Masochistic Theatre of Unrequited Love in 500 Days of Summer
Abstract
In 500 Days of Summer, the protagonist, Tom Hansen who is affected by popular music and film leads to his misunderstanding on love. In this film, Tom loves a girl, Summer Finn who doesn’t want to love anyone, be anyone’s girlfriend. Although Tom knows the truth, he still chooses to love her until Summer leaves him. This condition may make us recall the Zizekian Approach on masochistic theatre of courtly love. In this approach, Zizek presents the object of loved located in the higher position ‘Woman as a Lady’ which is shaped from the fancy of the subject of loving until the fancy disappears. While the fancy disappears, the object of loved becomes the object of hatred. After Summer departs Tom, Tom realizes the truth is endowed in the false veil which are constructed by the ideology of popular music, film, and greeting card nowadays. And my contention is that explore the masochistic theatre of unrequited love which is resulted by the fancy of love with Zizekian approach and discloses how the fictitious ideology of modern products influences people nowadays.
Keywords
Zizek, fancy, courtly love, unrequited love, masochism, the object of loved,
the subject of loving, ideology, modern products, 500 Days of Summer
Masochistic Theatre of Unrequited Love in the Film, 500 Days of Summer
In the modern society, there are some products effects our life, like the pop music, the greeting card, the film, the commercial, and so on. These products lead to people filled with the false fancy on love. They make people believe love is happy, romantic, and sweet. But the fact is not. And I would like to choose a film to reveal how the latent ideology of these modern society’s products affects the people on love. Even these products render people suffer in love and become a masochist. In this paper, I would like to use Zizek’s approaches from his essays includes “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing”, “There is No Sexual Relationship”, and “The Spectre of Ideology’’ to apply on three topics of this film: unrequited love, love, and ideology.
500 Days of Summer is a film is directed by Marc Webb, is acted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in 2009. It deal with the issue on the relationship between man and woman in love, the fancy of love, the latent ideology of these modern society’s products includes popular songs, films, and greeting cards and its influences, and the differences between the reality and fancy. In the beginning of this film, the narrator who tells and emphasizes to audiences “This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front' this is not a love story.” 500 Days of Summer is a story about a boy meets a girl. The boy is Tom Hansen, a writer at a greeting card company, is good at on writing the greeting card, and interested in the architecture and as a fan of The Smiths’s songs. Tom always thinks “he'd never truly be happy... until the day he met "the one." The narrator refers Tom’s perspective on this is the influences of “contacting the sad British pop songs and misunderstanding on the movie of ‘The Graduate’.” And the girl is Summer Finn, who moves from New Jersey, works as Hansen’s boss, Mr. Vince’s secretary, is a beauty. But she doesn’t look forward to love because she said that “there's no such thing as love. It's a fantasy.’’ And she talks about “Relationships are messy, and people's feelings get hurt” to indicate her perspective on love. Also Summer mentions most marriage ends in divorce in these days likes her parents. Tom and Summer first meet while Tom’s boss, Mr. Vince introduces his newcome secretary to his employees. And Tom falls in love with Summer at first sight, and thinks Summer is the true one. But one day Tom learns Summer is a cold girl from his colleague. Because one of their colleagues would like to greet to Summer, but Summer shrugs of him. So Tom decides to give up his love to Summer until one day, Summer meets Tom and hears the music from Tom’s walkman in the elevator. Summer inquires about the singer of this song and acclaims Tom has a good sense in music and tells they’re also her favorite singer. After that Tom and Summer become friend gradually. One day Summer, Tom, and their colleagues go to KTV and sing songs. Before they leave KTV, Mckenzie , one of Tom’s colleagues tells Summer that Tom loves her while the colleague is drunk. After Summer hears this, she confirms Tom is true or not. Tom admits but Summer reminds him that she doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Tom accepts Summer’s request and they become a friend. After that day, Tom and Summer do many things together includes eating together, going to the movie theater, having fun in IKEA through they play different roles as husband and wife, making sex. While Tom and Summer kiss in IKEA, Summer reminds Tom that she doesn’t want to be anyone’s friend but Tom doesn’t mind. After they make sex in the first time, Tom feels very happy even imagines he dances with the passerby while he goes to the company at the next day. Since they date successfully, Tom is curious about their relationship. Until one day, one guy would like to treat Summer to drink in the bar, but Summer refuses and tells him goes away. The guy is unhappy so he says I can’t believe that the guy is your boyfriend with the aggressive tone. Tom is angry so he fights the guy. After the fight with the stranger, Summer is angry and they quarrels. Tom asks Summer again “What is our relationship?” but Summer responds we just friend. Tom is very angry and said “This is not how to treat your friend”. Summer said “I like you Tom, but I just don’t want to the relationship”. After a while, Summer goes to Tom’s house and apologizes for her angry. Until one day, Summer leaves the company and Tom feels sad and heartbroken.
At first, I would like to talk about unrequited love. There are three dimensions I would like to talk about includes the fancy of love, the subject of loving one is masochist, and deadlock of love and resolution. The first dimension is fancy of love. In the modern society, there are some machines to create the fancy of love. For instances, we all hears and read the fairy tales in our childhood. And some people fantasizes love is beautiful, romantic, and happy and becomes a naive person to wait the coming of rich, nice, and handsome prince or beautiful princess. Until we get hurt from love even suffer in love, we’ll found the fairytales is a lie and false and knows that love isn’t always romantic and happy. According to Slavoj Žižek, “fancy is narcissistic projection” (151). Zizek portrays the fancy is constructed while the subject of loving one who fantasizes his/her the object of loved one through his/her ideal imagination. In Zizek’s view, “The Lady functions as a mirror on to which the subject projects his narcissistic ideal” (152). For Zizek, “The Lady in courtly love loses concrete features and is addressed as an abstract ideal” (151). And in Zizek’s own interpretation, “The Object can be perceived only when it is viewed from the side, in a partial, distorted form, as its own shadow- if we cast a direct glance at it we see nothing, a mere void” (156). Also in Zizek’s view, “The place of the Lady-Thing is originally empty: she functions as a kind of ‘black hole’ around which the subject’s desire is structured’’ (155). For Zizekian approach, the distorted form of the Object is made by the fancy of love from the subject of loving. So the form of the Object is totally emptiness. Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “Lacan’s thesis that ‘there is no sexual relationship’ means precisely that the structure of the ‘real’ sex act (of the act with a flesh-and-blood partner) is already inherently phantasmic- the ‘real’ body of the other serves only as a support for our phantasmic projections” also provides us the different dimensions on fancy (56).
In the second dimension, since I have mentioned “fancy is narcissistic projection” before, I want to explore profoundly how the fancy of love from the subject of loving renders himself/herself becomes a masochist and suffers on the unrequited love. In this film, Tom suffers on love for Tom’s ideal fancy on Summer. In Zizek’s view, “Masochism confronts us with the paradox of the symbolic order qua the order of ‘fictions’: there is more truth in the mask we wear, in the game we play, in the ‘fiction’ we obey and follow, than in what is concealed beneath the mask” (153). So according to Zizek insights, Tom is a masochist who always keeps his fancy of love for summer and suffers on love. Even if Summer often reminds she doesn’t wants to the relationship like the lover. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. In Zizek’s interpretation, it expresses why Tom is a masochist:
Masochism is made to the measure of the victim: it is the victim (the servant in the masochistic relationship) who initiates a contract with the Master (woman), authorizing her to humiliate him in any way she considers appropriate (within the terms defined by the contract) and binding himself to act ‘according to the whims of the sovereign lady’ . (153)
This sentences I tries to reinterpret the contract is designed and signed by the masochist who fantasizes that the lady will love him and continually insists on suffering in the unrequited love even if the Lady ever tells him that she never love him like the case on Tom and Summer. And It shows Tom as a masochist who suffers in the love with Summer in the film, also portrays their relationship likes ‘Sid who stabbed Nancy... seven times with a kitchen knife’ and Nancy on Sid and Nancy through Summer and Tom’s dialogue. And this condition presents on the one of trailers. In a particular trailer, Summer impersonates as Sid and be a male, Tom impersonates as Nancy and be a female, and Sid stabbed Nancy and blood spills on Nancy’s clothes. And this trailer recalls me it also presents another meaning on “masochist”. According to the psychoanalysis, “masochist” mentions the person who would like to somebody to beat, stab, punish, and etc him/her severely to get the enjoyment and pleasure of sex through these humiliated and morbid behaviors. And this film also portrays Tom likes a masochist through shows some words likes ‘suffering’ and ‘so much suffering’ on the screen while Tom makes a dream when Tom is heartbroken and suffers on the unrequited love.
In the third dimension, I would like to mention the deadlock of love and its resolution in this film. And there are also two dimensions show the deadlock of love through the perspectives of Tom and Summer. As far as Tom concerned, Summer is the true one. According to Zizek, “A very refined manner to supplant the absence of the sexual relationship is by feigning that it is us who put the obstacle in its way” (155). Because Tom’s fancy on Summer renders the deadlock of love. But for Summer, according to the narrator portrays that “Summer’d only loved two things, the first was her long dark hair, and the second was how easily she could cut it off... and feel nothing since the disintegration of her parents’ marriage”. So perhaps it may explain why Summer doesn’t want to love. And I would like to borrow the Zizek’s insights from “There is No Sexual Relationship”. In this essay, Zizek deals with the similar condition on a film, A Heart in Winter by Claude Sautet also presents the deadlock of love. In this essay, Zizek explains the problem of Stephan who can’t love. In this dimension, I want to use Zizek’s insights to explain the problem of Summer:
Summer’s character is rather enigmatic: the point is not that Tom isn’t her true love, but rather that she simply feels no need for love- there is no place for love in her psychological universe. This incapacity to love accounts for the kind of inner peace and completion irradiated by her personality: unperturbed by any emotional turmoils, profoundly apathetic. (198)
Also we can find some hints from the dialogue is spoken by Tom while he is heartbroken and talks to a girl who is introduced by Tom’s friends. “You think back on the times you had with someone, replay it in your head over and over again, and you look for those first signs of trouble. There are two options really. Either... she’s an evil, emotionless, miserable human being, or... she’s a robot” to show Summer is apathetic. According to Zizek, “This abstract character of the Lady has nothing to do with spiritual purification; rather, it points towards the abstraction that pertains to a cold, distanced, inhuman partner- the Lady is by no means a warm, compassionate, understanding fellow-creature” (151). And in Zizek’s interpretation, “This coincidence of absolute, inscrutable Otherness and pure machine is what confers on the Lady her uncanny; monstrous character- the Lady is the Other which is not our ‘fellow-creature’ ; that is to say, she is someone with whom no relationship of empathy is possible’’ (151). So perhaps we may portray Summer like a robot. Also in Zizek’s view, it expresses why I refer Summer may portrays as a robot:
The Lady is thus as far as possible from any kind of purified spirituality:
she functions as an inhuman partner in the sense of a radical Otherness which is wholly incommensurable with our needs and desires; as such, she is simultaneously a kind of automation, a machine which utters meaningless demands at random. (151)
For Zizek, “There is no need here for any ‘psychoanalytical’ reference to sexual frustrations, childhood traumas and so on” (198). But in my own interpretation, Summer feels ‘no need for love’ because her parents divorced when she was young. Perhaps Summer ever hurts from love or she might not refers “Relationships are messy, and people’s feelings get hurt”. But it’s a little bit ironical in the ending of this film, Summer marries to another man. Perhaps Summer doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend, but she wants to be anyone’s wife. Besides, this film also presents the resolution of the deadlock of love. In this film, Summer goes to the park Tom ever tells that it is his favorite place to go and takes Summer to go. Summer would like to know Tom how he is recently. Hence, Summer goes to the park to meet Tom and at the same time Tom also goes to the park. Summer concerns Tom and Tom tells Summer that he finds everything he believe are nonsense. And Summer tells him “It just wasn’t me that you were right about. But I’m really happy to see that you’re doing well’’. In this resolution of the deadlock of the love, Summer shows gentle concerns to Tom; although Summer and Tom can’t be a lover but they may be a friend in the future. In this way, all misunderstanding on love and deadlock of love are totally getting rid of after Tom’s realization of the truth. According to Zizek, “the impossibility of a compassionate solidarity beyond carnal passions, of a spiritual communion that can fill out the void of the inherent impossibility of a sexual relationship” (197).
In the second place, I would like to talk about love in three dimensions includes the definition of love, Love Objects become Hatred Objects, and sublimation. The first dimension is the definition of love. Since I have mentioned that unrequited love before, and now I intend to introduce the definition of love and definition of true love. According to Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek, “Lacan’s ‘There is No Sexual Relationship’ provides a simple answer to the eternal question, Why is there love in the world? Love is a lure, a mirage, whose function is to obfuscate the irreducible, constitutive ‘out-of-joint’ of the relationship between the sexes” (2). In Zizek’s view, “true love, as Lacan points out, is always a love returned” (198). In Zizek’s interpretation, it portrays how the inescapable deadlock resolves and proves that it is a genuine love:
As Lacan puts it, there is no relationship between what the loved one possesses and what the loving one lacks. The only way for the loved one to escape this deadlock is to stretch out his hand towards the loving one and to ‘return love’-that is, to exchange, in a metaphorical gesture, his status as the loved one for the status of the loving one. This reversal designates the point of subjectivization: the object of love changes into the subject the moment it answers the call of love. And it is only by way of this reversal that a genuine love emerges: I am truly in love not when I am simply fascinated by the agalma in the other. (164)
In the second dimension, I would like to talk about Love Objects become Hatred Objects. In this film, when Tom finds he falls in love with Summer, he said that “I’m in love with Summer. I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love this heart-shaped birthmark she has on her neck. I love the way she sometimes licks her lips before she talks. I love the sound of her laugh. I love the way she looks when she’s sleeping’’. According to Salecl and Zizek, it expresses why Tom loves these objects:
Lacan added to Freud’s list of partial objects (breasts, faeces, phallus) two objects, voice and gaze. It is therefore by no means accidental that gaze and voice are love objects par excellence- not in the sense that we fall in love with a voice or a gaze, but rather in the sense that they are a medium, a catalyst that sets off love. (3)
In Salecl and Zizek’s interpretation, “Love cannot be reduced to a mere illusion of imaginary phenomenon: beyond its fascination with the image of its object, true love aims at the kernel of the real, at what Lacan called l’objet petit a” (3). In this film, after Summer leaves Tom, Tom is heartbroken and said that “I hate Summer. I hate her crooked teeth. I hate her 1960s haircut. I hate her knobby knees. And I hate her cockroach-shaped splotch on her neck. I hate the way she smacks her lips before she talks. And I hate the way she sounds when she laughs’’. And there is a reasonable reason about Love Objects become Hatred Objects, as follows. In Salecl and Zizek’s view, “Love- as well as hate- is supported by what remains of the object when it is stripped of all its imaginary and symbolic features’’ (3). Tom gets hurt hence he gets rid of his fancy of love on Summer, the love objects become hatred objects. In my own interpretation, the object of loved turns into Thing due to the structure of the fancy of love from the subject of loving disappears. Hence, the love objects turns into the hatred objects. Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “The phallus, the signifier of enjoyment, had simultaneously to be the signifier of ‘castration’, that is to say, one and the same signifier had to signify enjoyment as well as its loss” (157). I think this condition on the phallus is similar to the object which not only refers love objects but also hatred objects.
In the third dimension, I would like to talk about sublimation. And in this paper, sublimation will be deals with two dimensions to talk about. At first, I would like to talk about the creative sublimation. In this film, Tom’s colleague, Mckenzie who suggests him that “well, you know, Henry Miller said that the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature’’ while Tom is heartbroken for the unrequited love with Summer. And I found a reasonable theoretical supports for this condition from the Zizek’s approach. According to Zizek, “The work of art acts here as the phantasmatic supplement: its enactment of the fully consummated sexual relationship supports the compromise we make in our actual social life” (193). In Zizek’s view, “creative sublimation which provides the co-ordinates for the gesture of feminine self-sacrifice’’ (193). Also I would like to cite an example from “There is No Sexual Relationship” to make my portrayal become persuasive and useful for this condition. In Zizek’s interpretation, “Goethe explained his Werther: by way of writing the book, the young Goethe symbolically acted out his infatuation, and brought it to its logical conclusion; this way, he relieved himself of the unbearable tension, and was able to return to his everyday existence’’ (193).
In the second place, there is another dimension on sublimation which I would like to talk about. In this film, Summer as a Lady while Tom fantasizes Summer is the true one. And Summer become a Thing while Tom is hurt from this unrequited love with Summer and realizes from his fancy. And the process while the Lady turns into the Thing. According to Zizek, sublimation sets:
sublimation sets in- sublimation in the Lacanian sense of the elevation of an object into the dignity of the Thing: ‘sublimation’ occurs when an object, part of everyday reality, finds itself at the place of the impossible Thing. Herein resides the function of those artificial obstacles that suddenly hinder our access to some ordinary object: they elevate the object into a stand-in for the Thing. (156)
In Zizek’s view, it portrays how the Thing can’t access to the object:
Some common, everyday object or act becomes inaccessible or impossible to accomplish once it finds itself in the position of the Thing- although the thing should be easily within reach, the entire universe has somehow been adjusted to produce, again and again, an unfathomable contingency blocking access to the object. (156)
Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “What Lacan means by sublimation, on the contrary, is shifting the libido from the void of the “unserviceable’ Thing to some concrete, material object of need that assumes a sublime quality the moment it occupies the place of the Thing” (157).
Besides, I would like to portray an especial phenomenon on Tom pursues the unrequited love before I goes on the third topic on this paper. In the film, although Summer reminds Tom she doesn’t want to the relationship as a lover, Tom accepts her requirement. But Tom still longs for Summer’s love. Tom think Summer will loves him someday in the future. Until Tom looks Summer’s wedding ring on her finger on the party which Summer invites Tom to go. I would like to use Zizek insights to explain Tom’s behavior on longs for Summer’s love even if he knows Summer doesn’t love him at all. According to Zizek, “The Object is attainable only by way of an incessant postponement, as its absent point of reference. The Object, therefore, is literally something that is created- whose place is encircled- through a network of detours, approximations and near-misses’’ (156). Also Tom ever says “Well, why rock the boat, is what I'm thinking. I mean, things are going well. You start putting labels on it, that's like the kiss of death’’ while he is curious but he is afraid of asking his relationship with summer so he seeks his younger sister, Rachel’s help. In my own interpretation, Tom is just afraid of losing Summer, so he continually expresses he doesn’t mind and postpones the question to ask Summer.
In the third place, I would like to talk about ideology of modern products in two dimensions includes its form and influence and popular songs’ display on the film. The first dimension is ideology of modern products take shape. In our contemporary society, there are many inventions makes our life become convenient but also some modern products lead into some problems in our life. In my own view, some modern products not only provide us to use but also become a machine conveys us correct or false ideology. For instance, in our society, many businessman designs commercials to promote his/her products to make people buy their products. He may convey some false ideology or latent lie through the commercial. Businessman requests some popular actor, actress, singer, athlete, and so on and use computer-aided design to promote and beautify for their products even if the products are not so useful. Even now TV commercial and CD also become the tool is manipulated to promote his party and his political concerns to win the election by some politician before the election. Besides, newspapers, film, music, greeting card, and advertisements all are embodied by some latent ideology on these products. Since we lives the contemporary society which is constructed by many latent ideology of modern products, people become too easily to get attention from the ideology of modern products which is showed on the commercial. In my own interpretation, the ideology which is embodied like with a magic power, people can’t aware of it is false even believes these ideology are totally right and absorbs some false perspectives on their brain even internalizes these ideas even if these false ideology is some person’s scheme to makes result he longs for. Hence, people also affect by the false ideology which exists on the modern products and suffers from these latent and false ideology. According to Zizek, “Already in the 1950s, in Mythologies, Roland Barthes proposed the notion of ideology as the ‘naturalization’ of the symbolic order- that is, as the perception that refies the results of discursive procedures into properties of the ‘thing itself’’’ (64). In Zizek’s interpretation, he mentions the reason for the modern product affects our contemporary society:
For that reason, a direct reference to extra-ideological coercion ( of the market, for example) is an ideological gesture par excellence: the market and (mass) media are dialectically interconnected; we live in a ‘society of the spectacle’ (Guy Debord), in which the media structure our perception of reality in advance, and render reality indistinguishable from the ‘aestheticized’ image of it (68).
In the film, Tom tells to Summer “Realizing that everything you believe in is complete and utter bullshit. It sucks. Uh, you know, destiny, and soul mates, and true love, and all that childhood fairy tale nonsense while Tom and Summer met in the final times’’. In my own interpretation, Tom heard many popular songs, idealized fairy tales, watches many romantic films, so the false ideology which he absorbs from the pop song, romantic films, and idealized fairy tales leads into his fancy of love for Summer and suffers the unrequited love. Because the truth is the fairy tales doesn’t exist in the real world. In Zizek’s view, “‘postmodern’ critique of ideology: to designate the elements within an existing social order which- in the guise of ‘fiction’, that is of ‘utopian’ narratives of possible but failed alternative histories- point towards the system’s antagonistic character, and thus ‘estrange’ us to the self-evidence of its established identity’’ (61). In Zizek’s interpretation, “the starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full acknowledgement of the fact that it is easily possible to lie in the guise of truth’’ (61).
In the second dimension, I would like to talk about popular songs’ display on the film. Since I have mentioned about the ideology of modern products before, in this dimension I would like to focus on the music because music plays an important role in this film. In the beginning of this film, the narrator mentions Tom’s perspective on love “he'd never truly be happy...until the day he met "the one."This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music”. In this film, not only the protagonist, Tom likes the popular music and as The Smiths’ fan but the girl, Summer also likes. I would like to refer four lyrics to portray their influences on Tom or the director tries to tell the audience a lesson through the display of music. The first song I would like to refer is “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’’ is sung by Tom’s idol, The Smiths. This song shows while Summer heard from Tom’s walkman, and Summer sing this lyrics to check “Is this song from The Smiths?” at that day they are meet and talk at the first time in the elevator. This lyrics “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die” , in my own interpretation, this songs conveys the false ideology likes to convey people must be sacrifice or suffer by his/her love is the ideal way to die. I think this ideology is false, and it makes Tom become a masochist indirectly. Because Tom often listens to this song from his walkman day by day, so he gradually absorbs the false ideology which conveys through this song and internalizes this ideology on his mind. The second song I would like to portray is “Here Comes Your Man” is sung by Meaghan Smith. In the film, this song is sung by Tom when Tom, Summer, and their colleagues sing songs in KTV. The lyrics “Just like every cowboy. Sing a sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn. There is a wait so long. So long, so long. There is a wait so long. Here comes your man”, in my own view, the cowboy may refer to Tom, rose has its thorn may refer to his Lady, the beauty, Summer, and this song expresses Tom’s mind. Because Tom looks like the cowboy who waits long for his true one, Miss Right. But I have mentioned before, according to Zizek, the ideal one just a fantasy from the subject of loving. Also in my own view, the reasonable reason for Tom waits long for and so long also may refer that there is no the existence of the true one. The third song I would like to mention is “You Make My Dreams” is sung by Hall & Oates. In the film, this song displays on the day after Tom and Summer makes love at the first time. And this song shows Tom is very happy even Tom dances with the passerby when he goes to the company of greeting card on the screen. The lyrics “What I want you’ve got. And it might be hard to handle”, in my own interpretation, it refers Tom thinks Summer is his true one and also he knows Summer is the one hard to be handle. And the lyric “What I’ve got full stock of thoughts and dreams that scatter. Then you pull them all together”, in my own view, this lyric also emphasizes the influence of contacting the sad pop music, also mentions Tom fantasizes Summer is his true love. And the lyric “I’m down on my daydream”, in my view, this lyric is ironical because in fact Tom still dream his daydream on his true love, after Summer leaves him away and he realizes that there is no true one. Also the last lyrics I would like to refer “But my heartache’s in me every day. Did you stand by me. No, not at all” displays while Summer leaves him away and Tom is heartbroken. In my own view, this song portrays Tom realizes his fancy of love for Summer just a fantasy.
To sum up, the masochistic theatre of the unrequited love is constructed by the false ideology of modern products. Nowadays people like Tom don’t know how to prevent the invader from the ideology which are embodied by the modern products including the pop songs, advertisements, TV commercials, drama, mass media, newspapers, and so on. People become silly and easily controlled. And the mass media become a tool of governing. In my own interpretation, it’s very pertinent to quote the sentences are spoken by Tom “It’s- It’s these cards, and the movies, and the pop songs—They’re to blame for all the lies and the heartache, everything” while Tom realized that ‘everything he believe is complete and utter bullshit’ to end of my paper.
Works Cited
500 Days of Summer. Dir. Marc Webb. Perf. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Zooey Daschanel. FOX, 2010. DVD.
Hall & Oates. “You Make My Dreams.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
Salecl, Renata, and Slavoj Zizek. Introduction. Gaze and Voice as Love Objects. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Print.
Smith, Meaghan. “Here Comes Your Man.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
The Smiths. “This Is A Light That Never Goes Out.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
Zizek, Slavoj. ed. “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
---. “There is No Sexual Relationship” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
---. “The Spectre of Ideology” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
Abstract
In 500 Days of Summer, the protagonist, Tom Hansen who is affected by popular music and film leads to his misunderstanding on love. In this film, Tom loves a girl, Summer Finn who doesn’t want to love anyone, be anyone’s girlfriend. Although Tom knows the truth, he still chooses to love her until Summer leaves him. This condition may make us recall the Zizekian Approach on masochistic theatre of courtly love. In this approach, Zizek presents the object of loved located in the higher position ‘Woman as a Lady’ which is shaped from the fancy of the subject of loving until the fancy disappears. While the fancy disappears, the object of loved becomes the object of hatred. After Summer departs Tom, Tom realizes the truth is endowed in the false veil which are constructed by the ideology of popular music, film, and greeting card nowadays. And my contention is that explore the masochistic theatre of unrequited love which is resulted by the fancy of love with Zizekian approach and discloses how the fictitious ideology of modern products influences people nowadays.
Keywords
Zizek, fancy, courtly love, unrequited love, masochism, the object of loved,
the subject of loving, ideology, modern products, 500 Days of Summer
Masochistic Theatre of Unrequited Love in the Film, 500 Days of Summer
In the modern society, there are some products effects our life, like the pop music, the greeting card, the film, the commercial, and so on. These products lead to people filled with the false fancy on love. They make people believe love is happy, romantic, and sweet. But the fact is not. And I would like to choose a film to reveal how the latent ideology of these modern society’s products affects the people on love. Even these products render people suffer in love and become a masochist. In this paper, I would like to use Zizek’s approaches from his essays includes “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing”, “There is No Sexual Relationship”, and “The Spectre of Ideology’’ to apply on three topics of this film: unrequited love, love, and ideology.
500 Days of Summer is a film is directed by Marc Webb, is acted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in 2009. It deal with the issue on the relationship between man and woman in love, the fancy of love, the latent ideology of these modern society’s products includes popular songs, films, and greeting cards and its influences, and the differences between the reality and fancy. In the beginning of this film, the narrator who tells and emphasizes to audiences “This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front' this is not a love story.” 500 Days of Summer is a story about a boy meets a girl. The boy is Tom Hansen, a writer at a greeting card company, is good at on writing the greeting card, and interested in the architecture and as a fan of The Smiths’s songs. Tom always thinks “he'd never truly be happy... until the day he met "the one." The narrator refers Tom’s perspective on this is the influences of “contacting the sad British pop songs and misunderstanding on the movie of ‘The Graduate’.” And the girl is Summer Finn, who moves from New Jersey, works as Hansen’s boss, Mr. Vince’s secretary, is a beauty. But she doesn’t look forward to love because she said that “there's no such thing as love. It's a fantasy.’’ And she talks about “Relationships are messy, and people's feelings get hurt” to indicate her perspective on love. Also Summer mentions most marriage ends in divorce in these days likes her parents. Tom and Summer first meet while Tom’s boss, Mr. Vince introduces his newcome secretary to his employees. And Tom falls in love with Summer at first sight, and thinks Summer is the true one. But one day Tom learns Summer is a cold girl from his colleague. Because one of their colleagues would like to greet to Summer, but Summer shrugs of him. So Tom decides to give up his love to Summer until one day, Summer meets Tom and hears the music from Tom’s walkman in the elevator. Summer inquires about the singer of this song and acclaims Tom has a good sense in music and tells they’re also her favorite singer. After that Tom and Summer become friend gradually. One day Summer, Tom, and their colleagues go to KTV and sing songs. Before they leave KTV, Mckenzie , one of Tom’s colleagues tells Summer that Tom loves her while the colleague is drunk. After Summer hears this, she confirms Tom is true or not. Tom admits but Summer reminds him that she doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Tom accepts Summer’s request and they become a friend. After that day, Tom and Summer do many things together includes eating together, going to the movie theater, having fun in IKEA through they play different roles as husband and wife, making sex. While Tom and Summer kiss in IKEA, Summer reminds Tom that she doesn’t want to be anyone’s friend but Tom doesn’t mind. After they make sex in the first time, Tom feels very happy even imagines he dances with the passerby while he goes to the company at the next day. Since they date successfully, Tom is curious about their relationship. Until one day, one guy would like to treat Summer to drink in the bar, but Summer refuses and tells him goes away. The guy is unhappy so he says I can’t believe that the guy is your boyfriend with the aggressive tone. Tom is angry so he fights the guy. After the fight with the stranger, Summer is angry and they quarrels. Tom asks Summer again “What is our relationship?” but Summer responds we just friend. Tom is very angry and said “This is not how to treat your friend”. Summer said “I like you Tom, but I just don’t want to the relationship”. After a while, Summer goes to Tom’s house and apologizes for her angry. Until one day, Summer leaves the company and Tom feels sad and heartbroken.
At first, I would like to talk about unrequited love. There are three dimensions I would like to talk about includes the fancy of love, the subject of loving one is masochist, and deadlock of love and resolution. The first dimension is fancy of love. In the modern society, there are some machines to create the fancy of love. For instances, we all hears and read the fairy tales in our childhood. And some people fantasizes love is beautiful, romantic, and happy and becomes a naive person to wait the coming of rich, nice, and handsome prince or beautiful princess. Until we get hurt from love even suffer in love, we’ll found the fairytales is a lie and false and knows that love isn’t always romantic and happy. According to Slavoj Žižek, “fancy is narcissistic projection” (151). Zizek portrays the fancy is constructed while the subject of loving one who fantasizes his/her the object of loved one through his/her ideal imagination. In Zizek’s view, “The Lady functions as a mirror on to which the subject projects his narcissistic ideal” (152). For Zizek, “The Lady in courtly love loses concrete features and is addressed as an abstract ideal” (151). And in Zizek’s own interpretation, “The Object can be perceived only when it is viewed from the side, in a partial, distorted form, as its own shadow- if we cast a direct glance at it we see nothing, a mere void” (156). Also in Zizek’s view, “The place of the Lady-Thing is originally empty: she functions as a kind of ‘black hole’ around which the subject’s desire is structured’’ (155). For Zizekian approach, the distorted form of the Object is made by the fancy of love from the subject of loving. So the form of the Object is totally emptiness. Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “Lacan’s thesis that ‘there is no sexual relationship’ means precisely that the structure of the ‘real’ sex act (of the act with a flesh-and-blood partner) is already inherently phantasmic- the ‘real’ body of the other serves only as a support for our phantasmic projections” also provides us the different dimensions on fancy (56).
In the second dimension, since I have mentioned “fancy is narcissistic projection” before, I want to explore profoundly how the fancy of love from the subject of loving renders himself/herself becomes a masochist and suffers on the unrequited love. In this film, Tom suffers on love for Tom’s ideal fancy on Summer. In Zizek’s view, “Masochism confronts us with the paradox of the symbolic order qua the order of ‘fictions’: there is more truth in the mask we wear, in the game we play, in the ‘fiction’ we obey and follow, than in what is concealed beneath the mask” (153). So according to Zizek insights, Tom is a masochist who always keeps his fancy of love for summer and suffers on love. Even if Summer often reminds she doesn’t wants to the relationship like the lover. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. In Zizek’s interpretation, it expresses why Tom is a masochist:
Masochism is made to the measure of the victim: it is the victim (the servant in the masochistic relationship) who initiates a contract with the Master (woman), authorizing her to humiliate him in any way she considers appropriate (within the terms defined by the contract) and binding himself to act ‘according to the whims of the sovereign lady’ . (153)
This sentences I tries to reinterpret the contract is designed and signed by the masochist who fantasizes that the lady will love him and continually insists on suffering in the unrequited love even if the Lady ever tells him that she never love him like the case on Tom and Summer. And It shows Tom as a masochist who suffers in the love with Summer in the film, also portrays their relationship likes ‘Sid who stabbed Nancy... seven times with a kitchen knife’ and Nancy on Sid and Nancy through Summer and Tom’s dialogue. And this condition presents on the one of trailers. In a particular trailer, Summer impersonates as Sid and be a male, Tom impersonates as Nancy and be a female, and Sid stabbed Nancy and blood spills on Nancy’s clothes. And this trailer recalls me it also presents another meaning on “masochist”. According to the psychoanalysis, “masochist” mentions the person who would like to somebody to beat, stab, punish, and etc him/her severely to get the enjoyment and pleasure of sex through these humiliated and morbid behaviors. And this film also portrays Tom likes a masochist through shows some words likes ‘suffering’ and ‘so much suffering’ on the screen while Tom makes a dream when Tom is heartbroken and suffers on the unrequited love.
In the third dimension, I would like to mention the deadlock of love and its resolution in this film. And there are also two dimensions show the deadlock of love through the perspectives of Tom and Summer. As far as Tom concerned, Summer is the true one. According to Zizek, “A very refined manner to supplant the absence of the sexual relationship is by feigning that it is us who put the obstacle in its way” (155). Because Tom’s fancy on Summer renders the deadlock of love. But for Summer, according to the narrator portrays that “Summer’d only loved two things, the first was her long dark hair, and the second was how easily she could cut it off... and feel nothing since the disintegration of her parents’ marriage”. So perhaps it may explain why Summer doesn’t want to love. And I would like to borrow the Zizek’s insights from “There is No Sexual Relationship”. In this essay, Zizek deals with the similar condition on a film, A Heart in Winter by Claude Sautet also presents the deadlock of love. In this essay, Zizek explains the problem of Stephan who can’t love. In this dimension, I want to use Zizek’s insights to explain the problem of Summer:
Summer’s character is rather enigmatic: the point is not that Tom isn’t her true love, but rather that she simply feels no need for love- there is no place for love in her psychological universe. This incapacity to love accounts for the kind of inner peace and completion irradiated by her personality: unperturbed by any emotional turmoils, profoundly apathetic. (198)
Also we can find some hints from the dialogue is spoken by Tom while he is heartbroken and talks to a girl who is introduced by Tom’s friends. “You think back on the times you had with someone, replay it in your head over and over again, and you look for those first signs of trouble. There are two options really. Either... she’s an evil, emotionless, miserable human being, or... she’s a robot” to show Summer is apathetic. According to Zizek, “This abstract character of the Lady has nothing to do with spiritual purification; rather, it points towards the abstraction that pertains to a cold, distanced, inhuman partner- the Lady is by no means a warm, compassionate, understanding fellow-creature” (151). And in Zizek’s interpretation, “This coincidence of absolute, inscrutable Otherness and pure machine is what confers on the Lady her uncanny; monstrous character- the Lady is the Other which is not our ‘fellow-creature’ ; that is to say, she is someone with whom no relationship of empathy is possible’’ (151). So perhaps we may portray Summer like a robot. Also in Zizek’s view, it expresses why I refer Summer may portrays as a robot:
The Lady is thus as far as possible from any kind of purified spirituality:
she functions as an inhuman partner in the sense of a radical Otherness which is wholly incommensurable with our needs and desires; as such, she is simultaneously a kind of automation, a machine which utters meaningless demands at random. (151)
For Zizek, “There is no need here for any ‘psychoanalytical’ reference to sexual frustrations, childhood traumas and so on” (198). But in my own interpretation, Summer feels ‘no need for love’ because her parents divorced when she was young. Perhaps Summer ever hurts from love or she might not refers “Relationships are messy, and people’s feelings get hurt”. But it’s a little bit ironical in the ending of this film, Summer marries to another man. Perhaps Summer doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend, but she wants to be anyone’s wife. Besides, this film also presents the resolution of the deadlock of love. In this film, Summer goes to the park Tom ever tells that it is his favorite place to go and takes Summer to go. Summer would like to know Tom how he is recently. Hence, Summer goes to the park to meet Tom and at the same time Tom also goes to the park. Summer concerns Tom and Tom tells Summer that he finds everything he believe are nonsense. And Summer tells him “It just wasn’t me that you were right about. But I’m really happy to see that you’re doing well’’. In this resolution of the deadlock of the love, Summer shows gentle concerns to Tom; although Summer and Tom can’t be a lover but they may be a friend in the future. In this way, all misunderstanding on love and deadlock of love are totally getting rid of after Tom’s realization of the truth. According to Zizek, “the impossibility of a compassionate solidarity beyond carnal passions, of a spiritual communion that can fill out the void of the inherent impossibility of a sexual relationship” (197).
In the second place, I would like to talk about love in three dimensions includes the definition of love, Love Objects become Hatred Objects, and sublimation. The first dimension is the definition of love. Since I have mentioned that unrequited love before, and now I intend to introduce the definition of love and definition of true love. According to Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek, “Lacan’s ‘There is No Sexual Relationship’ provides a simple answer to the eternal question, Why is there love in the world? Love is a lure, a mirage, whose function is to obfuscate the irreducible, constitutive ‘out-of-joint’ of the relationship between the sexes” (2). In Zizek’s view, “true love, as Lacan points out, is always a love returned” (198). In Zizek’s interpretation, it portrays how the inescapable deadlock resolves and proves that it is a genuine love:
As Lacan puts it, there is no relationship between what the loved one possesses and what the loving one lacks. The only way for the loved one to escape this deadlock is to stretch out his hand towards the loving one and to ‘return love’-that is, to exchange, in a metaphorical gesture, his status as the loved one for the status of the loving one. This reversal designates the point of subjectivization: the object of love changes into the subject the moment it answers the call of love. And it is only by way of this reversal that a genuine love emerges: I am truly in love not when I am simply fascinated by the agalma in the other. (164)
In the second dimension, I would like to talk about Love Objects become Hatred Objects. In this film, when Tom finds he falls in love with Summer, he said that “I’m in love with Summer. I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love this heart-shaped birthmark she has on her neck. I love the way she sometimes licks her lips before she talks. I love the sound of her laugh. I love the way she looks when she’s sleeping’’. According to Salecl and Zizek, it expresses why Tom loves these objects:
Lacan added to Freud’s list of partial objects (breasts, faeces, phallus) two objects, voice and gaze. It is therefore by no means accidental that gaze and voice are love objects par excellence- not in the sense that we fall in love with a voice or a gaze, but rather in the sense that they are a medium, a catalyst that sets off love. (3)
In Salecl and Zizek’s interpretation, “Love cannot be reduced to a mere illusion of imaginary phenomenon: beyond its fascination with the image of its object, true love aims at the kernel of the real, at what Lacan called l’objet petit a” (3). In this film, after Summer leaves Tom, Tom is heartbroken and said that “I hate Summer. I hate her crooked teeth. I hate her 1960s haircut. I hate her knobby knees. And I hate her cockroach-shaped splotch on her neck. I hate the way she smacks her lips before she talks. And I hate the way she sounds when she laughs’’. And there is a reasonable reason about Love Objects become Hatred Objects, as follows. In Salecl and Zizek’s view, “Love- as well as hate- is supported by what remains of the object when it is stripped of all its imaginary and symbolic features’’ (3). Tom gets hurt hence he gets rid of his fancy of love on Summer, the love objects become hatred objects. In my own interpretation, the object of loved turns into Thing due to the structure of the fancy of love from the subject of loving disappears. Hence, the love objects turns into the hatred objects. Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “The phallus, the signifier of enjoyment, had simultaneously to be the signifier of ‘castration’, that is to say, one and the same signifier had to signify enjoyment as well as its loss” (157). I think this condition on the phallus is similar to the object which not only refers love objects but also hatred objects.
In the third dimension, I would like to talk about sublimation. And in this paper, sublimation will be deals with two dimensions to talk about. At first, I would like to talk about the creative sublimation. In this film, Tom’s colleague, Mckenzie who suggests him that “well, you know, Henry Miller said that the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature’’ while Tom is heartbroken for the unrequited love with Summer. And I found a reasonable theoretical supports for this condition from the Zizek’s approach. According to Zizek, “The work of art acts here as the phantasmatic supplement: its enactment of the fully consummated sexual relationship supports the compromise we make in our actual social life” (193). In Zizek’s view, “creative sublimation which provides the co-ordinates for the gesture of feminine self-sacrifice’’ (193). Also I would like to cite an example from “There is No Sexual Relationship” to make my portrayal become persuasive and useful for this condition. In Zizek’s interpretation, “Goethe explained his Werther: by way of writing the book, the young Goethe symbolically acted out his infatuation, and brought it to its logical conclusion; this way, he relieved himself of the unbearable tension, and was able to return to his everyday existence’’ (193).
In the second place, there is another dimension on sublimation which I would like to talk about. In this film, Summer as a Lady while Tom fantasizes Summer is the true one. And Summer become a Thing while Tom is hurt from this unrequited love with Summer and realizes from his fancy. And the process while the Lady turns into the Thing. According to Zizek, sublimation sets:
sublimation sets in- sublimation in the Lacanian sense of the elevation of an object into the dignity of the Thing: ‘sublimation’ occurs when an object, part of everyday reality, finds itself at the place of the impossible Thing. Herein resides the function of those artificial obstacles that suddenly hinder our access to some ordinary object: they elevate the object into a stand-in for the Thing. (156)
In Zizek’s view, it portrays how the Thing can’t access to the object:
Some common, everyday object or act becomes inaccessible or impossible to accomplish once it finds itself in the position of the Thing- although the thing should be easily within reach, the entire universe has somehow been adjusted to produce, again and again, an unfathomable contingency blocking access to the object. (156)
Also in Zizek’s interpretation, “What Lacan means by sublimation, on the contrary, is shifting the libido from the void of the “unserviceable’ Thing to some concrete, material object of need that assumes a sublime quality the moment it occupies the place of the Thing” (157).
Besides, I would like to portray an especial phenomenon on Tom pursues the unrequited love before I goes on the third topic on this paper. In the film, although Summer reminds Tom she doesn’t want to the relationship as a lover, Tom accepts her requirement. But Tom still longs for Summer’s love. Tom think Summer will loves him someday in the future. Until Tom looks Summer’s wedding ring on her finger on the party which Summer invites Tom to go. I would like to use Zizek insights to explain Tom’s behavior on longs for Summer’s love even if he knows Summer doesn’t love him at all. According to Zizek, “The Object is attainable only by way of an incessant postponement, as its absent point of reference. The Object, therefore, is literally something that is created- whose place is encircled- through a network of detours, approximations and near-misses’’ (156). Also Tom ever says “Well, why rock the boat, is what I'm thinking. I mean, things are going well. You start putting labels on it, that's like the kiss of death’’ while he is curious but he is afraid of asking his relationship with summer so he seeks his younger sister, Rachel’s help. In my own interpretation, Tom is just afraid of losing Summer, so he continually expresses he doesn’t mind and postpones the question to ask Summer.
In the third place, I would like to talk about ideology of modern products in two dimensions includes its form and influence and popular songs’ display on the film. The first dimension is ideology of modern products take shape. In our contemporary society, there are many inventions makes our life become convenient but also some modern products lead into some problems in our life. In my own view, some modern products not only provide us to use but also become a machine conveys us correct or false ideology. For instance, in our society, many businessman designs commercials to promote his/her products to make people buy their products. He may convey some false ideology or latent lie through the commercial. Businessman requests some popular actor, actress, singer, athlete, and so on and use computer-aided design to promote and beautify for their products even if the products are not so useful. Even now TV commercial and CD also become the tool is manipulated to promote his party and his political concerns to win the election by some politician before the election. Besides, newspapers, film, music, greeting card, and advertisements all are embodied by some latent ideology on these products. Since we lives the contemporary society which is constructed by many latent ideology of modern products, people become too easily to get attention from the ideology of modern products which is showed on the commercial. In my own interpretation, the ideology which is embodied like with a magic power, people can’t aware of it is false even believes these ideology are totally right and absorbs some false perspectives on their brain even internalizes these ideas even if these false ideology is some person’s scheme to makes result he longs for. Hence, people also affect by the false ideology which exists on the modern products and suffers from these latent and false ideology. According to Zizek, “Already in the 1950s, in Mythologies, Roland Barthes proposed the notion of ideology as the ‘naturalization’ of the symbolic order- that is, as the perception that refies the results of discursive procedures into properties of the ‘thing itself’’’ (64). In Zizek’s interpretation, he mentions the reason for the modern product affects our contemporary society:
For that reason, a direct reference to extra-ideological coercion ( of the market, for example) is an ideological gesture par excellence: the market and (mass) media are dialectically interconnected; we live in a ‘society of the spectacle’ (Guy Debord), in which the media structure our perception of reality in advance, and render reality indistinguishable from the ‘aestheticized’ image of it (68).
In the film, Tom tells to Summer “Realizing that everything you believe in is complete and utter bullshit. It sucks. Uh, you know, destiny, and soul mates, and true love, and all that childhood fairy tale nonsense while Tom and Summer met in the final times’’. In my own interpretation, Tom heard many popular songs, idealized fairy tales, watches many romantic films, so the false ideology which he absorbs from the pop song, romantic films, and idealized fairy tales leads into his fancy of love for Summer and suffers the unrequited love. Because the truth is the fairy tales doesn’t exist in the real world. In Zizek’s view, “‘postmodern’ critique of ideology: to designate the elements within an existing social order which- in the guise of ‘fiction’, that is of ‘utopian’ narratives of possible but failed alternative histories- point towards the system’s antagonistic character, and thus ‘estrange’ us to the self-evidence of its established identity’’ (61). In Zizek’s interpretation, “the starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full acknowledgement of the fact that it is easily possible to lie in the guise of truth’’ (61).
In the second dimension, I would like to talk about popular songs’ display on the film. Since I have mentioned about the ideology of modern products before, in this dimension I would like to focus on the music because music plays an important role in this film. In the beginning of this film, the narrator mentions Tom’s perspective on love “he'd never truly be happy...until the day he met "the one."This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music”. In this film, not only the protagonist, Tom likes the popular music and as The Smiths’ fan but the girl, Summer also likes. I would like to refer four lyrics to portray their influences on Tom or the director tries to tell the audience a lesson through the display of music. The first song I would like to refer is “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’’ is sung by Tom’s idol, The Smiths. This song shows while Summer heard from Tom’s walkman, and Summer sing this lyrics to check “Is this song from The Smiths?” at that day they are meet and talk at the first time in the elevator. This lyrics “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die” , in my own interpretation, this songs conveys the false ideology likes to convey people must be sacrifice or suffer by his/her love is the ideal way to die. I think this ideology is false, and it makes Tom become a masochist indirectly. Because Tom often listens to this song from his walkman day by day, so he gradually absorbs the false ideology which conveys through this song and internalizes this ideology on his mind. The second song I would like to portray is “Here Comes Your Man” is sung by Meaghan Smith. In the film, this song is sung by Tom when Tom, Summer, and their colleagues sing songs in KTV. The lyrics “Just like every cowboy. Sing a sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn. There is a wait so long. So long, so long. There is a wait so long. Here comes your man”, in my own view, the cowboy may refer to Tom, rose has its thorn may refer to his Lady, the beauty, Summer, and this song expresses Tom’s mind. Because Tom looks like the cowboy who waits long for his true one, Miss Right. But I have mentioned before, according to Zizek, the ideal one just a fantasy from the subject of loving. Also in my own view, the reasonable reason for Tom waits long for and so long also may refer that there is no the existence of the true one. The third song I would like to mention is “You Make My Dreams” is sung by Hall & Oates. In the film, this song displays on the day after Tom and Summer makes love at the first time. And this song shows Tom is very happy even Tom dances with the passerby when he goes to the company of greeting card on the screen. The lyrics “What I want you’ve got. And it might be hard to handle”, in my own interpretation, it refers Tom thinks Summer is his true one and also he knows Summer is the one hard to be handle. And the lyric “What I’ve got full stock of thoughts and dreams that scatter. Then you pull them all together”, in my own view, this lyric also emphasizes the influence of contacting the sad pop music, also mentions Tom fantasizes Summer is his true love. And the lyric “I’m down on my daydream”, in my view, this lyric is ironical because in fact Tom still dream his daydream on his true love, after Summer leaves him away and he realizes that there is no true one. Also the last lyrics I would like to refer “But my heartache’s in me every day. Did you stand by me. No, not at all” displays while Summer leaves him away and Tom is heartbroken. In my own view, this song portrays Tom realizes his fancy of love for Summer just a fantasy.
To sum up, the masochistic theatre of the unrequited love is constructed by the false ideology of modern products. Nowadays people like Tom don’t know how to prevent the invader from the ideology which are embodied by the modern products including the pop songs, advertisements, TV commercials, drama, mass media, newspapers, and so on. People become silly and easily controlled. And the mass media become a tool of governing. In my own interpretation, it’s very pertinent to quote the sentences are spoken by Tom “It’s- It’s these cards, and the movies, and the pop songs—They’re to blame for all the lies and the heartache, everything” while Tom realized that ‘everything he believe is complete and utter bullshit’ to end of my paper.
Works Cited
500 Days of Summer. Dir. Marc Webb. Perf. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Zooey Daschanel. FOX, 2010. DVD.
Hall & Oates. “You Make My Dreams.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
Salecl, Renata, and Slavoj Zizek. Introduction. Gaze and Voice as Love Objects. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Print.
Smith, Meaghan. “Here Comes Your Man.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
The Smiths. “This Is A Light That Never Goes Out.” 500 Days of Summer - Music From The Motion Picture. Warner Music, 2009. CD.
Zizek, Slavoj. ed. “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
---. “There is No Sexual Relationship” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
---. “The Spectre of Ideology” The Zizek Reader. MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Print.
全站熱搜
留言列表
{{ article.title }}