The Obvious Object of Male Desire: the Representation of Male Desire as a Floating Signifier in El (1953) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

Abstract

Desire is a crucial motif in Bunuel’s films, which have delved into hypocritical and contradictory moral conditions in bourgeois society. Through his films, Bunuel shows his antipathy against bourgeois morality, which, he thinks, paralyses the human spirit. Bunuel criticized the thought and morality of middle class in our bourgeois society, and according to him, anesthetized and spiritually numbed bourgeoisie has unquenchable desire, Insects and animals in his films express and emphasize our incomprehensible world. Insects and animals are catalysts to facilitate the function of suturing the gap of narrative flow. Bunuel makes use of animals to remark that there are many inexplicable events, and animals are metaphors for what the better human beings are supposed to be, while insects in his films do not give a powerful impression. In El, Francisco's desiring subject is that of a child trapped in the fetish. Being imprisoned in the Imaginary, he cannot know the world of language, therefore he can know only his own misrecognized ideal ego. His paranoia results from the tortured subject confined in an image of his own ego. In That Obscure Object of Desire, Bunuel uses two actresses in his film who represent difference, an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier. Two alternating actresses signify the evanescence and the fluctuation of the signified, which symbolizes Mathieu's desire to own Conchita's body. Also, by appearance, the two actresses indicate ambivalent aspects of Conchita. Two actresses visualizes and concretize the split of male fantasy. In Bunuel's films, two male protagonists, Francisco and Mathieu are, like their deformed desires, the representatives of the symbols and metaphors that echo distorted bourgeois society. Through delving into twisted male desire, Bunuel sharply points out the warped contradiction hidden at the smooth surface of bourgeois society.