Mulholland Drive

[Manuel V. Cabrera Jr.]

I think the salon.com made some good points about the film, especially its recognition of
how it stages the archetypal noir couple as
two women.  given Zizek's reading of "Lost Highway" in the "The Art of the Ridiculous
Sublime"--namely, in terms of the classic
noir versuys the neo-noir narrative types and their respective images of the femme fatale,
it wouldn't surprise me if he writes
something on "Mulholland Drive".
    by the way, when Zizek was here at UCLA in the Spring, i had the pleasure of taking his
seminar.  when i asked him a couple of
questions about the paper on LH, he told, strangely enough, that he didn't at all like the
film, and claimed (although this may be
another turn of his iconoclastic irony) that his favorite Lynch film by far is "Dune".
actually, a couple of major film buffs i know
share the sentiment.  i like the film more than most, i think (with the exception of the
annoying actress who plays Alia), but i simply
don't see why anyone would think it's his best film.
    for anyone who is interested and may be in the area, in the Spring there will be a
virtual extravaganza of contemporary theory
going on here at UCLA.  Zizek will be delivering a few talks, and, as a special added
bonus, Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou
will be here as well delivering talks and giving seminars.  for those of you who are
interested in continental philosophy and haven't
heard of these two, you should check out their work (especially _Ethics_ and _Deleuze: the
Clamor of Being by Badiou and
_Homo Sacer_ by Agamben): it seems their sign is rising in continental philosophy.  besides
that, they are interesting on their own
merits (putting aside intellectual fashion), although Badiou has inherited in some of his
writing (not the books i mentioned) the
irritating Lacanian flirtation with mathematics, which is, to my mind, complete obfuscation
(this coming from someone who knows a
little about mathematical logic).


                                                    mandel cabrera

Dave Monroe wrote:

> Had some occasion a while back to post at least from
> Marek Wieczorek's "The Ridiculous, Sublime Art of
> Slavoj Zizek," his introduction to Slavoj Zizek's The
> Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost
> Highway (Seattle: U of Washington P, 2000) ...
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0102&msg=311&sort=date
>
> And see as well ...
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=465&sort=date
>
> On other fronts, a friend sent this along today ...
>
> http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/10/23/mulholland_drive_analysis/index.html
>
> Which not only serves as a sort of FAQ for MD, but
> which also led me to ...
>
> http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2001/10/12/lynch_interview/index.html
>
> http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/10/12/mulholland_drive/index.html
>
> Still not sharing the apparent general enthusiasm
> here, elsewhere, however, I'm resolved to hit at least
> one more showing ...
>
> --- "Manuel V. Cabrera Jr." <mandelc at ucla.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I've seen it twice now, and i can't say enough good
> > things about it.  I was a huge fan of "Lost
> Highway",
> > but now the latter seems almost to have been a dry
> > run for MD.
>
> > To use a figure coined by Slavoj Zizek (whose work
> > on Lynch is the best such critical work I've seen,
> > despite its failings), MD seems to give us a
> > loop-like narrative where multiple diverging
> > possibilities are constantly created but which
> > fatalistically always converge on the same traumatic
> > inevitability.
>
> But this is very helpful, indeed, Manuel, and I'll
> keep it in mind next time around ...
>
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