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A Study on the Encounter with the Real in Amores perros

Eun-kyung Choi 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu(1964~)’s movie Amores perros is comprised of three chapters such as “Octavio y Susana,” “Daniel y Valeria,” and “El chivo y Marú”, and the protagonists of each chapter resemble their dogs in the manner that they seek love. In this study, I examined these three stories under the theory of desire by Jacques Lacan, especially in “the fictitious characteristic of the dignified object,” “the destruction of the elevated object into the dignity of the Thing,” “the encounter with the real,” “the negation of the (pre)supposition of the Big Other,” and “tarrying with the negative.” First, I examined the objects of desire of the different social classes (the lower, the middle, and the upper classes and the homeless) shown in each chapter, such as women, ambition for a luxurious life, and ideology. And I concluded that, since their objects of desire are elevated to the dignity of the Thing, the protagonists of each chapter experience the destruction of their dignified objects of desire. Then, I suggest that, different from the protagonists of the previous two chapters who repeat the same vicious circle of desire, the protagonist in the third chapter appears on screen already realized the fictitious characteristic of the dignified object of desire. Especially, I focus on his encounter with the real, which results in his desertion of his “demonstrative” resistance to life, and which liberates him from the symbolic order and makes him tarry with the negative and to live a new life by denying the (pre)supposition of the Big Other.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.