Denotatively, a desire is a strong feeling of wanting or wishing something or even someone to have contentment to oneself.
Slovenian Philosopher and Psychoanalyst
According to Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, cinema doesn’t give us our desires but it makes us how to desire.
From the hypodermic needle theory where the implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences, the people tend to learn how to desire what’s been viewed. Why? Because the things injected in the minds of the spectators create questions if that can be desirable or not. It happens to teach a person how to crave or long for an idea.
People have different perceptions about what films could impose. Factors like gender, religion, political and economical terms affects the opinions of the audience and somewhat react on the violated or affected belief of anyone. But through the psychoanalysis where Zizek is expert on explaining things, he elaborated that everything that has been created by human is due to the surroundings beginning from the past to present. Thus, the behaviors either normal or abnormal of one’s personality influence his/her creation of ideas. The stories being discussed by Zizek all circulate from the behaviors of those who/what create the story.
Psycho 1960
From the movie Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock which I remembered the most thrilling, horror and first black and white movie I’ve watched has been an eye-opener how to appreciate an old film. Events took place on three different levels of developing personality as stated by Zizek. At the ground floor of the house is the Ego where Norman Bates, the innkeeper is in his normal state as a son. Ego is described to be in the middle of childish/cleverness and moral judgement of one’s human subjectivity. Upstairs is the maternal super ego wherein the dead mother is the symbol of super ego. And in the cellar, the Id is being showed in the film where the reservoir of illicit actions. Norman Bates carried her mother to the cellar which Id took place. The id doesn’t care about reality, about the needs of anyone else, only its own satisfaction.
Though psychoanalysis has a broad concept especially on films, the movie Psycho could explain an idea of how desires should be handled. How to desire is how to be responsible on your deeds. In reality, we are unconscious of these things. But in the end, we need to think about that films are realizations of life itself. How people act and react to a thing and how the world revolves around through us.
Cinema 