Body Double (1984) Film Analysis
Brian DePalma’s 1984 film Body Double explores Lacan’s ideas of identity development and desire. DePalma uses three main characters which align with Lacan’s developmental theories; these are the mother, father, and child. He further applies a second layer of metaphor wherein the mother represents film itself, the father represents a film’s director, and the child represents the viewer. DePalma demonstrates not only how these developmental ideas lead to a sense of self, but also how film can be a foundational component in development of identity through fantasy.
The Mirror Phase
Lacan presented his idea of the mirror phase as the stage in a baby’s development when they first recognize their own reflection in the mirror. The reflection is no longer seen as that of another baby or other object, but as themselves. This recognition is the moment one develops a sense of self and can view themselves as a subject, beginning to develop an ego or a definition for “me”. Jake, the main protagonist of the film Body Double is shown in a mirror twice during two important scenes, with two different outcomes. His first reflection is unseen and occurs in an acting class before a huge mirror that fills the back wall of the room. He is being led through his psychosis of claustrophobia, attempting to understand it. The scene feels like he is in therapy more than an acting class. Jake stands in this scene with his back to the mirror and closes his eyes just before turning around to face the mirror, so he never sees his own reflection. Later, in the last third of the film, Jake has been cast in a pornographic film role, which he has pursued due to his desire to be with the lead actress of the film, Holly Body. He stands before a mirror and looks at the world on the other side. In it he first sees Holly Body and then sees himself for the first time. When he moves to peer through the door to Holly’s room, the screen is divided with him filling the right side, and the left side being filled with the mirror on the back of the door. This mirror displays Holly meeting his gaze. Once she entreats him to come inside, the mirror’s angle is shifted, and we are shown a camera crew filming this scene. We are reminded that we are watching this, and we are shown ourselves. The audience is Jake in the metaphor. We are asked to identify with him and follow him through the story, defining ourselves against him, as we are asked to do with characters in all films. After this scene, Jake boasts to Holly that the mirror was his idea, further tying it to the idea of developing one’s ego. As we will later find out this is the only action of Jake’s that was not planned by someone else for him. This is his first self conceived action. Jake makes a transition after this scene, changing from the timid person seen so far in the film, to a confident and gruff facade. His new voice affectation even mimics that of the father figure (Sam), whom Jake had spent time with in the early half of the film. The mimicry ultimately does not make Jake any more effectual than before, and it is only when he realizes he has been manipulated into actions by his father figure, and moves into his own actions and own self that he becomes effective in the film. Throughout the film, Jake deals with crippling claustrophobia. First it affects his ability to work, then it affects his ability to be a hero to the mother figure Gloria, and lastly it almost leads to his demise. Lacan developed the idea of a master signifier, which is a driving force in one’s life. Jake’s driving force is that he wants to be an actor, which is a stand in for his desire to develop his own sense of self. Lacan said that behind every master signifier is a matching, repressed force. For Jake, this is his claustrophobia which metaphorically points to his not wanting to be placed in a box and labeled or controlled by others. When he is being counseled in acting class, the chalkboard reads “feel, personalize, act.” Jake is not able to act because he is not able to personalize anything. When he breaks free of his claustrophobia, he has realized how to define his own actions in the roles needed through life. He can not act to save himself and others and in the end return to his desired job of being an actor.
The Name of the Father
After the mirror phase come Lacan’s linked ideas of “the name of the father” and the phallus. The phallus is symbolic of that which takes mother’s attention away from the baby, and is seen as the thing the father possesses. The baby wishes to possess this phallus to recapture mother’s attention and seeks to learn the metaphorical name of the father or the name of that which takes away mother’s attention. This may ultimately be a partner or it may be work duties or something else which the mother may name for the baby as the baby seeks this identity. The name of the father in the film Body Double is Sam, however this is not the father’s actual name. Alexander Revelle is his real name, but Jake does not discover this until the end of the film. Alexander plays 3 intertwined roles: himself, Sam, and someone Jake calls the Indian. Throughout the film, in addition to overcoming his claustrophobia and forming his self image, Jake is attempting to find out who Alexander Revelle and the Indian both are, all the while communicating with Sam, not knowing his real name or alternate identities. Jake is attempting to discover the name of the father, first so he can connect with and rescue the mother figure, Gloria, and later so he can rescue the replacement mother figure, Holly. Sam is the father figure of the film and also stands in metaphorically as the role of the director of a film. Sam tells us later that he identified a weakness in Jake, assigned him a role, directed his attention where he needed in order for Jake to play the role and fulfill Sam’s purpose. Sam puts Jake in a high-rise house. Sam shows him Gloria Revelle dancing and masturbating semi-nude in the house across the way. Sam dresses as the Indian and makes Jake see him watching Gloria dance, then makes Jake see him stalking Gloria through a shopping mall and along the beach, and finally makes Jake see him as the Indian kill Gloria, taking her from him once and for all. Sam’s plan is to make Jake the perfect witness to direct attention away from the fact that he killed his own wife. Jake slowly pieces together that Alexander Revelle hired the Indian to kill his wife, then he realizes Alexander and Sam are the same person, and finally, when Jake confronts the Indian, as he is about to kill Holly Body, he tears the Indian’s face revealing that it has always been a mask over Sam’s face. Sam had been able to define his own actions and play the roles he needed in life, to achieve his desires. This tearing of the mask and realizing all three roles are the same person, is the moment Jake understands the name of the father. As he tears the mask and hears how he had been manipulated throughout the film by the man underneath, Jake overcomes his immobilizing claustrophobia by rejecting the role the father put on him. He is in a box shaped hole dug by the father to bury Jake and Holly Body within. Jake climbs out of this hole, climbs out of the box he has been put in by the father, seizes on the idea he has seen displayed in the father that one person can play many roles and decide their own actions, and defines himself, killing the father and rescuing Holly Body.
Obet petit a
Finally, as Slavoj Zizek said about Lacan’s theory of desire “we don’t really want to get what we think that we want.” [1] Zizek goes on to demonstrate in a story about a man who divorces and rather than keep his mistress, loses both her and his wife. He demonstrates that having the desire for something is more often the thing desired than actually acquiring the something. The man did not want the mistress, he wanted to be in an affair. This is demonstrated by DePalma through the character of Gloria Revelle. Jake watches her from afar, lusting after her and being seduced by her dancing. He becomes consumed by the thought of her and begins stalking her, waiting outside of her house, following her to the mall, taking her panties from the garbage, and eavesdropping on her phone calls. He finally meets her face to face and immediately finds himself in a whirlwind embrace with her. The film takes on a fantastical quality during this kiss, with an uncharacteristic spinning camera style and a soaring, romantic musical cue. Gloria stops the embrace prematurely, before they can consummate, and leaves Jake. He almost possessed what he thought was his desire, but whereas before it was taken from him by the father, either in the guise of Alexander or the Indian, here she leaves of her own volition. She rejects Jake outside of a tunnel where he just had a claustrophobic episode. She had to lead him out of the tunnel which the Indian had led him into to purposely paralyze him. She could not make love to him right outside of the box he had been put into when his actions had been first dictated by the father then by the mother. Jake now returns to his voyeuristic ways, watching Gloria from afar and is powerless to stop the father in the form of the Indian as he uses a large phallus of a drill to take the mother away from him permanently. Jake has lost the object of his desire, and the mother has been forever removed by the father. It is then revealed as Jake is watching ads for pornography on the television, that the pornographic actress Holly Body dances in the exact same seductive way that he first saw Gloria dance when she became his object of desire. It is later revealed that it was never Gloria he was desiring, but Holly who had danced the entire time, having been hired by Sam to be the titular body double for Gloria. The object of his desire which he was pursuing for most of the film (Gloria), was not actually the one that sparked the desire (Holly). When he realizes this, he begins to pursue Holly Body in a similar fashion to his pursuit of Gloria. Holly Body then becomes the new object of desire. Jake manages to be cast opposite Holly in a pornographic film and sees her in the mirror before seeing himself (as described before during Jake’s mirror stage). As Lionel Bailly states “Apart from the small other in the mirror, the individual comes to recognize all people as little others and to treat them as suitable objects of projection and identification.”[2] Jake sees in Holly the phallus. He is drawn to her masturbatory dance. Her ability to please herself. She has a frank conversation with him about what she will and will not do on film, listing many sex acts. Jake seems taken aback, but he is also recognizing that she has clearly defined personal boundaries. Jake still seeks to possess Holly, but she is taken from him by the father. It is only when he realizes what the father possess and what he saw in Holly’s dance, that he can grasp that ability to define himself, throw off the father, and have an actual relationship with Holly. He again was not seeking that which he thought he desired in Holly, but the aspect her dance revealed she possessed which Jake also wanted to possess. Recall that Jake is the audience and Holly is film. Holly Body is the body of Hollywood, or the movie screen onto which desire can be projected. DePalma is stating that we can find identity and we can find our phallus through the characters and situations in film.
Crossing the Bar
The film ends with Jake as a vampire again, he can define himself within a role as needed just as the father did, and he is no longer hampered by a perceived box placed around him. He is even placed here in a very small, boxlike shower set and has no problems with claustrophobia. Jake is told to pause his actions while the body double is brought in. We are walked through how body double nudity works in a film with an actress and her stand-in. During this scene, a metal bar is placed between Jake’s fingers to allow him to maintain continuity when the woman whose breasts he is caressing swaps places with another actress who has larger breasts. Jake is very adamant that no one touch the bar. In Lacan’s terminology, “crossing the bar” is equivalent to understanding a metaphor’s meaning and can be a method to recognize and overcome psychosis. Jake does not want his triumph over his psychosis disturbed, especially since he is in a confined space. He even yells about not touching the bar, hinting that it is the new cause of some anxiety. The bar is also there for the viewer. Now that the film is over, DePalma will hold the bar in place during this final scene, so that we may cross it and understand the metaphor. We are given time to understand how body doubles work and how Body Double works. We are the voyeurs watching the film’s frames dance before us. We either see ourselves in the mirror of the film’s characters or we see our antithesis, either way, we formulate a part of our sense of self due to the reflection found here. As Slavoj Zizek said “fantasy is an answer [to] why in the first place do I want to have contact with that woman? It provides the coordinates of my desire.” [3] We may allow this film to show us the coordinates of our desire, and we can apply our newfound understanding of the metaphor to every film.
Works Cited
[1] “Slavoj Žižek | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Interesting?” YouTube, Big Think, 25 June 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88jj6PSD7w
[2] Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: a Beginner’s Guide. Oneworld, 2013.
[3] “Slavoj Zizek. Object Petit a and Digital Civilization.” YouTube, European Graduate School Video, 22 Sept. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ui7N1SZWJw
Bibliography
“13. Jacques Lacan in Theory.” Performance by Paul Paul Fry, YouTube, Yale Courses, 1 Sept. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkAXsR5WINc
Leader, Darian, and Judy Groves. Introducing Lacan. Icon, 2010.
Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. MIT Press, 1992.
