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there is question as to whether “spirits” even exist in the first place), and thus
they seek it like they never did before.
The failings of Prohibition are also true in terms of repression. When
prohibition — of any sort — becomes the prevailing rule for peoples’ lives,
what is naturally repressed is complete lack of inhibition; and what is repressed
is also what governs. Thus, killing alcohol is impossible, because once it is
prohibited, it becomes repressed and thus governs covertly. The object of
alcohol acts as though it was never dead in the first place, and reality continues
on as though the death never was. Again, it is not that alcohol is particularly
remarkable, but rather that it is the nature of the human subject to deem it so. As
Boardwalk Empire shows, ridding the world of alcohol through Prohibition
would be like trying to rid a parent of his or her desire for a child, when the first
one bom quickly dies. Likewise, it would be like trying to force a man or
woman not to be gay or lesbian after his or her first experience with a lover. It
would also be like trying to ask a man to give up on a search for a God he
believes might be dead. Prohibition, of alcohol, of man, of theism, or atheism,
will not happen because it is not natural for the human subject to let anything
tmly disappear. This is the point of Boardwalk: that alcohol can be like a baby,
like a God, like a lover in that, when it is lost, it grows all the more great.
University of Texas at Arlington
Lindsey Barlow
Works Cited
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Created by Terence Winter. Perf Steve
Buscemi, Michael Pitt, and Kelly Macdonald. HBO, 2009.
Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
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Lacan, Jacques. E crits. 1st ed. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2007. Print.
—. The E go in Freud's Theory a n d in the Technique o f P sychoanalysis. Ed. JacquesAlain Miller. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. Notes by John Forrester. New York, N.Y.:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.
—. The F ou r F undam ental C oncepts o f P sychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans.
Alan Sheridan. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
Lambert, Katie. "Vaudeville’s Red Hot Mama." S tu ff You M issed in H istory Class. How
Stuff Works, 9 Apr 2010. Web. 18 July 2011.
B o ardw a lk Em pire.