Besides Melancholia and Beyond Gender: Melancholia

Abstract

Chapter 8 approaches the topic of melancholia through Lars von Trier’s cinematic take on it in his film Melancholia. The argument is that, even though the film deals primarily with melancholia, its focus shifts radically from the category of the melancholic to the category of the hysteric towards its end. By taking a close look at certain scenes in von Trier’s film, the chapter seeks to show that, in Melancholia, there is something else besides melancholia that remains with the viewer long after experiencing the film, which, even though still related to the film’s melancholic stasis (both content and stylistics-wise) and what some of its readers see as its nihilistic drive, is fundamentally situated in the desiring, living, hysterical subject as such as what constitutes the human condition in general. Von Trier’s Melancholia, regardless of what the director’s intentions may be in terms of what he really wants to communicate to the viewer, shows that while melancholia may be regarded as an illness afflicting certain people, being a desiring subject is itself an incurable illness that can be traced back to the subject’s very inscription into the symbolic order—an inscription that is melancholic by its very nature since it is based not on a gain but on a certain fundamental loss within the psyche. In the course of this, it will also be shown that nothing hinders coming to grips with a filmic text like Melancholia and trying to fully grasp the scope of its radical implications more than feminist readings of it.