Analysis of "Alienation" in Paul Thomas Anderson's Cinema with focus on Jacques Lacan’s Ideas

The concept of alienation has been extensively discussed in the history of modern thought, emphasizing the estrangement of individuals from intrinsic elements of their nature. This concept has been expressed in various forms by some of the prominent Western philosophers. Philosophers who have spoken about alienation do not agree on the nature of human essence. For example, saint Augustine considered alienation as the separation of humans from the kingdom of God and saw the way back to it in obeying the commandments of the Church, while thinkers such as Feuerbach or Nietzsche saw Christian doctrine as the cause of human alienation from their own essence. Nevertheless, all these philosophers agree on the point that humans have an essence and have fallen away from that essence.

Jacques Lacan considered Alienation as a necessary condition for the subject's entry into symbolic order. According to Lacan, Cartesian duality cannot reveal all that the subject is, because the Descartes skeptic, who realizes his own existence through his thinking, only informs about a conscious subject, while Lacan considers the nature of the subject to be unconscious and made by the language. Lacan, in his Psychoanalytical perspective, posited that individuals become alienated from themselves upon acquiring the ability to speak, allowing others to confine their desires within the bounds of signification through language. While the Other’s desire is manifested in language, Lacan believes that man's desire is the desire of the Other.

This study focuses on the manifestation of alienation in the films of contemporary American director Paul Thomas Anderson Throughout employing an interdisciplinary approach encompassing cinema, Psychoanalysis and philosophy. By adopting a descriptive analytical method, this research aims to prove the hypothesis that the concept of alienation is the main theme in P.T Andersen's cinema, which is manifested as a leitmotif in all the works of this filmmaker. Throughout Anderson's films, the protagonist resembles a Lacanian alienated subject compelled to embrace Other’s language in the pursuit of meaning. The big Other in Anderson's films is a metaphor of capitalism that presents American cultures and subcultures through surrogate relationships. The "Surrogate Family" and at the head of it the surrogate father turns Andersen's characters into subjects who renounce freedom in the dangerous world of The Real in favor of escaping loneliness and finding identity in the symbolic world. In this symbolic world, Andersen's heroes are in a situation similar to the situation of the unconscious subject described by Lacan. The protagonists in Anderson's works are intricately bound to the signifiers established within these surrogate relationships. Ultimately, this study reveals that Anderson's primary preoccupation in his films is human identity, one whose desires are limited within the framework set by paternal law. As Lacan considers the neurotic as the most common position of the subject, Andersen's characters are generally Neurotics who accept the Other’s rules. However, the Hysteric subject in The Master, the Psychotic character in Inherent Vice, and The Pervert Subject in Phantom Thread define the different position of the subject in the face of the Other.