested in
how spaces define who we are such as Century Hotel. There is also an increasing interest in films dealing with
the fear of the repressed and unknown such as The Cell (Tarsem 2001), The Others (Alejandro Amenabar
2001), The Haunting (Jan de Bont, 1999), House on the Haunted Hill, Blair Witch Project, Sixth Sense, Bless
the Child, Stir of Echoes, Stigmata, Lost Souls, The Mothman Prophecies (Mark Pellington, 2002), Glass
House, 13 Ghosts, Jeepers Creepers, Resident Evil, The Devil’s Backbone.

3
This author has previously critiqued Zizek’s approach for being too committed to Lacanian terms to the extent
that it misses the point (Akser, 2002).
4
It is important to note that the appearance of several storylines and characters such as Dam’s cannot only be
explained as Diane’s fantasy. Adam may be existing in multiple narratives and fantasizes as well as being part
of an elaborate deeper level fantasy of Diane. This reviewer accepts that it is difficult to explain the theft of a
black book and accidents related to it in Mulholland Drive.

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