Popular Culture Review
98
The last thing that this photo symbolizes is what is most important in terms
of Lacan. “Ghosts” — the word used to describe the figures in the photo —
imply death. Not only this, but ghosts imply haunting — or possessing — and
most importantly, a lack of existence. All four are characteristics of the lost
object, and all four relate to Angela in that, even though it may have been a lie,
she longs for the relationship she had with Mary. Angela is haunted by the
absence of someone who was a lie to her. The haunting is physically represented
by the blurred photo, much in the way that the death that causes the lost object is
represented by physical death in terms of “ghosts.” The physical proof of
Angela missing and desiring Mary is in the last episode when she cuts off her
long hair — partially as a symbol of mourning, partially as a sign to Jimmy that
things can never be as though her relationship with Mary never happened. It
does not really matter if the Mary she thought she knew was a lie, just like it
does not really matter if ghosts don’t really exist. Both still haunt.
The fact Angela’s child called the figures “ghosts” is important for one
more reason in terms of Lacan. Another word for ghosts, which little Tommy
could just as easily have said, is “spirits.” Sprits are ghosts; and, of course,
spirits are also liquors. This is a point at which a double entendre, or Freudian
slip, seems to appear within the historical drama. In other words, within the
madness of linking ghosts that are symbolic of dead relationships to dead
alcohol through the word “spirit,” there is method, and one that is carried out
gracefully by Boardwalk Empire. Of such Freudian slips, Bruce Fink states,
“[wjhile in most cases a person who just made a slip would probably endorse the
following statement,’! just made a random, meaningless goof,’ Freud's retort
would be ‘The truth has spoken’” (4). The truth that has slipped into the viewer’s
lap is that the lost objects — Angela’s lover, liquor, Nucky’s baby, etc. —
within Boardwalk Empire are linked, no matter how covert or hidden the link
may be. It is much like the building blocks of the unconscious, described by
Fink on Lacan and Freud as the following:
. . . when repression takes place, a word, or some part of a
word, ‘sinks down under,’ metaphorically speaking. The word
does not thereby become inaccessible to consciousness, and it
may indeed be a word that a person uses perfectly well in
everyday conversation. But by the very fact of being
repressed, that word, or some part thereof, begins to take on a
new role. It establishes relations with other repressed
elements, developing a complex set of connections with them.
( 8)
The word “spirit” is one of those repressed words that make up the web of
the Boardwalk Empire subconscious. Alcohol in the movie is never referred to
as a “spirit,” just like the word “ghost” is used by Timmy, and — what will soon
be seen — “Holy Ghost” is always used with Agent Van Alden instead of “Holy