PHILOSOPHY.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS THROUGH A TALE OF TWO JUNKIES, FILM REVIEW | JULY 2026
Writing on why we reenact destructive behavior, Freud points to a repetition compulsion: Either an ill-conceived attempt to master past trauma or a death drive to annihilate the headache that is self-consciousness. Lacan takes this a step further, theorizing that the regression we aim at is to pure jouissance, a pre-cognitive bliss before the self enters the symbolic order and is divided by language, law, and misrecognition by the other.
Given the impossibility of returning to this fantasy state, the human condition is one of perpetual dissatisfaction, forever seeking what it can’t have. This gives rise to Lacan’s famous objet petit a, the unattainable object-cause of desire that keeps desire desiring beyond any actual object it might obtain.
In Lacan’s later writings, he frames this leftover as surplus jouissance, which makes us chase desire even at the expense of our own well-being. Jouissance, paraphrased as enjoyment, is really better left untranslated, as it suggests not just pleasure but an off-limits ecstasy that is excessive and even painful. It’s no accident that Lacan chose a term that in everyday French speech means to cum, the very limit experience of pleasure whose excess is almost too much to bear.
From the moment we recognize ourselves in the mirror stage of development, we are circumscribed by the norms, labels, and judgments of the symbolic order. Feeling this constraint, we are impelled to break free, to defy the authority of the imagined Big Other and make contact with the elusive Real: That which defies integration into our socially mediated reality. The logical extreme of this compulsion — to transgress the prohibitions imposed on our enjoyment — is perfectly captured in the self-destructive drug binges of Duke and Gonzo.
What they’re after, what to varying degrees we’re all after, is an escape from a permanently frustrated desire. For Lacan, this frustration isn’t merely socially imposed; it’s the very structure of subjectivity. Capital, however, leverages this frustration to reproduce itself, manipulating surplus jouissance to fuel endless consumption.
Perpetual dissatisfaction works in capital’s favor, driving us to purchase ever more commodities in a futile attempt to satisfy what the previous set could not. The modern subject is thus doubly frustrated, tortured with constant ideological reminders of their relentless biological desire. For capitalism to thrive, its subjects must buy, experience disappointment, then buy again, ad nauseam.
A queasy condition to be sure, a libidinal merry-go-round. If only we could hop off. In this light, Duke and Gonzo’s pharmacological self-abuse can be read as a repetition compulsion to master the trauma of capitalist desire; or, short of that, a drive to obliterate the interpellated self-as-consumer. In a dialectical inversion, the height of capitalist excess — a never-ending bender on the Las Vegas Strip — becomes a radical rejection of capitalist subjectivization: A refusal to live a life of orderly consumption of prescribed goods and services, even if it means dying.
The tragedy, of course, is that they survive, as desire always does. It’s a drive down an endless road, made concrete by director Terry Gilliam as both Duke and the credits roll across the highway.
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