What do you think Lacan would have made of the stage show "Puppetry of the Penis"?

(Note: this is a serious question, it's not a joke.)

Puppetry of the Penis is a "risque" burlesque theatre production created by the Australian performer David Friend where two naked men bend, twist and contort their phalluses into various shapes and objects, kind of like a genital version of balloon twisting.

I wonder what Lacan would have made of it given the importance of the role of the symbolic Phallus (Φ) and the imaginary phallus (φ) as conceptual signifiers in the structuring of human desire? Remembering of course that the Lacanian Φ does not refer to the biological penis but as a signifier (usually of castration in some form or another) in the chain of signification?

By the performers so bltantly separating the Phallus from the penis, by turning it into a crafts tool, I'm thinking in the first instance along the lines of a sublimated inversion of the perverse position, in that the transformation of the organ from a sexual object involved in desire is turned into a banal, almost Heideggerian zuhanden everyday tool for doing art & craft, just a literal piece of flaccid meat, and by doing so it becomes a subversive act of the disavowal (Verleugnung) but simultaneously also an invocation of castration, or the anxiety about castration, with the performers becoming the (literal) object of the Other's jouissance (here the Other of the audience, the mass).

Given it's a show performed in front an anonymous crowd, the role of the gaze and scoptophilic drive in the aphanisis of the subject also immediately springs to mind. Voyeurism & exhibitionism also immediately come to mind, but the show is most decidedly, not intended to be erotic, arousing or sexual. It's actually comedy, castration reframed as comedy. Which is the most interesting thing about it probably. What is the role of anxiety here, I wonder. I'm sure Lacan would have found the phenomenon of this performance fascinating.

But I'm interested to hear what this brings to mind for other Lacan readers. Please comment.

Posted Jun 23, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

02
Loading comments…