For many Lacanians, Lacan in Seminar XX seems to argue that man is wholly castrated by the phallic function and can enjoy only idiotic, masturbatory masculine jouissance, whereas woman is not wholly subjected to the phallic function and has the access to the non-phallic other jouissance and that woman is the true subject, man being the idiot who does not know the existence of the jouissance other than the masculine jouissance. This position of many Lacanians about man is shared by film 3-Iron. However, such a simplification of masculinity becomes problematic when we see films Lust, Caution and Dream and consider Lacan's own previous emphasis of the real in the subject. 3-Iron, Lust, Caution, and Dream present three different types of men. 3-Iron represents a typical idiotic man, Minkyu, who is imprisoned in his masculine world of the ego, possession, dominance, and attachment, and does not know the existence of transcendental feminine alterity of his wife. Dream portrays a tough journey of Jin, a Minkyu-like typical man, at the end of which he comes to break with his masculine world by his ethical responsibility for the sexual other's suffering and succeeds in reaching her. Yi of Lust, Caution is a man entrapped between the positions of Minkyu and Jin. Lacan, who declared "there is no such a thing as a sexual relationship" in Seminar XX, says in Seminar XXIII Le Sinthome that sexual relationship is possible through sinthome. This self-correction of Lacan suggests that we should reinterpret and correct his previous simplification of man in Seminar XX. According to Lacan in Seminar XXIII Le Sinthome, man can traverse the symptom-fantasy to reach his true subjectivity by creating his own sinthome(-signifier). Now we should represent man as a subject who can break with his idiotic masturbatory "masculine" position and make access to non-phallic true jouissance, which is not necessarily feminine. This later position of Lacan about man is similar to that of Jin of Dream. The newly born neo-subject is not immured any longer in the phallic and can make a sexual relationship with his partner.
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