The folks who say this film is overrated clearly don’t give enough credit to anyone involved. All kidding aside, Uncut Gems is an anxiety riddled masterpiece that has garnered much well deserved critical acclaim. While it may be hard to stack up to the likes of Jack and Jill, Uncut Gems does that and then some. They are equivalent acts.Uncut Gems is one of Adam Sandler's best movies, by far. Because his act of copulation is already necessarily mediated by the non-relation imposed by the signifier, the sexting is not subordinate due to the physical distance between the two subjects. As present as Howard is in the picture he’s painted in his eye, there is a flattening of the jouissance available through physical intimate contact - no more a sexual relation than the sexts - and his obscene messages. But I am in the picture” (96, corrected translation). It illustrates what Lacan writes in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, “The picture, certainly, is in my eye. The staging of the shots are quite clever, with at one point the reflection of Howard’s salacious text thread in his glasses. He seems to watch the screen and Julia herself in equal measure, attempting to assuage his anxiety about what she does when he can’t see her. ![]() After she walks in, he continues sending her text messages as if he hasn’t already arrived, propositioning her sexually. Though he carries the banner of authenticity if it is to his financial benefit, it is clear Howard cares not a whit about “the real thing.” When celebrating his immense financial windfall after a winning bet with the profits from the pawned Celtics ring, Howard ends up in his girlfriend Julia’s closet. As scarce as an NBA championship ring might be, its status as a piece of history doesn’t trump the value of full cut diamonds. Instead, the jewelers scoff at the quality of the stones and their cut and asserts, “we both know the value is mostly ‘cause it’s memorabilia.” Though it is an “authentic” piece of sports history, its stones don’t have value due to their cut. Though Howard can verify it’s supposed authenticity, it is a real championship ring for the Boston Celtics, reallytaken from Kevin Garnett’s finger, that authenticity doesn’t carry the value that Howard hopes it will. Howard’s attempt to pawn a Celtics’ championship ring from Kevin Garnett is exemplary of this idea. But even when taken in such a way, its value is still specious. Insofar as it serves as a guarantor of certain kinds of value, it is taken to be an imminent quality of an object or experience. It is a fantasmatic standard against which experiences and objects can be measured. Howard’s relationship with authenticity and mediation shows precisely that authenticity has no value. At the same time, signifiers can provide a substitute jouissance, a facsimile that Howard Ratner revels in through his deception. ![]() Only jouissance, unavailable to the subject insofar as it causes the subject to cease to exist, could be argued to be something unmediated by signifiers because it is diametrically opposed to them. What this means is that one’s experience of sense stimuli, apprehension of beauty, and intersubjective interaction are all mediated by the signifiers that these experiences are transformed into. ![]() Fundamentally, signifiers serve to separate the subject from the signified or supposed meaning - meaning itself an ideological fantasy. Symbolic castration and entry into the symbolic order constitutes the subject as lacking and separate from the Real. Their film addresses the issues of castration and signification - inextricable as they are - in at least three ways. The subjective reality of our signifying universe is one the Safdies appear to have a clear grasp of.
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