Lawrence of Arabia

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that the phrase "lightning flashes" is tautologically redundant, and is indicative of a central flaw in Western reasoning. That is, lightning doesn't cause the flash, it doesn't give the flash, it is the flash. Lightning cannot flash because lightning is, by definition, a flash. Nietzsche claimed we in the West commit the same mistake with people; we say "people act," when in reality people are the acts. We don't produce acts, we are them, we are made up of nothing else. We are what we do.

Nietzsche's thought has been on my mind ever since rewatching Lawrence of Arabia over the weekend. What stuck out to me is how much each character is inherently performing an act--Prince Fiesel, the British generals, the American reporter, the Arab chiefs, TE Lawrence himself. Their actions are all very deliberate, calculated--and concealing. The British are just as wary of revealing their true motives as the Arabs are. Every act is a concealment. The symbol never corresponds to the referent. In one telling scene, Lawrence is walking along the top of a toppled train, his shadow is cast by the sun, and the camera makes the people appear to be following a shadow, not a man; people are never following a person, but the shadow, the image. The image is more important than the man, for the image is the man.


But it's more complicated than that; for after a stretch, one gets the impression that though the signifier is unstable, there is also a lack of a referent behind the signifier. That is, the signifier alone becomes the thing that is important, not what it is supposed to represent. Hence, Lawrence's guide is killed on sight because he's wearing the clothes of the wrong tribe; flags are always displayed prominently for each tribe; the British soldiers are always portrayed in ceremonial stances; Lawrence, who saves a man from the desert to prove that "nothing is written" must later kill the same man to prevent tribal warfare, and a chieftan says simply, "ah, then it was written," signifying that the word is more important than the referent; the American reporter writes stories about Lawrence--for different motives than Prince Fiesal, but then the story itself becomes more important; and the chieftans refuse to have their picture taken, for the photo is a signifier, and the Arabs understand that the person's acts themselves become the signifier, and hence resent being replaced by another symbol of themselves.

In each case, repeatedly throughout the film, the signifiers replace the person itself (especially as Lawrence himself becomes a legend, and refuses it but can't), but then, the signifiers are the person itself. The lightning is the flash, the person is their acts. There is nothing behind the flash, there is nothing behind the person.

But then, there is nothing in the desert itself; it's emptiness is the point of it. It's utter lack of signification is the source of its significance. Perhaps that's why Lawrence says he prefers the desert "because its clean;" there is not significance. You are not the signifier any longer. All that is left is the sheer beauty itself, desolate, clean, over-whelming. The beauty of the movie itself is all that is left to consider.