The title is just the first of many startling asides, observations and insights that fill this guide to Hollywood on the Lacanian psychoanalyst’s couch - a thrilling guide to cinema and psychoanalysis from the last giant of cultural theory in the twenty-first century.

Introduction to the Revised Edition Introduction 1. Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination? 1.1 Death and Sublimation: The Final Scene of City Lights 1.2 Imaginary, Symbolic, Real 2. Why Is Woman a Symptom of Man? 2.1 Why is Suicide the Only Successful Act? 2.2 The Night of the World 3. Why is Every Act a Repetition 3.1 Beyond Distributive Justice 3.2 Identity and Authority 4. Why Does the Phallus Appear? 4.1 Grimaces of the Real 4.2 Phallaphany of the Anal Father 5. Why Are There Always Two Fathers 5.1 At The Origins of Noir: The Humiliated Father 5.2 Die Versagung 6. Why is Reality Always Multiple? 6.1 Is There a Proper Way to Remake a Hitchcock Film? 6.2 The Matrix, Or, the Two Sides of Perversion Index