IT'S A PHALLUS SHAPED LIKE A TIRE!

WATCH THIS trailer for the movie rubber!

Watching this movie for the first time, there's an obvious connection to post-modernism, the defusion of narratives, the false-hood of the metanarrative, the confusion of conflicting views, the arbitrary nature of the movie and the plot-creation.

However, in re-thinking this movie after reading Lacan, I was considering the phallus as the power structure, and the process by which he abstracts it out of gender, no longer "penis or clitoris" as Lacan would say.  In rubber, a tire in the desert mysteriously comes into an animated life, and discovers a telekinetic power to make living things explode. Not combust. Explode.  He then essentially attempts to enter into relationship with an individual whom he follows.  However, with no ability to talk or act beyond rolling and killing, things turn predictably messy.  All of this messiness is performed in front of an on-screen audience, but that is another matter.

For Lacan (via me) the tire is the new phallic symbol. It is the thing which enters into relaionship through direct power symbology. That is, his process of interpellation (Althuisser) or interruption of the self in relationship for another is so complete in power and subjugation that it's totally destructive.  It is the symbol-replacer of the phallus.  But it is genderless, and with violent manifestations as opposed to sexual manifestations.

Nothing's perfect I suppose.