A Field Guide to Imaginary Idiocy
2017; Volume: 21; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/itx.2017.0001
ISSN2156-5465
Autores Tópico(s)Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
ResumoIn Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 fi lm Rumble Fish, two troubled young brothers engage in a philosophical discussion while they gaze into a fi sh tank at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, pet store.Th e elder brother, whom everyone calls Th e Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), explains to the younger, Rusty James (Matt Dillon), that Siamese fi ghting fi sh will try to attack their own image when they are shown a mirror: "You know, if you lean a mirror up against the glass, they try to kill themselves fi ghting their own refl ection."Such behavior in animals is Imaginary in the Lacanian sense-which is not to say that it is a matter of animals daydreaming or conjuring up nonexistent scenarios in in their minds.Rather, the response of the fi sh to their refl ection is Imaginary because it is image driven, induced by the presence of a likeness.Th e fact that the scene in the pet store is both the source of the fi lm's title and the only sequence fi lmed in color (everything in the fi lm except for the vibrant red and turquoise fi sh is shot in black and white) sets the characters' strange discussion in high relief.It is not diff erence that drives young men such as these to engage in acts of aggression, but instead a dyadic similarity that induces the violence.Indeed, to anyone who has seen Rumble Fish, the mise-en-scène of the fi lm resembles nothing so much as a series of hometown fi shbowls, circumscribed arenas of aimlessness and ennui that the characters strain but fail to escape, turning instead to various forms of combat and defensive display.Judging by their sheer number on social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, short videos and gifs of animals "rumbling" with
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