ABSTRACT
The question of the Other’s desire is central to submarine films. Whether in the confrontation between two captains in U-571, a submarine and a destroyer in e Enemy Below, or a captain and a CIA analyst in e Hunt for Red October, an uncanny number of submarine films stage the same scenario: a dyad of male protagonists attempting to locate the desire of the Other through the opaque signifiers of sonar pings, radio silence, screw propellers, depth charges, and strategic maneuvers. Aided by their well-disciplined all-male crews, submarine captains sound the depths behind these submerged signifiers, searching for their signifieds: “He changes course, has he detected me?” or “The sonar comes up with nothing, is he hiding on the seabed?” The opacity of signifiers in submarine films mirrors that of language itself, effectively dramatizing Jacques Lacan’s emphasis on the alienated condition of living in signification. Thus the heroes of submarine films are above all hermeneuts. How else are we to understand Alec Baldwin in Red October, who somehow divines in the signifier of radio silence (literally, the signifier of nothing or the real) his adversary’s desire to betray his country?
