1. Plato Classical Aesthetics Truth / Appearance Being / Becoming Mimesis
Knowledge / Belief
BUT Plato explains his ideas through myth, allegory
e.g., the soul is an amalgam of appetites, emotion, reason – in short, a monster

2. Aristotle underlying mimesis is love of order, balance, unity
Tragedy takes action/story (praxis) and idealizes it into a plot (muthos)
necessity, probability and inevitability (causal link)
Post hoc / Procter Hoc
Essence / Accident
Hierarchy
Cf. painting vs. photography
Principle of sufficient reason – every thing/event has a cause
logic is not self-grounding

3. Elephant Deep focus Camera placement (intentionally off-center)
Extensive use of Direct Sound
Soundscape, not sound objects
Improvised Dialogue
Plot is non linear, but not in a way that ties together the meaningful relationship of parts (e.g., Benny, multiple viewpoints, etc.)
Dionysian Apollonian aspects in Attic tragedy (Pre-Socratic)
We have lost sight of the Dionysian impulse. The key is to unite A and D
Humans in 2001 are great example of Alexandrian

6. Once Upon a Time in the West
Cinecittá (extensive use of dubbing – ADR)
All sounds are close mic’ed, dubbed in post production
Idealized
Non spatial, disembodied

7. Mulholland Drive Problems with platonic interpretation
Relationship between realities is not simply hierarchical
follows free association
Also, the explanatory section (“day act”) has many inconsistencies, narrative is fragmented, employs many defamiliarizing techniques
Nietzsche on aesthetic Socratism:
“in order to be beautiful everything must be conscious” / understandable

8. Freud The Uncanny (Das Unheimliche)
cognitive dissonance produced by familiar yet strange experiences
Heim = home (e.g., Heimat = hometown, place of origin) familiar
Geheim = secret, hidden
Thus the motif of the home contains what is known and yet simultaneously unknown
the name for everything that ought to have remained hidden…and has become visible
(Schelling)
Unheimlich = both familiar (of the home) and strange (hidden)

9. Reality and Fantasy side-by-side in Mulholland Drive
In fantasy space there are mysterious but reliable externalized ordering agents (cowboy, terrifying bum, movie producers, etc.)
Properly uncanny moments are when the dream space is disintegrating
but we are not yet back in reality (Club Silencio)
Why does the dream space disintegrate? (disastrous (incomplete) fulfillment of desire)
impossibility of a perfect union between two people

10. Questions of Identity and Love in Mulholland Drive
In fantasy space there are mysterious but reliable externalized ordering agents (cowboy, terrifying bum, movie producers, etc.)
Betty’s idealizing love is narcissistic
Rita is an empty slate onto which is projected Betty’s idealized self

11. Jacques Lacan -- The Mirror Stage
Subject / becoming (true) || Self / being (false)
Self is the name we give to the becoming subject
Like the name we give to nothing, it is not a thing but sutures the kinetic heterogeneous flow of experience into a stable (though illusory) concept
(cp. empty set || non-existent object)
The self is not a transcendental unity, but a misrecognition of absence
illusion of wholeness is perpetually deferred /unattainable.
serves as the originary object of desire that shapes all further desiring behavior.

12. Desire / Prohibition
Lacan: sublimation is not the transfer of a concrete need to a socially acceptable practice but shifting the libido from the void of desire to some concrete thing to let it stand in for the Real.
Love:
The subject / erastes (the loving one) The object / eromenos (the loved one)
Idealizes through narcissistic projection Unattainable Ideal (in the realm of the Real)
Lack / Desire objet petit a (unattainable / unknowable object of desire, e.g., Kinder Surprise)
Reversal:
Becomes loved (object) “returns love” becomes subject
True love:
Mutual Lack