Commentary on Footnote 1 of Sadly, Porn, Part 2

A secondary source for a book explicitly against secondary sources

III. Reinhold and the Return of the Repressed

“You are living through the product recall of Freud's steam driven invention: the obliteration of all unconscious fantasy, thus locking us down into the existing reality: someone else's unconscious.  At first the fantasies were encouraged because advertisers could use them to draw us in.  Well, we're all inside the walls, and we're not going anywhere.  So now the fantasies are at best superfluous and at worst a threat.

‘So porn suppresses the imagination?’  HA!  Liar. I have to write sentences with multiple dependent clauses in order to repair the damage of your 5 word rhetorical cluster grenade. Of course it could-- if there was anything left of it.  The suppression of the imagination came first and porn was the inevitable and much welcome defense against its loss, even as it could help suppress it further.  I know this seems backwards, I know this seems like madness, I wish it was.

The advertisements came first. They gave us fantasies, they relieved us from producing our own aspirations, they taught us how to want. And the imagination was supressed. Porn inevitably appeared as relief, it has relieved us of this lack, it fills out where imagination once was after we lost the ability to fantasize. All of this the result of guys in the 40s and 50s trying to sell you mattresses and radios and TVs.

“If your desire and wanting were intact, then all the porn in the universe could only be a tool-- wait, I mean: all the reality of the universe would only be a tool, not to replace fantasy but to facilitate it, the way Judge Reinhold watched through a window at Phoebe Cates sitting by the pool, and then turned off the window to stop looking at her, so he could be free to fantasize about her coming out of the pool.  NB: the movie was directed by a woman.  It was not, as you might think you remember, a real life, real time embellishment of eyes wide open reality (sexier walk, sultrier look, add some mascara and let water be your proxy for touching her all over); by the time his pants are down, she hadn't even yet jumped into the pool.  If you want to get psychoanalytic: the fantasy of her coming out caused her to jump in.  “Come on, that's impossible.”  Not if it's the audience's fantasy.”

Firstly, NB means nota bene, Latin for “note well”. Being directed by a woman: at that point in time, women could still fantasize. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was released in 1982, remember. Secondly, engaging with primary sources: lets watch the scene in question.

I’m not entirely sure this video won’t get taken off vimeo, so if the link is dead I apologize. Pheobe Cates has fantastic tits.

Fantasy is a tool to facilitate action, and reality should facilitate fantasy. Reinhold closes the window to masturbate: he has taken reality and used it to produce a fantasy to aspire to. He’s still jerking off sitting on a toilet instead of talking to an actual girl, and we’ll get to that, but it’s a start.

A confusing line at the end:

“If you want to get psychoanalytic: the fantasy of her coming out caused her to jump in.  “Come on, that's impossible.”  Not if it's the audience's fantasy.”

My best interpretation is this: the audience(=men from the 80s) can fantasize but can’t act. We’re worse off in that we can’t even fantasize properly, but in the 80s it was still possible as evidenced by Reinhold shutting the window to masturbate and this being completely normal to everyone watching. But in the 80s they already couldn’t act. Correct fantasizing, where fantasy leads to action leads to change in the world and change in the fantasizer become actor, is already impossible for them. Instead, the audiences’ fantasy is a world wherein they can fantasize and it will lead passively to change: the audiences fantasy is that if they fantasizing her coming out of the pool and walking towards them sexily (the thing they want), this will actually cause her to jump in, in the real world. The fantasy->action->change link is broken, for them its fantasy->change and they want for no action to be needed on their part. However, I’m not sure about this interpretation and don’t know enough psychoanalysis to have any idea what I’m talking about. If someone has a better idea, please let me know.

Anyhow, onward:

“The criticism I should be making is, “why did he pursue a fantasy and not the real girl-- why didn't he just go outside and show her his phallus or even act like a dick and see what happens?  Why not some act of will?”  But I was born a little too early and way too late, our desires have changed, the best I can do now is to convince you to shut the window-- to work through what you want and how you want.”

“So I can have more satisfying relationships?”  No.  So you don’t destroy everyone else.  No one would do that kind of detailed fantasizing today; you'll argue that no one ever did this, yet there it is on film and at that time his actions made sense to everyone, not a single person said, “why would he close his eyes?  Why wouldn't he just jack it while watching her?”

Which is why the climax of that scene is Delphic Fate=psychic determinism: while he is fantasizing  about her coming up to him as she takes her top off, she accidentally walks in on him coming with his bottoms off.  “Doesn't anyone knock anymore?” he says as Cates averts her gaze, that's supposed to be the punch line.  Is it funny?  No, it’s terrifying. … It's repression, not suppression, what's repressed never knocks, it just-- returns.”

Hoping for fantasy->change without action i.e. jerking off to the girl and just hoping that someday, she’ll want to fuck, rather than going out there and swinging your dick around, is already a perversion. Wanting to be desired rather than desiring is wrong but its too late even for that, we’re too far gone. What Reinhold wants is fate, Athenian fate, that the prophecy will tell him what’s going to happen to him and he can just sit back passively like a woman and take it. He’s already Oedipus, “well the prophecy said x, so I guess that’s how it is, there’s nothing I can do about it.” And he gets what he wants, and he gets what he deserves: fate arrives but its Delphic fate, the prophecy is fulfilled but not how he wanted it. Oedipus sleeps with his mother and kills his father because he was too cowardly to act, Reinhold imagines being a stud but reality returns when he doesn’t act and he’s a loser in a pirate costume jerking off in the toilet.

“[W]hen she walked in on him, did you think that he thought that she thought he was masturbating to her?  Or to someone else?  Which would she have thought was worse? Which is more embarrassing to him: that she discovers that he likes her, or that she discovers that he lusts after her?  Which discovery about him requires a response from her?  You'll say love, of course, because you know that his lust has nothing to do with “her”, just her body/walk/scent/moves/gaze/status-- she gets to choose when to disavow her always-on sexuality, “that isn't me.”  Yet his love, which is based on nothing about her anyone can point to-- is something she'd feel obligated to deal with either approvingly or through a protection order.

But she'd be literally right: his lust has nothing to do with her, which is why he turned off the window.  But if the lust carries the lesser risk, why are you so nervous to approach some defenseless girl in a bar, yet you have no shame sending a woman walled up in her fortress a ten page autobiopic?  …  Only dream theory can explain your behavior: things may symbolize other things, but affect is always 100% correct, so your anxiety is telling you something important: your desire to tap her drunk ass is your confused attempt at love, not lust, and your mind protected you from the mix up by failing to try, on purpose; while the spectacular love you feel writing your fictional backstory is way more about you and your character doing a dp on your DP, which is why you spent so much time writing it.”

Double penetration on your director of photography, for those wondering. Explaining the joke makes it a lot less funny.

First off, affect is always 100% correct. What does porn get you out of? What do your actions allow you to do? What is the affect of your way of thinking, of being? Thinking in terms of what it means, what it says about you – all of it in defense of the status quo, “know thyself”. Asking what your actions mean is useless, is intentionally defending the status quo – ask instead: what do my actions get me out of? What do they allow me to do?

Trying to sleep with a bar girl has less to do with lust and more to do with love. Lust can be disavowed, you’re attracted to her because of her tits/ass/feet/you choose, but its not her. Love cannot be disavowed: you love her for some quality no one can point at, it is entirely your own, to love someone is to commit entirely in that sense – there is no fall, no way to say “uh well actually I was only doing it because she was hot/culture/society” – love is all you. You have responsibility entire to it. Which is why it must be defended against, which is why porn defends against it. Love inherently requires you to act. Love requires change.

So turning love into lust solves the problem. Phoebe Cates would have to deal with Reinholds love because it points to nothing that can be disavowed, and Reinhold would be responsible. Its his love. But by transforming it into lust it no longer matters. “I was just horny” = disavowed. You are relieved of having to own your desire, the desire was caused by – something else, animal instinct, not you, you didn’t choose it. This is a Kierkegaardian either/or, this is ethics. Love is an ethical choice: you love her, then you choose her, and thus she is yours, and you are responsible. Lust is just animal instinct and can safely be disavowed.

But the backstory 10 paragraph text to the girl you love? Count how many times it says “I”, and you’ll understand that has nothing to do with her and everything to do with you. You and your imaginary character self doing double penetration on your director of photography. That is, masturbation: defending the status quo.

“Now that you've read this here’s a question that should be easy to answer: does secretly masturbating to Cates mean he would be satisfied if he got her, or not?  I guess it's not that easy.

So if this hot bikini girl is the return of the repressed, then what was repressed?  The “real”, ordinary, skin and bones girl behind his fantasy?  Not to make a normalizing judgment, but for a “real” girl she's fantastically hot.  The “reality” of her hardly needs repression, if you're really fickle soft lighting and a few beers will do.  But it's 1981 and he loves her as well as lusts after her, and in 1981 and today it is well nigh impossible to masturbate to a woman you love unless you're imagining her with someone else.  Which is what Reinhold was doing: he's in the bathroom in the top half of his job’s pirate costume while the fantasy stud making out with the topless her is in a business suit.  He has repressed himself.”

Ay, there’s the rub.

“He has repressed the thoughts which conflict with his ideal self, and this is hardly a surgical excision: the uniform, the lack of confidence, and his non-sexual desire for her-- his love for her-- it all goes out the window, which he then closes so he can get down to business.  And then in fantasy it returned as its gender and power opposite:  he approaches with the hesitation, clothes and deference of a Victorian gentleman, and she's horned up succubus, naked, powerful, and aggressively wet.  Now it looks like she knows what she wants, which means he can act on it.”

Phoebe Cates walking in on him is the return of the repressed not in that the real girl has appeared, but in that he has reappeared: he isn’t a stud, he’s a dude half naked in a pirate costume jerking off to a girl 10 feet away. By repressing himself in his fantasy he doesn’t have to change to become the man in the fantasy. But more than that: his love for her is repressed, the love that would make him responsible, force him to act on his feelings, commit, change, this is repressed by transforming love into lust, by disavowing it. He isn’t desiring in his fantasy – she is approaching him, horny and knowing what she wants, which gives him permission to act. He doesn’t have to act of his own accord, its her who wants it, so again he isn’t responsible.

Her return, her walking in on him, is the return of the repressed. He is reminded of who he actually is, a guy jerking off in the toilet. The repressed always returns.

“Back to the question: under these psychic conditions, would he be satisfied by her, or not?

There is a story, maybe apocryphal but I’m going anyway, that Judge Reinhold the actor, in order to generate the scene’s shock in Phoebe Cates the actress, was actually masturbating a giant dildo; so her startle/chuckle/grimace is an on-screen real life WTF.  You can dismiss this as on-set shenanigans, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of using a dildo if he had to perform a sex scene, bringing a dildo towards a naked woman is real-life proof of what he wants and what he’s missing.  But masturbating without one is an enormous risk, it must be hard for a man to be watched pretending to be masturbating to the fantasy of being desired; everyone will wonder how close that is to the truth, the best way is to negate the fantasies and offer reality: a) look, no hands! or b) look, no penis!  If you want to fake masturbating, you pretend to touch your penis.  If you want to fake fantasizing, you actually touch a pretend penis.  He went from desiring her to wanting to be desired, by her, which was exactly the point of the scene, and the inflection point of po-mo no homo sexual relations.  It is the absence of the penis that makes one the object of desire.”

Being the object of desire as opposed to desiring, pornography over fantasy, masturbation over action, lust over love. All disavow responsibility, commitment, its never you, its never your desire, its always because of something/someone else. The object of desire does not have a penis: the object of desire is fucked, it does not do the fucking, the desiring subject is the one who goes into the world and fucks it to get what he wants. The desiring subject causes change. He is the one who acts. In Reinholds fantasy she is lusting after him. She is horny, she’s a succubus, and he’s a gentleman in a suit, she “knows what she wants”. He becomes the desired object in his fantasy in order to disavow action. He no longer has to desire; he no longer has to act. But the repressed always returns.

IV. The First Three Acts of the Five Act Structure

“This kind of masturbation yields a climax that never seems to move the story forward, it goes back to the beginning and repeats, to prove this look for a commonality elsewhere that shows the story as a circle and not a mountain…”

Five act story structure. You’ve all learned it before in 9th grade English: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Freytag’s pyramid, Aristotle’s dramatic structure: complication, middle, denouement. Acts I through V come up frequently in Sadly, Porn, and you’ll notice that Reinholds story stops at Act III, the climax, literally in his masturbation. Jumping ahead to the famous porn story in Sadly, Porn, to its first footnote:

“Act I: Inciting event (Denial)

Act II: 1. Conflict (Rage)  2. Reversal (Despair)  3. Trial (Sacrifice)

Act III: Climax (Acceptance)

Rule of repetition compulsion: Perform only Acts I, II, and III.  Act IV is repressed.  It returns as Act I.”

Act IV is where the character has to act in response to the climax, i.e. Act IV is where the character has to change. The porn story is the example of this and so necessary to understanding that it is placed directly after the introduction. It is also another irritant, another way to not allow you to be mechanically led to meaning. It is the sum of the whole book. In the introduction and the porn story we are told exactly what the book is about. Porn is a circle, not a mountain: no one ever changes.

“This kind of masturbation yields a climax that never seems to move the story forward, it goes back to the beginning and repeats, to prove this look for a commonality elsewhere that shows the story as a circle and not a mountain e.g. it’s not the first time or the last time he’ll take off the pirate costume.  Earlier Reinhold was working at Captain Hook Fish and Chips in the pirate uniform, and was told to go make a delivery, so he changes out of the uniform into street clothes but his boss stops him. “During deliveries you’re still a representative of CHFnC-- have some pride.”  You can well imagine the reaction of all the recently awoken Holden Caulfields watching this scene, enraged at the boss for making him wear the humiliating costume and having to address the customers in Piratese, and consoling himself with tiny subversions like, “Arrrgh, here’s a basket of hardtack and a joke for the table: a wench walks into a pirate bar and asks for seamen and a towel.”  HA!  Funny as ever.

So every 14 year old knows exactly what he’s thinking: “have some pride?  In what?  In his stupid minimum wage job?  Why should he have any pride?  He doesn’t own the means of production, he’s an exploited wage slave, and we all know that pride is the lie capitalism uses to make us work harder for them.”  The thing is, even if this were a fact, that knowledge doesn’t get anyone to do more pushups or more math or become an actual pirate let alone a captain; it doesn’t move the story forward, it only gets you out of work, yours and your job’s; and instead of one exploited but concrete step forward you solidify your status quo; you satisfy yourself with wearing street clothes at work and pillaging the occasional burger, to you these are a kind of compensation, you deserve to steal a little back for yourself since you have no power.  The idea that he could be proud of the business itself, of what the owner had built, the form of this creative act-- whether or not he benefits-- that this respect costs him nothing and it might change him-- such an idea is so revolting to his me vs. them psychology that he pretends it’s really an us vs. them philosophy, and us has more important things in store for me, yet when he ditches the job and the burger out another window and goes back home to masturbate to the girl who is literally 15 feet but two psychologies away from him, he tells everyone to keep it down because he has work to do. At least he had the decency of shame; today that kind of work needs to be accepted, because it is frantic, energetic, and utterly non-productive-- a defense against change.

Act I (Inciting Event): Changing into street clothes.

Act II:

1.       Conflict (Rage): Wearing the costume, “During deliveries you’re still a representative of CHFnC”

2.       Reversal (Despair): “Have some pride?  In what?  In his stupid minimum wage job?  Why should he have any pride?”

3.       Trial (Sacrifice): Putting on the pirate costume again.

Act III (Acceptance): Consoling himself with tiny subversions, stealing a burger, “I have more important things to do.”

And we return to Act I, and the story never moves forward.

“You need to rethink how you use porn, stop listening to people who hate you, stop listening to people who want to parlay about its meaning, or lack of meaning, damn to the depths whatever man what thought of meaning.  So much of the satisfaction-- not interest, not pleasure, but satisfaction-- of watching porn is not just from seeing the sex act, nor a laziness to pursue sex, but from not having to generate the fantasy.  Not as “an escape from reality”-- if anything, reality sex is becoming much more like a staging of porn-- but an escape from fantasy in to reality.  If fantasizing is daydreaming-- a semi-conscious elaboration of the unconscious-- then avoiding fantasy is a way to avoid the terrible truth that we will never get our wish fulfillment-- it is a way of not ever wondering what our wish fulfillment might look like, and the sad reason for this is that our wish fulfillment doesn't actually contain us-- it's impossible.”

Reinhold represses himself when he masturbates. He doesn’t imagine Reinhold fucking Pheobe Cates, he imagines some other version of himself, one that doesn’t love her, one that is desired by her. Porn means we never have to imagine, it fills the space available, because fantasizing, imagining, these things are painful because they conflict with reality. We cannot even be in our own fantasies. We don’t want to know what it would even look like if we got what we wanted. No fantasies, no desires, and thus no responsibility to act, notice how the exact thing you find hot can be found merely by going to the Pornhub front page, huh, strange, you contain multitudes and are unique yet they can nail what gets you, specifically, aroused? The medium is the message, the content is the juicy treat they use to trick the watch dog of the brain, it is porn itself that you are interested in, and the content is besides the point. It is the relief to not have to fantasize.

“‘I don't really want to interpret my dreams.’  Then your unconscious probably doesn't bother to obfuscate them, so you can take them literally.  “Well, I don't remember my dreams-- I'm not even sure I do dream.” Could be the alcohol or they reveal too much, are the results the same?  Then it worked.  You never want to know about your unconscious so you're obsessed with learning about your conscious-- information, studying every detail, to guard against what you are doing.  So rather than fantasies that risk failure but at least clarify our real desires, we find it easier to want things that we are told to want-- that we don't want, but that there can be no guilt in wanting because they were commanded to be wanted.  Since it's too painful to fantasize what will never come to pass-- or shouldn't come to pass-- we drown ourselves in other people's visions and are lead mechanically to the end, see also politics, economics, love.”

Rather than fantasies where one could realize exactly that they are not who they wish to be, and be forced to act, to change, we want the way that someone else wants us to. We invite this. We are locked in to someone else’s unconscious. Our desire is compelled and thus not ours, we have no responsibility to it, there is no compulsion to act. Phoebe Cates in Reinholds fantasy is horny and is sure of what she wants, “You know how cute I always thought you were” and thus it is her desire he is acting on, not his own, and thus he has no responsibility to it, its allowed. It isn’t him that wants her, he’s acting at the behest of someone else. We are led by the visions of others mechanically to the end, just like in porn, and responsibility is avowed.

“Today we masturbate to porn-- out of obligation.  “That’s stupid.”  Are you agreeing or disagreeing?  Take a guy in a 5 year cohabitating relationship and watch what happens when his woman tells him she's going to go visit her mom for the weekend.  He looks forward to-- be specific-- porn and masturbating.  But it's not like he can't do it in the garage when she's home, too, right?  So?  But left in the house alone for a few hours he starts to think.... well, I guess I have no choice.  He feels pressured to enjoy because he has the opportunity to enjoy, and the worst sin is wasting an opportunity.  “Yes, yes!  What's is it called when an oppressive superego makes you feel guilty if you don't take every opportunity to enjoy?”  I think it's called “capitalism” but I'm no economist.”

Like all media porn fills the time available. The man feels no desire to masturbate. He has no choice because he’s been given the opportunity. What would be a more noble existence would be if he were a real porn addict who, of his own volition, chose to beat off in the garage. At least then he has desires, at least then he chooses. Our man on the other hand is compelled because he has free time, because the wife isn’t home, because the opportunity exists. Its not his desire, he’s compelled, its not his fantasy, its porn, none of it is his responsibility ever. Never choosing, always filling the time, compelled by some other force. Being the object of desire as opposed to desiring, pornography over fantasy, masturbation over action, lust over love. Sadly, Porn explains all of this from the start, demonstrates it in the porn story, all it demands is that the reader work, the reader not sit passively and come to understanding by accident, from compulsion, from mechanically being led to the end of the book, but that the reader come to understanding by his own desire, his own work. Sadly, Porn requires you to engage. It requires you to be responsible for your own learning.

Sadly, Porn is about the central problem of our time: porn. Porn obliterates fantasy, porn obliterates the need to imagine what you could be, it destroys your responsibility to your own aspirations, it allows you not to act. Everything can be disavowed, none of it is ever you, none of it your responsibility. You become the desired object rather than desiring. You wait for the prophecy to tell you how your life will go. And just like Oedipus the prophecy will be fulfilled, you’ll get what you want and what you deserve.

They tell us that Socrates said “Know thyself”, as though introspection and looking for meaning has ever changed a single thing. They are lying because knowledge meant something else to the Greeks. I leave you with one more long quote, this from the last section of the book.

“This was not the case for the Greeks, not at the beginning, anyway.  Personal morality was inseparable from the state's morality, they were not overlapping, they were the same single thing; but in the opposite way you’re imagining it, not because the State was all powerful but because the state was themselves.  Personal morality vs. social standards; public behavior vs. private thoughts-- for at least 50 years it would have been inconceivable to an Athenian that those were different things.  I don’t mean they thought whatever the state wanted them to think, that’s as meaningless as saying people think what their brains want them to think.  And I do not mean there weren't bad people; I mean there was no recourse to the psychological position of “I'm not a bad person, I just did a bad thing.”  When we say the Athenian democracy required full participation, it should be taken literally.  The citizens didn't just make up their own laws or fight their own wars, they thought the same thought: the state was the highest-- not power, not might-- but good.  The highest good.  Think about this.  Think about whether you can think about this.  Think about whether you have no other way to think about this except to think “O’Brien”-- assuming you could even think “O’Brien” and not  default to “Hitler”.  Yet early Athens was not a surveillance state, it did not need to know-- though admittedly every government will patronizingly embrace its sycophants-- it left the accumulation of knowledge and power to the citizens so they could act, as it. This is why that period of history is so unique and so unrepeatable.  For the first time and the only time and never since time, knowledge was used for action; the purpose of knowledge was to act; the purpose of earthly knowledge was to be able to act like gods with restraint.  Not only for a handful of “great men”; they all thought this, it was the cultural standard.  And then the war came, and the plague came, and the plague came again, and the sophists came, and the idea of man's greatness through obligation became more fantastical than 12 hairless gods on a cold mountaintop wrapped in bedsheets, or on them.  What good are gods in heaven if they won’t send my neighbor to hell?  For all but a few, math became arithmetic and philosophy became accounting, and getting some power was far less satisfying than depriving the other of theirs.  And here we are.”

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