Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell is a short film made from the footage of another film. Henry Krips says that "the fetish… functions as an impediment, a delaying mechanism," and the way that Cornell edits his film does just this. The image of Rose Hobart is the focus of this short film. Only her image is the focus—not her character in the film, not her acting ability or anything to do with her or the film. The image is repeated. This repetition creates an effect similar to that of a trailer, in that it causes the audience to desire to know. The audience wants to know the story, whatever it may be. Cornell provides enough for desire, but the cutting of the film—the endless repetition of her image—serves as an impediment to the fulfillment of the desire.

Like a trailer, the film creates a package. It presents her image and creates a desire to know. Cutting from the package presented to the same package presented and then again to the same package presented is the same as setting the package on a shelf and not opening it. We get to know the package—her image, her face and expression—but we are never given anything that follows them up. We are never shown what we desire to see beneath the image: story and character.

Story and chracter are also denied to us by the soundtrack. It is light, a type or cousin of elevator music; it has no set passionate emotion and therefore denies character and narrative. If Cornell had elected a melodramatic, emotionally descriptive score there would have been some element of story present. However, the presence of story, character, mood, atmosphere or other narrative devices would have taken the focus away from the image of Rose Hobart. The focus wouldn’t have been on the delaying mechanism: the cutting from one image of her to another to another. The cutting restates the image and reaffirms the focus. The music simply lets the cutting do its job without interfering.

The fact that Rose Hobart is taken from an already existing film is why it is a delaying or impediment. It puts a delay on the already-existing pleasure cycle of a film. Had Cornell made his film from footage he shot for this specific purpose, then there would be no underlying desire cycle. Had he made the film strictly for this purpose it would have been like going strait to the chaperone and asking her for a date. The cycle and structure of desire and fulfillment must be present for the fetish to exist. By cutting a certain image from an already existing film, Cornell has represented the fetish with his Rose Hobart.

The word fetish often conjures images of bizarre sexual behavior and practices that most would consider deviant, but a fetish is not limited to such things. According to Jacques Lacan's theory, fetishes are something that almost everyone has, or has had, at some point in life. To have a fetish is to become obsessed with, and gain pleasure from, the process of achieving a specific goal rather than the goal itself. If the goal is to achieve sexual intercourse, then a fetishist will be more interested in the actions leading up to intercourse—the foreplay—rather than in actually achieving the goal. A fetishist is a person who waits for a new movie to come out by watching all the trailers, reading all the reviews, and buying the merchandise, but then never sees the film and is satisfied. It is the guy who buys a comic and seals it in a plastic bag never to read it. It is an interest in the setup to the exclusion of the payoff.

This interest in the setup is, according to Lacan, a somewhat positive thing. Human beings constantly want something, and when we get what we want it suddenly ceases to be of interest. Actually achieving our goals results in nothing more than having to find new ones because we must desire that which we do not have. It is a never ending cycle of wanting something, going through a quest to have it, and then, having achieved it, moving on to something else. The fetishist escapes this by not attaining the goal. By becoming satisfied with the quest instead, the fetishist receives pleasure that doesn't necessarily have to end.

In the film Rose Hobart (1936), director Joseph Cornell took pieces of an existing film and re-edited it to create a different effect all together. The entire twenty minute piece is one clip after another of the actress Rose Hobart with no underlying narrative structure. The film acts as a perfect example of Lacan's view of the fetish. Each segment is build up without payoff. We see the beginning of an action, but never the full action itself. The entire film becomes fetish in that the film is concerned with the path toward the goal without ever achieving the goal. This is to say that the goal of any scene is to advance the plot. But, each piece of this film is the moment leading up to a plot point without ever allowing said plot to be seen. In fact, by doing this, the film allows for endless viewing without any sort of end, as it is not dictated by any kind of structure. It allows an endless quest that cannot be achieved. This plays right into the fetishist mindset and is what makes the film an example of the Lacanian view of the fetish.

In a re-edited version of the 1931 release East of Borneo, Joseph Cornell creates an experience that entices the audience to a re-evaluation of a simple mainstream film with Rose Hobart (1936). The context of the obscure re-cut version clarifies the Lacanian understanding of the phenomenon known as fetishism by taunting you with laughter, only to make you beg to guffaw.

By treating the viewer to a seemingly unrelated train of "snippets,” Cornell clearly endeavors to evoke an emotional experience that carries the audience to want more—but he never delivers. Arguably, Cornell is employing evocative images and clips that feature the emotional highlight, or mood marker, of a particular scene—such as when Rose Hobart (Rose Hobart) is posed as a lady in a veiled room, holding a flaming candle while dressed in a suit and tie; again as a woman who removes a coat to reveal a plunging neckline of a backless gown; as a woman who watches, with a man, an erupting phallic volcano; and again as a woman who temps a spider monkey to slap her face by invading its personal space.

To paraphrase Jaques Lacan is to reveal, at this juncture, the essence of the film’s purpose and intent: 'Stuck on the object in the process of being revealed, at the expense of actual revelation, the fetishist would prefer the tease.' Simply put, to the context of Rose Hobart, one could make an argument for Cornell’s intent to heighten the desire of the audience to want the climax of each scene, only to be kept at the same plane throughout the entirety of the film, never giving the audience what they want. What they want is, in fact, to get past the objet a—the climax (or jouissance) of the scene in the process of being revealed. They want the monkey to slap Rose Hobart!

The question remains: how does Cornell recreate fetishism for his viewers? He goes against a tried and true Hollywood formula—the cinematic syntax. By placing the various intriguing shots in a non-chronological order, Cornell creates a new syntax for his film in order to skew the former storyline, and thus creates his own storyline. By inserting non-diegetic, tropical and French music as an interlude, the director has set the stage for a comedic response—which comes through and delivers giggles to every row.

In Rose Hobart, Rose Hobart (the actress) would logically seem to be the object of desire since it is her name that appears on the title. However, she is the fetish object of this film. It is the world around her that we desire to see, thus making it the beloved (to use Henry Krips' words). The structure of this film slowly leads us down this road.

At first, Rose Hobart can only be seen from behind curtains and in medium to long shots. This creates a desire for her. However, the desire for her becomes secondary to the desire to know what surrounds her. This is accomplished by quick fades when the camera wants to pan, shots of her talking to an unknown person, and quick 'tantalizing' glimpses of other characters. The music also helps to achieve this desire. The music has a romantic tone. Romance requires two. Therefore Hobart must have 'another.' We desire to know this other, just as we are supposed to desire the beloved in Henry Krips' triangular model.

However, we, the viewer, have a hang up—Hobart herself. For when the fades become slower and the first two-shot appears, it is discomforting to us. This is analogous to the action figure collector who never takes the figures out of the plastic. Hobart is the action figure. The empty world around Hobart is the box. And although we, like the fetishist, seem to desire to play with the toy (to see Hobart interact with the cast), we are discomforted by it. To open the box would be to fulfill desire (and thus lose it). We become stuck on seeing Hobart untouched by the outside.

Rose Hobart creates a fetish experience for its viewers by showing what fetishists have already realized: the attainment of desire is not as fulfilling as it should be, but rather the path to that desire is, in a way, more fulfilling. When the surroundings of Hobart are seen, they are nothing more than an oddly disturbing Arabian man and a confused monkey. It is the lack of seeing—the seeing only of Hobart—that continues the cycle. By creating a want, in the viewers’ mind, to see not what fulfills desire but what perpetuates it, Cornell successfully creates the very scenario of which fetishes are made.

Joseph Cornell positions himself as voyeur in relation to his heroine Rose Hobart in East of Borneo; in addition, we experience Cornell’s gaze of Rose as his fetish through the editing structure. Her perfection and attraction as an object of desire lies in her chastity. Men threaten to claim her sexually, crocodiles threaten to invade her shores, but because of the editing, she remains unsullied.

The uninterrupted and playful samba music juxtaposed with a continual flow of assorted suitors, which repeat randomly, and the eminent threat of sex echoes the circular nature of desire. Because Rose plays every female part, Cornell can fetishize many different women in the film; her various changes of clothing symbolize that she is everywoman: reluctant mannish woman (presexual) in trench coat and safari wear, glamorous female adult woman in evening dress, and vulnerable (sexual) robe-wearing woman. Her clothing both masks her femininity and displays it; the costumes function as fetish. To be naked—imperfect—breaks the cycle of desire.

So did she or didn’t she? The film alludes to two answers: safe in her jungle perch she lets down her guard, even laughing knowingly to herself when she sees the phallic bananas. On the other hand, Cornell sublimates her sexual desire by placing her among "wild" animals. Only when she is safe from the real beasts—savvy princes, sultans, natives, and even her husband—does she allow herself freedom to cavort with animals, even if they are only tame monkeys and tigers. Regardless of her status, Rose’s maturation from girl to woman must not be preserved on film in a sex scene: once she sheds the virgin label, she ceases to become desirous, which explains why Cornell chooses to sacrifice the other female actor on the virgin altar rather than Hobart. Joseph Cornell exemplifies fetishism: he collects "women." In their pristine film package, they remain untouched—forever virginal and ageless.

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Last update: 2/22/2005