5000-07

One should here go a crucial step further into the disintegration of fantasy. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive perfectly depicts this process. The two main versions of the film share the idea that the hero's (the hero’s) trial takes place in a real place, that the hero is forced to expose himself to the public and his beloved (the heroine). However, the crucial thing is that, for the hero, the truth is a fiction. The full trial, involving a full and open discussion of the heroine’s role, is thus only possible in a fake—the idea that the hero would be able to reveal that much is already the illusion of the open and honest discussion of her role. What if, then, the very moment the hero shows his true identity, the moment of freedom, he is brutally oppressed by the secret police, so that the very idea of him as a hero is the lie he tells himself? Such a crucial moment is thus not the epiphany of the hero discovering that his very actions are fake rescific as the final resort of a deadlock, he is nonetheless too weak to affect a change of tack. If he stays stuck in one place, however, he cannot change the direction of the current. The only way out is through a violent “rebellion against the encirclement,” which, precisely, is the very passage from the one to the other (and through another) positions. It is not that I am forced to take a position that is incompatible with my self-esteem. Rather, it is that, in holding onto the fictional position of Joy, I am compelled to take on the entire bundle of fictional self-esteem.