Breaching the Frame: Psychoanalysis and Sunset Boulevard PDF

Received: 16 January 2023 Accepted: 19 January 2023 DOI: 10.1002/aps.1796 RESEARCH ARTICLE Breaching the frame: Psychoanalysis and sunset boulevard Nilofer Kaul also the means by w...

Received: 16 January 2023 Accepted: 19 January 2023 DOI: 10.1002/aps.1796 RESEARCH ARTICLE Breaching the frame: Psychoanalysis and sunset boulevard Nilofer Kaul also the means by which Hollywood stands exposed. In many ways, the audience like Joe Gillis Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, Delhi, India thinks they are in on the joke, till it turns against Correspondence them. This paper argues that we can read this as a Nilofer Kaul, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, Delhi, India. Email: [email protected] cautionary tale for psycho analysts as we enter into Abstract an analysis of the patient, only to discover that we Sunset Boulevard is a film that breaches the frames have been recruited into a world that never was in that cinema has conventionally used. It playfully our control. satirises Holly wood with its silent era, its glossy nostalgia, its mystique that conceals its brittle KEYWORDS floating, hollywood, nostalgia, wilder cynicism. Norma Desmond is sati rised but she is Sunset Boulevard (1950) has been an icon for 72 years-celebrated, cloned, and deconstructed. What can one say about it today that has not already been said? Does it still deserve a contemporary perspective? Its star, Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson), is a relic of the silent era who aspires to return to the sleek dialogue-centric Hollywood talkies. For years, she has been scriptwriting Salome for an epic comeback. She lassoes an out-of-work scriptwriter Joe Gillis (played by William Holden) into helping her. Seduced by her wealth and an inchoate promise of glamour, he stays on, while she fancies herself in love. When he finally tries to leave her, Norma shoots him dead. It is his corpse that we see floating in her ample swimming pool, in the opening scene, his bloated face looking up at us with an expression of stunned surprise. Watching it for the very first time recently stirred up a melee of noisy associations. Hotel California played in my head. You can check-out any time you like, But…“. Not forgetting the well-known silent star, Mabel Normand, I also thought of the other Norma—Norma Bates and of course Norman Bates. Psycho (1960) followed Sunset Boulevard a decade later. The noise in my head pointed me to the coming together of popular cultural tropes: Peter Pan and Neverland, Dorian Gray, and Greta Garbo. Joe Gillis himself places Norma Desmond in a literary tradition with “Miss Havisham and her rotting wedding dress”. I would like to suggest that we revisit this film for its audacity in breaching frames. Civitarese (2010) suggests that it is transference and the “eruption” of passion that is unique to psychoanalysis. When the analyst interprets the 140 Int J Appl Psychoanal Studies. 2023;20:140–147. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aps © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e KAUL 141 transference, he breaches the frame that separates patient from analyst. Civitarese draws a parallel between trans ference and the painter with canvas appearing in the foreground in Velasquez's painting Las Meninas (1656). Both intrude into what is expected to remain outside. What I argue here is that, even as it mobilizes familiar tropes, Sunset Boulevard also ruptures frames and interrupts the comfortable distance that separates us from the on-screen spec tacle. The floating corpse as narrator, is only the first of these disruptions. Wilder's original idea that the film begins in a morgue with corpses greeting the new entrant may have gone too far in this direction; and was considered too outre for inclusion. The film taps into the common enough theme of nostalgia with Norma Desmond's prolonging the silent era in every possible way. But the viewing of an old film about nostalgia frames its viewing in an uncanny way. When released 72 years ago, the silent era had already passed. Hence, its viewers would be looking at a bygone era, render ing the frame itself nostalgic, albeit with distance. Moreover, watching it now is itself evocative of another nostalgia, for Hollywood of the 50s, with its angu lar, crackling dialogue, its endless cigarettes smoked by brill-creamed men and sharply coiffed women—a popular sub-genre of its own. In our own era, platforms such as Netflix draw on this nostalgia in shows like Madmen, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and most recently, Hollywood. While the movie stirs up associations with the 50s, it very specif ically alludes to “golden age” Hollywood and the classic film noir. This framing is reminiscent of Balter's (2006) idea of a “nesting dream”—a dream within a dream-as we viewers take on a disquieting resemblance to Norma Desmond in our living rooms, savoring a bygone era. Joudrey (2020) writes “we are all Norma Desmond now” as “Clicks, likes and retweets transformed into a cryptocurrency” and being seen has become everyone's right. This nostalgia doesn't depend on our having been alive during the events depicted. Svetlana Boym (2001) observes that nostalgia need not be for a past we have lost, but rather a melancholic yearning for something we never had. Nostalgia has an emotional texture that uncannily picks up the tones and hues of something irrevocably lost, as it taps gently at un-mourned knots in the mind. Note that the word “nostalgia” comes from nostos (home) and algia (pain) and originated from sailors who sailed away for years and suffered terribly from homesickness. Yet as the term traveled, the unbearable and unnamable pain of loss was disavowed with the promise that what you once possessed can be recovered. It is in this sense that nostalgia shades over into delusion in the form of “once upon a time” and “Garden of Eden illusions” (Steiner, 2018). Here we see Norma Desmond idealizing the silent era and her status as reigning queen. She rails against the world for no longer having space for her. But unable to bear this loss, she thunders against “talkies”: “We didn't need dialogs. We had faces” or again: Joe: Wait a minute, I know you, you’re Norma Desmond. You used to be big. Norma: I am big, it’s the pictures that got small! Her celebration of the bygone era is caricatured to the point of ridicule. The past was sublime, the present egregious, but the future will circle back to the past, thanks to her belief in a comeback. The delusion is twofold: It glorifies the past but also anticipates a return to her glory days. The film's nostalgia/delusion thus becomes especially fraught, since watching it today stirs up the very nostalgia that it exposes. Like much else in the movie, nostalgia is both evoked and made the subject of irony. Repeatedly the film arouses in us the same feelings that are being held up for ridicule, with results that are decidedly disconcerting for viewers. In this regard, the movie opens with ravenous journalists looking for a scoop on the murder by an aging star. Voyeuristically, we join the hungry press, as the movie draws us in with the whiff of scandal. As we know, a corpse has been found floating in Norma Desmond's swimming pool. The body's arch expression signals a sardonic tone and irreverent mood, emblematic of Film Noir's flaunting of Hollywood conventions. 1 Once again the distance between the viewer and the hungry press collapses, as both become “voyeurs.” There is also something profane about the way the film mixes fact and fiction. So even though it has been read as the most scathing of critiques of Hollywood (Ames, 2021), an expose of its brittleness, gloss, and cynicism, 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e 142 KAUL Wilder executes his narrative in a provocative, even sensationalist way, creating unease in the viewer. We see, for example, Norma playing weekly bridge with other stars from the silent era whom Gillis, in his snarky voiceover, refers to as “waxworks”. Oddly enough, Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, Hedda Hopper and Anna Q. Nilsson agreed to play themselves and be alluded to as “waxworks”! Joe Gillis becoming Norma Desmond's gigolo is thus another of these instances of crossing the line between film and fact, between satirizing the other and making himself the subject of irony: Wilder had worked as a gigolo back in Poland before immigrating to America. Indeed, the crossing of lines cuts so close to the bone that many actresses including Greta Garbo refused the role. Perhaps she intuitively sensed that it would be “too revealing…something akin to analysis” (Sunset Boulevard 1999, p.11). Gloria Swanson certainly felt something akin to this since playing Norma Desmond was a transformational experience for her, in which the container (actor) transformed the contained (role). The film's indictment of the Hollywood system and its paradoxical reveling in its excesses is captured in an early exchange between Joe Gillis and Betty Schaefer, a script reader. We enter the scene with Joe overhearing his script being savaged by Betty. She finds it trite, despite having heard that he has talent. She derides him for not living up to his promise, to which he responds with: “That was last year. This year I'm trying to earn a living.” At this stage, Joe is on the run from car repo men and about to be evicted. In search of a place to hide his car, he stumbles upon the gothic looking mansion (that in real life apparently belonged first to Paul Getty and then to his ex-wife). The power of the cinematic medium is especially potent here in the sharp cut from the bustle of the city to the eerie quiet of the mansion. Interestingly, the film is shot in black and white, even though color photography had been around since 1940 and was beginning to be used commer cially. Yet the black and white film stock intensifies the phantasmatic mood of Norma Desmond's domain. The mood ruptures and divides Gillis's existence in the external world from his entry into a make-believe world. It is an encoun ter between the present and the past, between external and internal worlds, between sanity and insanity. We may be forgiven for thinking at this point that Norma Desmond represents delusion and Joe Gillis is the voice of sanity. At first, Norma Desmond appears to live up to the textbook narcissist: controlling and pathetic, insecure, and haughty by turns. The aging actress (she even refers to contemporary actresses being no good, except Garbo—an exception which is clearly a nod) withdraws into this decaying mansion, because she cannot face the passage of time. This caricature mode continues with a comedy of errors style of humor, as Joe Gillis is mistaken as the “coffin maker” for her chimp. An elaborate coffin has been ordered for the departed pet. “Is her life really that empty?” the narrator muses. But we trust this narrator only at our own peril. His ironic comments on the dead chimp, the decaying house, the Miss Havisham reference, all seem to uphold him as the voice of sanity. But assumption slowly crumbles (perhaps his dead corpse at the beginning can be read retrospectively as a warning). In heavily laden symbols, we can see death as pervasive. Joe's conscience is already dead and like the dead chimp, he too is looking for a coffin as a means of laying to rest his own “empty life”. But like him, we cruise obliviously into the trap of this version of Hotel California. In keeping with the modus operandi of the film, we are lulled into believing there is a safe distance between us and the characters, between fact and fiction, past and present, sanity and insanity. Yet somehow, the movie repeatedly leads us down the garden path of “Sunset Boulevard”, so to speak. Norma Desmond socializes with “waxworks” from her time, but also watches her own silent movies and in every way possible holds on to a stopped watch. Steiner (2018) suggests that it is universal to look for that perfect time now lost. He observes that such a time is associated with the absence of frustration and the presence of plenitude. This longing for a life without frustration paves the way for the creation of personal Edenic myths. The illusion of Para dise is linked with hostility toward the relentless March of time. For time is the real enemy of the psychotic part of the personality. It is the relentlessness of time passing that ruptures Norma's omnipotence, leading to what Akhtar (1996) calls “Someday” and “If only” fantasies. These fantasies displace the present either through the past (memory) or the future (desire). Joe collaborates in what Steiner (1993) calls a “romantic perversion of time”: “Romantic daydreams commonly involve an escape from the dreary world of needs and humiliations to scenarios where we are admired. Cinderella-like 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e KAUL 143 phantasies in which we are rescued from drudgery by an idealized prince figure and fantasies involving sporting or military triumphs are common in both men and women and are used to deal with feelings of exclusion and inferiority. The timelessness of the phantasy world is present in all of these.” (Steiner, 1993; Weiss, 2008). By entering the pres ent (falling in love with Gillis) even if it is a “romantic perversion of time”, Norma has placed in Joe the hope for a future escape from the solitary confinement to which she has sentenced herself. This comes through in a scene where she actually leaves the desolate barrenness of her macabre house, taking Joe shopping for expensive clothes. In a brief reprieve, she is able to step out and see the light of the day. But in general, she strains to keep the awareness of time at bay, a task for which a delusional apparatus must be established. Norma bribes and seduces Joe into helping her maintain her delusional worldview. Yet despite her efforts, the delusional world, remains sterile. It needs constant pumping. It requires both preservation (Max) and active fueling (Joe). The retreat into an idealized past, leaves her not just lonely but also frightened. For no matter how much effort is made to keep time at bay, one may say with Andrew Marvell (2007), “at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot drawing near”. As time ticks on, the effort to destroy it must be redoubled. It is that very terror we see in Norma's frantic, deranged eyes. Yet the youthful Joe exudes a promise of another stab at life, he promises to make time bearable. Perhaps she can ease up on the violence with which she destroys time. Instead of knifing and stabbing it, perhaps she can suspend it: “What a wonderful next year it is going to be. What fun we're going to have. If I fill the pool for you. Or I open my house in Malibu, and you can have the whole ocean…”. Norma's mental apparatus mimics a thinking apparatus, but in fact seems bent upon the destruction of truth. Joe on the other hand is not yet lodged, his homelessness reading like a signifier of a search for containment. Without any resources at his aid, he is far more vulnerable than his supercilious façade would indicate. Unlike Norma who has built a retreat to preserve her delusional system, Joe has no “garage” to park his psychotic part. At this point, Joe chooses to turn away from his own harsh reality and toward a world (theater) where his role is handed to him on a silver platter (like Salome's with the head of John the Baptist) and he reluctantly begins to play it. This reinforces Norma's fragile omnipotence. It seems to allow him to dwell in his delusion that he is benefiting from this arrangement and that a bit of pandering to his crazed benefactress can do no harm. It is when he careens into this castle that he abdicates his tenuous contact with the external world. He will become Estella to Miss Havisham. Thus, while the caricature of Desmond is not untrue, the movie cuts both ways. Gillis's ruthless selfishness chips away at our faith in his credibility. He lets himself slide into her fantasy world with no recognition that his own choices have brought him to this pass. It is as though the material comforts seduce him into colluding with a make-believe world. He gives into his parasitic impulses, as he dares not confront the possibility of failure. Yet he feels quite worth less when he encounters this bizarre figure. He is pleased to charge her a lot of money to “improve” the script which he considers terrible. He declares himself very pleased for “the way I'd handled the situation” and goes on to say “I'd dropped the hook, and she'd snapped at it. Now my car would be safe, while I did a patch up on the script and there should be plenty of money in it.” But as foreshadowed by the first scene of his corpse in the swimming pool, the joke is on him. He had often fantasized about swimming pools; it is then macabre irony to be found floating dead in one. As the narrative progresses, we witness a slow-moving reversal of roles between Norma and himself. At first, Norma Desmond appears as a caricature—a histrionic figure, in fancy dress, bejeweled, haughty, and operatic. Joe's urbane humor is pitted against her delusional grip on reality, and we initially align ourselves with him. But over time, his cynicism distances us from him, allowing Norma to be seen as both a psychological wreck and a tragic figure. Gradually, Joes ironic voice unravels, and we detect his failure to see that the rambling mansion is not just an architectural anach ronism but is also an embodiment of a very fragile psychotic structure. Moreover, straying into it is no accident and prolonging his stay is a recognition of his inability to face the cruelty of the world outside. Joe may well have entered this fortress “accidently”, but he too is looking for a place to hide and is easily bribed by the accouterments that 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e 144 KAUL encourage oblivion. In this respect, he enters a mutually destructive relationship, exemplifying what Bion (1962) calls parasitic links. While Norma Desmond uses Joe to feed her delusion of grandiosity and he feeds himself on the delusion that all is well with him; that his alienation from his world can be “parked” safely in someone or some place. By ensconcing himself in a “retreat” from the harsh world, he surrenders to the effortlessness of a death-like existence. His mindset stands in contrast with that of Betty Schafer. Unlike him, she remains uncorrupted by the same Hollywood he debunks. This comes up very sharply when Betty—the sole voice of sanity and the conscience of Hollywood—pursues him. She stands for truth and integrity as she wants to collaborate with him in making mean ingful cinema. “I just think that pictures should say a little something”, she says. Here then are two approaches to art: For Norma Desmond movies are showcases; while for Betty, they should “mean something.” Betty is Joe's buried conscience. She is very aware of her own failures as actor and scriptwriter, but is energetic and wants another kind of creative collaboration and this feels hopeful. But he recognizes and repeatedly tells her he does not have it in him. And in the end, he rejects her offer to join her. Joe Gillis: Stop crying, will you? You're getting married. That's what you wanted. Betty Schaefer: I don't want it now. Joe Gillis: Why not? Don't you love Artie? Betty Schaefer: Of course I love him. I always will. I… I'm not in love with him anymore, that's all. Joe Gillis: What happened? Betty Schaefer: You did. Despite this powerful invitation by a woman who is so attractive to him, he dismisses the possibility of a return. As Norma Desmond threatens to expose him to Betty, he offers to do it himself—he does so without a fight. He calls Betty to Norma's house. Norma watches from the balcony, as he reveals his shameful truth to Betty. Betty is shocked but willing. In the final scene between them, Betty (Joe's sanity) makes a last bid effort to save him: Betty Schaefer: Now, get your things together and let's get out of here. Joe Gillis: All my things? All my 18 suits, all my custom-made shoes, and the six dozen shirts, and the cuff links and the platinum key chains and the cigarette cases? Betty Schaefer: Come on, Joe. Joe Gillis: Come on where? Back to a one-room apartment I can't pay for? Back to a story that may sell and very possibly will not? Betty Schaefer: If you love me, Joe. Joe Gillis: Look, sweetie, be practical. I've got a good deal here. A long-term contract with no options. I like it that way. Maybe it's not very admirable. [She looks away from Joe and softly begins to cry] Joe Gillis: Well, you and Artie can be admirable. Betty Schaefer: [He reaches to lift her chin, but she turns the other way] I can't look at you anymore, Joe. Joe Gillis: How about looking for the exit? [He gently takes her arm and walks her towards the door] Joe Gillis: This way, Betty. Quite stricken by this loss, he soberly packs his bags for the trip to Ohio—as though he could return to some chastened vestige of a life. Observing this, Norma picks up her gun. Mistakenly he thinks she is going to stage yet another melodramatic suicide, except this time, she shoots him dead. Previously, his attempt to leave drove her to slash her wrists. But seeing him leave now completes her descent into madness, and the precipitously poized 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e KAUL 145 delusional apparatus collapses. Max had forewarned Joe. In the final scene, we see her descending the stairs regally attired, surrounded by the police and media. She makes her dramatic entrance and slowly emerges with her face veiled, in the absolute grip of her delusion that the long awaited “cameras have arrived”. Norma Desmond's house on Sunset Boulevard may be read as a psychic retreat (Steiner, 1993) with all its fragility and seclusion. She has created a world that is withdrawn from the harsh onslaught, that allows a resting place, and fends off a complete breakdown. Retreats can be of all shapes and sizes. They can be small holes and burrows that we disappear into, deep caverns from where we may never find our way, fortresses and castles that are rigidly defended, or even little kingdoms which stand defiant. The grandiosity of Norma Desmond stands somewhere between a fortress and a kingdom. But the scale of her delusion requires the help of others. In its out-sized grotesquery, it seems out of sync. For Norma, the retreat must be grand and cavernous to fuel the scale of her delusion. For Joe, a simple garage will do. She wants the retreat to be a physical manifestation of her absent internal world, while Joe's version provides shelter from his failed life. To buttress her delusion, there is Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim - also a great director-playing Norma's ex-husband) who guards the fortress by wiping off all footprints of unwelcome reality that threaten to break into the fragile scaffolding. He later reveals himself as the first of her three husbands, who returned to keep her alive. He is perhaps the one figure in the movie who while underused and understated reins in the tragic undertow of Norma Desmond's fragile universe. He admits he ghost -writes her fan mail. Is it an act of love to feed delusions thus know ingly? In the case of Max, it certainly seems to be. And yet even as he participates in sustaining her delusion, this is not quite folie a deux since he is aware of the web of lies he helps create. And yet there is infinite compassion as he watches her helplessly clinging to the delusions. He hides all knives and blades, because no amount of omnipotence can filter out the constant stream of external thorns that pierce her skinless existence. Max stands in sharp contrast to Joe Gillis who feeds Norma's delusions in order to exploit her. This split reveals two paths taken on encountering omnipotent delusions. Max knows she is a sleepwalker, and he can't wake her up rudely. His collusion comes from love. Joe Gillis's comes from self-interest; Max does it to preserve her existence. Joe imagines he can walk away without consequences but when he hears from Max of her attempted suicide, he returns to the mansion momentarily sobered from his usual cynicism. Max had returned to a dissolved marriage, unable to abandon Norma. Here he encounters one kind of counter transference that the analyst experiences with a patient, who is both grandiose and deeply fragile. Metaphorically speaking, we may provide emotional first aid (hiding blades and knives) in the consulting room. This would be kind ness without much truth. Or we can become brutal with the truth like Joe who leaves her, says he does not want her to buy him anything, that she is a relic from the past. But he presents her with what is as undigestible as it is without kindness and risks killing her. Or as it happens, getting killed himself. One can then see these approaches as two forms of collusion: one preservative, the other destructive. The two paths taken by Max and Joe are like the two erroneous paths that analysts can slide into-to be too fright ened of breakdown to speak the truth, and/or to use truth with cynicism and violence. Perhaps we are always open to both these errant ways. It is in fact very hard not to collaborate or collude with the psychotic part. Bion (1957) writes about the complexity of the relationship between the psychotic and non-psychotic parts of the personality. He envi sions a constant struggle between attacks on the means of perception and a constant assault by the external world. In turn, this assault of reality impels the psychotic part to seek collaboration, collusion, and complicity. Upon this bedrock, folie a deux is formed. Or for that matter cults and other forms of group madness. It is this aspect of the rela tionship between the psychotic and non-psychotic parts of the personality that the film seems to capture intuitively. And here is also why the corpse as narrator serves a profound role in establishing a radical anti-realism. The crisp ironic voice that stitches the story together, also demands a suspension of disbelief and invites us to a very whimsical truth-telling. This quasi-dream like quality lends the film a chimerical Alice-in-Wonderland texture. We are often reminded as psychoanalysts to abjure concreteness and listen to patients as though they were dreaming, to listen oneirically. If we watch this film in this mode, we could read it as Gillis's dream. If we go back to the point where Gillis drives toward Sunset Boulevard, we might see him falling into a dream and having all the phantasmatic 15569187, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps.1796 by Rmit University Library, Wiley Online Library on [18/01/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons Licens e 146 KAUL experiences that one could expect in a strange dream. He has us believe that Norma Desmond is moving about in what should have been the “furniture of dreams” (Bion, 1956). But it is Joe Gillis who careens into Sunset Boulevard thereby cutting off the evidence of his senses, to “park” himself (car) in a safe home (garage). All this should have been a dream from which he, like Alice, should have awakened from. As in a dream, time has stood still. And as in Alice's Wonderland, inanimate objects seem to take on a life of their own, Norma Desmond's cigarette holder, for example, while the living are like “waxworks”. Could we have been lulled by him into thinking this was in fact happening, when it was all his fantasy in a deserted house? If like Alice, he had woken up from the dream, it would not have been about psychosis, but just a bizarre dream. The retreat on Sunset Boulevard becomes an embodiment of a bizarre world—a dream from which neither Norma nor Joe can be awakened without catastrophe. If the film follows Gillis's attempt to find a retreat, then Norma may be seen as a bizarre figure in his mind into whom he projects an incendiary mix of mad phantoms. Perceiving Norma as grotesquely out of touch allows him to feel sane. But more profoundly, there is an unconscious identification Joe feels with Norma as they have both been discarded by Hollywood after a successful run. He heaps contempt on this ridiculous figure but it is a deflection of his self-contempt which he has expressed to Betty: “Look, sweetie, be practical. I've got a good deal here. A long-term contract with no options. I like it that way. Maybe it's not very admirable.” But ultimately, a bizarre container (delusional Norma) is unable to contain the violent projections, without corroding and corrupting the contained (Joe). Norma Desmond may then be read as a hallucination of his mind, a collection of all his unwanted parts, put together into a “bizarre object” (Bion, 1962, p. 11). This allows him to main tain a semblance of sanity. This is akin to how the psychotic part of the mind seeks support and collaboration on the periphery of psychosis, both as an assurance against the terror of madness and as a container for itself. And just as Gillis cannot distance himself from Norma Desmond, we viewers cannot distance themselves from Gillis. The ironic mode punctures every attempt to distance oneself and like Flaubert said about Madame Bovary, we all end up feeling what Joudrey claims, and also: “Joe Gillis, c'est moi.” Eventually, the movie brings rich and dense tropes together but takes them apart. We are constantly thrown off our seats; outraged and surprised, amused and moved. Whichever way we read the film, it invites us to interpret as it suggests and insinuates, rather than saturates meaning, thus encouraging the act of meaning-making. It is this riddling, Sphinx-like quality, its openness to meaning-making that lures us to drive along Sunset Boulevard. ENDNOTE 1 A term used by French critics who located a strand in stylish but dark American crime films peopled with cynical heroes, femme fatales. The pessimism has often been linked with the Great Depression. CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT I have no conflict of interest regarding this material. REFERENCES Akhtar, S. (1996). ‘Someday … ’ and ‘if only … ’ fantasies: Pathological optimism and inordinate nostalgia as related forms of idealization. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44(3), 723–753. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 000306519604400304 Ames, C. (2021). Movies about movies. University of Kentucky Press. Balter, L. (2006). Nested ideation and the problem of reality: Dreams and works of art in works of art. Psychoanalytic Quar terly, 75(2), 405–445. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2006.tb00045 Bion, W. R. (1956). Development of schizophrenic thought. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 37, 344–346. Bion, W. R. (1957). 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