Journal de Etica y Cine

Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

The desiring gaze and the enjoyment of madness: a psychoanalytic reading of feminine horror

Pearl | Ti West | 2022
Yi Wang

Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)

Abstract

This article presents a psychoanalytic analysis of the film Pearl (2022), exploring the relationship between gaze, desire, and madness in the construction of the subject. It employs Lacan’s optical schema and key concepts such as superego, jouissance, mirror-I, and idealization to interpret Pearl’s interactions with parental figures, objects of desire, and fantastical projections on the screen. The film is examined not only as a narrative but also as an aesthetic construction, considering how visual composition, framing, and lighting reinforce subjective fragmentation and the tension between desire and repression. This approach offers a reading that bridges psychoanalytic theory and cinematic analysis, providing new perspectives on the representation of madness and subjectivity in contemporary cinema.

This article is, for the time being, only available in Spanish: La mirada deseante y el goce de la locura: una lectura psicoanalítica del horror femenino

NOTAS

Cinema, Body, and Power. The Subaltern Subject in Prayers for the Stolen Noche de fuego | Tatiana Huezo | 2021 Juan Casas
We are the same human beings, but they were unlucky: The Ableist Gaze and the Rejection of Japanese Homogeneity in Kazuo Hara’s Sayonara CP Sayonara CP | Kazuo Hara | 1972 Rafael Méndez García
Confined Childhoods: Allegory and Subjectivation in Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple La manzana | Samira Makhmalbaf | 1998 Ndeni Esperanza Rojas Barragán
Pictures of reality in three Argentine underground fictions … (Puntos suspensivos) | Edgardo Cozarinsky | 1971 - La pieza de Franz | Alberto Fischerman | 1973 - La civilización está haciendo masa y no deja oír | Julio Ludueña | 1974 Enzo Moreira Facca
Bodies Turned into Weapons: An Ethical and Psychoanalytic Reading Weapons | Zach Cregger | 2025 Fernando González y Galán
When revenge is justified. Regarding Kill Bill: Hegel, the life-or-death struggle for recognition of the other, and Foucault’s power relations Kill Bill | Quentin Tarantino | 2003-2004 Sheila López-Pérez
Fractured Mirrors in an Overloaded World Postmodernist Cinematic Variables in the Representation of Climate Change Jesús Cendros GuaschPavel Cendros Parra
The search of meaning and cinema Close | Lukas Dhont | 2022 Felipe Arthur Muñoz Becerra
The Narrative of Dissensus: Approaches to Viejo calavera (2017) by Kiro Russo Based on a Reading of Jacques Rancière Viejo calavera | Kiro Russo | 2017 Sebastian Morales Escoffier

Etica y Cine (Ethics & Films) is a Peer Reviewed Quarterly Journal Edited by
Department of Psychoanalysis and Department of Deontology, School of Psychology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina
Department of Psychology, Ethics and Human Rights, School of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
With the collaboration of:
Center for Medical Ethics (CME), Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway
Under the auspicious of:
The International Network of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics.

The desiring gaze and the enjoyment of madness: a psychoanalytic reading of feminine horror

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