The character of Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls presents a clear example of Lacan’s theorizing on desire, specifically as it is written into the graph of desire. In showcasing Rory’s professional fantasies and eventually perforating them, Gilmore Girls makes an argument about how one should desire in order to experience the least amount of disappointment, or, in Lacanian terms, castration. Rory Gilmore is a subject split by having encountered the Other/language, being quilted to it, and forming her own ego. As a result of her being stitched to language, Rory has desires; one of the most prominent of which is the desire to be a journalist. She recognizes an ideal ego in international correspondent Christiane Amanpour and ascribes general qualities to her that she finds admirable, thus creating an ego ideal. Rory aims to emulate her ideal ego, in what Lacan calls the mirror stage, by joining her high school and college newspapers. Rory’s desire to be a journalist becomes a fantasy, since it is unattainable. In the last season, Rory has failed at being as good of a journalist as she has always fantasized. The enjoyment, or jouissance, that Rory has always experienced when fantasizing about being a journalist is perforated when she is subjected to her …show more content…
In recent years, there has been much discussion from older generations surrounding millennials and the seemingly strange ways they live their lives. Millennials have responded by expressing the particular anxieties they experience as a result of the historical moment they have come of age in. Rory Gilmore exhibits many of the professional anxieties that millennials have expressed. Specifically, she is a depiction of a generation that has worked hard to become qualified for a particular career path only to find that there are no jobs available or that it turns out to be different from what one had prepared