The Devil in Miss Jones begins and ends on the couch. Less than a year before the release of the film, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan announced “Le femme n’existe pas” (“The Woman does not exist”). This is not an admonition of women proper, but The Woman, a singular, barred entity. It is a semblant, or the make believe of an appearance, that does not and cannot exist in the Lacanian unconscious. It is just this, The Woman, that is quite brilliantly captured in Justine Jones. For Lacan, The Woman is representative of the not-all. This being not-all there results from there being “no symbol of the feminine sex which can couple in the unconscious with the signifier of the phallus.”[1] The phallus is not considered the penis proper; rather, the organ acts as the object of fantasy. This places women in an interesting position, so to speak. Because of the absence of a symbol in the Lacanian system, she has the choice of aligning herself with the phallus, or rejecting it entirely. Thus the woman is split. She is not-whole. The Woman does not exist.
Gerard Damiano’s second film – note the word, he did not make just another fuck flick – presents, in Justine Jones, a woman entirely foreclosed from the phallus. A thirty-something spinster, her virginity is intact. She has never had sex or even known any sort of desire. She is so far removed from the phallus, she wouldn’t know what to do with it. This is the jumping-off point for Damiano. The first scene of the film ends with Justine Jones’ killing herself. She examines her naked body in a mirror as if it were someone else’s, something alien to her. She cannot read it. The unreadable body has no value, it is incoherent. Her physical act, the slitting of her wrists, is suicide through vivisection.
The Catholic rulebook is fairly direct in its punishment for suicide – eternal damnation. That’s it! Even one as pure and innocent as Miss Jones cannot escape it.
For the sake of this analysis, Hell is not considered in traditional terms. It is the real, the register of the unconscious which is un-faceable. It is what individuals cannot and will not subject themselves to, lest be rendered psychotic. For Lacan, the real is the realm of the impossible.
Miss Jones’ arrival in Limbo presents for the powers that be a bit of a conundrum. They are forced to condemn a woman who otherwise deserves nothing less than salvation. Mr. Abaca, an angel figure whose job is to direct the newly departed, cannot help her peculiar case. Justine will not simply resign herself to her fate. She resolves to earn it. In a fit of Faustian desire, she chooses to immerse herself in the one, most crucial thing she lacked – sexuality. She chances a journey during which she will completely re-
write herself and grab a hold of the signifier (that which relates to the subject of something else) of the phallus.
Learning to speak and the event of the body.
Lacan structures the unconscious like a language. As a speaking being man is forced into the chain of signifiers which not only form his identity, but also establish a social link, namely the sexual relationship. A result of there being no symbol for the female sex, the woman is not whole and the sexual relationship is impossible. Man is phallic by nature, his jouissance (fr. joy, orgasm, cumming) is situated in the phallus. Not just a sensation, jouissance is beyond pleasure. It is so beyond pleasure that it is actually painful for the subject. Lacan can be no more direct when he states “jouissance is suffering.”[2] Women, on the other hand, are split up the middle. As such, the phallus becomes necessary for The Woman to become one (whole).
Miss Jones’ first sexual encounter is with the Teacher (Harry Reems), who, as his name suggests, is responsible for introducing her to the sexual discourse. This is done by way of a variety of sex acts and through language as well. He operates as the Master, commanding her to “open yourself to me.” He then instructs her to speak. Exposing himself to her, he asks, “By what name do you call this?” She responds quietly “Cock, penis, prick,” repeating the words more emphatically, an act of naming the phallus – making it her own. There is elation as she consumes it, first by mouth, and then vaginally. Her inhibitions begin to wane as she develops a rapport with the phallus, establishing herself in the chain of signifiers.
Her sexuation continues with a roll around with another woman. What is most striking in this encounter is its resonance to the Mirror Stage. Lacan believed humans to be born prematurely, and it is through mimicry that the identity is founded. This mimicry is fostered in language (“She’ll grow up to be like her mother”) and an actual image of another (be it another child, or merely a reflection in a mirror). It is from this that the speaking being is written. The formation of the specular image, the reflection of one’s body which is simultaneously one’s self and the object of desire, is central to the Mirror Stage. Miss Jones’ lesbian experience is her coming into contact with a woman’s body so as to learn her own. This is emphasized the moment the other woman begins to paint her. Where her experience with the Teacher is focused primarily on the language of sex, this is the crucial moment in the formation of the body.
Becumming the phallic woman.
The Woman experiences a different kind of jouisance than the man, the jouissance of the body, which is not complementary to phallic jouissance. If The Woman’s jouissance were in fact based on the phallus, she would be whole. In his seminar Encore, Lacan explains, “The fact remains that if she is excluded by the nature of things, it is precisely in the following respect: being not-whole, she has a supplementary jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouissance…she has a different way of approaching that phallus and of keeping it for herself.”[3] Women, therefore, have an infinite number of ways to align themselves with the phallus in order to achieve a semblance of being One, of filling up.
The evolution of Miss Jones into a phallic woman – her staking claim to it – is characterized through masturbation. The woman needs the phallus to operate as a plug, which could be anything. While pleasuring herself in a bath tub, the phallic symbol is simply a thin hose spurting water, a rudimentary, yet functional substitute. She matures, though, as the film progresses. After a second go-round with the Teacher, her methods become a bit more sophisticated. She moves on to fruit, stuffing herself with grapes and fellating a banana, illustrating the sustenance of the phallus as an object of fantasy. Later in the scene, the introduction of a snake brings life to it. The snake slithers from between her legs to her mouth, where she begins to imitate it, flicking her tongue as she closes her lips around its head. It is her phallus in her mouth, forming a circle, a unity. This marks her transition from signifying the not-whole to an apparent domination of the phallus.
From this point on her partners become secondary, mere semblants. She is totally uninhibited, the ultimate phallic woman. Her dominance, controlling two men at once in the penultimate scene of the film, is all too apparent. She doesn’t need them, they’re merely cocks, reduced to operating for her.
“Garcin: I dare say some get used to it in time.
Valet: Some do. Some don’t.” – Sartre, No Exit.
Harry Reems, after reading the script of The Devil in Miss Jones, noted “This is No Exit in its thinnest disguise.” There is a truth to that statement. Yet Hell, for Miss Jones, is the real, the register of the unconscious that is excluded from any symbolic orientation. It cannot be captured in language, which is why it carries such traumatic implications for the subject. It is that which cannot be spoken. The real entirely fragments the body, disassociating it from the imaginary and symbolic registers that hold it together. It is in these first two registers that the image is cohered and situated through language. Fissure of the two renders the subject psychotic. Miss Jones, her body image having been wholly identified with the phallus, and whose sole jouissance derived from it, is now as exiled from it as she was in the beginning of the film. She is but a hole – total lack. From that, there truly is no exit.
Her exile, her hell, is fully realized in her cell mate, who shows no interest in fulfilling her desire. He is more concerned with discussing his trade secret for catching flies than this woman offering herself to him. She pleads for his prick, near unintelligibly, jamming her fingers into herself. “I can’t do it by myself!” she whines. And she’s correct. She never really could to begin with. He simply tells her to be quiet. There is no language in the real. Neither of them make much sense, but the man and his flies are on to something. The sexual relationship, the discourse between The Woman and the phallus, cannot be articulated. There is no symbol for the female. To attempt to speak this relationship is no different than grasping at flies. “Close your eyes, you’ll see,” says the man. He’s right. One sees nothing because it doesn’t exist. That is precisely why Miss Jones cannot do it by herself. To amend Sartre, Hell is the real. It is the complete fragmentation of the body, the disintegration of language. It’s a nasty trick jouissance played on poor Miss Jones – cumming so hard it tore her apart.
It is highly doubtful that Damiano had Lacan in mind when he wrote The Devil in Miss Jones. Be that as it may, his ability to create erotic cinema that allows for such analysis elevates his work above that of mere stroke material. The marriage of such films with critical theory can only enhance the accessibility of both schools.
[1] Pickman, Claude Noële. "Examining a clinic of the not-all." The Letter (2004): 22-23.
[2] Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book V11. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60, trans.
Dennis Porter,
[3] -------- The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of
Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973. trans. Bruce Fink. Jacques-Alain Miller ed.
©Peter Lang, 2009.
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