A Parallactic Analysis: Masquerade, Femininity and Fantasy in Claire Dolan

Abstract

The essay examines what Žižek calls “the real of sexual difference” in relation to his notion of “parallactic gap” through a formal analysis of the film, Claire Dolan (Lodge Kerrigan 1998). The article primarily focuses on the ineliminable alterity of the sexual antagonism or ‘the real’ of sexual antagonism: the ‘symbolic Real.’ The parallactic gap, opened up by the fantasy structures of the male and female protagonists, reveals ‘the real’ of sexual difference—these fantasies are two exemplary cases of a fantasmatic support of the Symbolic. Through the analysis of the formal aspects of the film, this paper argues that the function of the real is not situated within the diegetic realm, but is founded on the borders between the diegetic and non-diegetic domains.