Heading Off Satisfaction in Tough Guys Don’t Dance

Authors

  • Hugh S. Manon Oklahoma State University Author

Keywords:

Tough Guys Don't Dance, jouissance, Lacanian film theory, film noir, excess and boredom

Abstract

A Lacanian reading of Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987) in which the film can be understood as a kind of short-circuited noir amnesia narrative, which at the same time suppresses all of the stylistic excesses of noir, in effect subverting subversion itself.

Author Biography

  • Hugh S. Manon, Oklahoma State University

    Hugh S. Manon (PhD Pittsburgh) is an Associate Professor in the Screen Studies Program at Oklahoma State University where he specializes in Lacanian theory and film noir. He has published in Cinema Journal, Film Criticism, Framework, International Journal of Žižek Studies, and numerous anthologies, including articles on Tod Browning, Edgar G. Ulmer, George Romero, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Michael Haneke’s Caché, and Stanley Kubrick’s films noirs. He is interested in lo-fi and punk representation in relation to the psychodynamics of failure, and is currently developing a book project entitled “Lack and Losslessness: Toward a Lacanian Aesthetics.”

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Published

2026-03-14

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009): Beyond Fiction

Section

Mailer and Film