REALITY on a BENDER: Cinema As the Embodiment of The

REALITY ON A BENDER: Cinema as an Embodiment of the Carnival Spirit

By Joachim Wichman Strand

Bachelor of Arts (Screen Art) (Honours)

Submitted to the Department of Media and Information Faculty of Media, Society and Culture, Curtin University of Technology November, 2004

This thesis is protected by CREATIVE COMMONS license. www.creativecommons.org

Abstract

The carnival, through its formalization into the carnivalesque and its subsequent transposition into art, has been one of the most important elements of artistic expressions opposing the monolithic norms, values, and truths of the established order. With its links to Menippean discourse, as well as the fantastic, the carnivalesque facilitates an organic combination of disparate elements, polyphonic dialogism, and ambivalent significations in order to provide representations that can examine the deeper questions of life and death. This essay will examine how multiple layers of meaning can be created in cinema through the use of the carnivalesque.

Acknowledgement

This project would not have happened where it not for certain brilliant individuals who all deserve big golden heaps of gratitude. They are: my family, Ghazal, Donald Pulford, Lezlian Barrett, the crew and the actors on Headspace, all my friends for good advice, support and extremely valuable pints of beer, and Mike, Keith, Sam, Pete, Damian and Steve at Curtin FTV.

Thanks!

Joachim Wichman Strand, Perth, 05.11.04

Contents

General Introduction 1

Chapter One - Carnival: Reality on a Bender 2 1.1 Fantasy and Enstrangement 2 1.2 The Carnival 4 1.3 The Carnivalesque 8

Chapter Two - The Carnivalesque and Cinema 12

General Conclusion 20

Bibliography 22 Films 25 Appendix a: Film Synopses 26

Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 1

“Nowhere is everywhere, and especially the place where one happens to be.” A. JARRY

General Introduction

This essay will examine how the carnivalesque can create multiple layers of meaning in cinema. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the carnival, the essay will draw connections to Tzvetan Todorov’s notion of fantasy, and in extension of that Victor Shklovsky’s concept of enstrangement. The theoretical findings will then be explored in a critical reading of cinema and, through the creative research production research of the project, the making of cinema. The essay will consist of two parts. Firstly, there will be an introduction to the concepts, providing a brief contextual overview, and a combined discussion of their main features. Particular attention will be paid to the dualistic aspect of the carnival, it’s foregrounding of Menippean discourse, and the organic combination of disparate elements, polyphonic dialogism, and ambivalent significations facilitated by the carnivalesque. The notion of enstrangement within fantasy, and the relationship between the ‘real’ and the ‘fantastic’ will also be discussed.

The second part will consist of a critical reading of cinema specifically the four films ‘Blue Velvet’ (David Lynch, 1986), ‘Delicatessen’ (Jeunet & Caro, 1991), ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’ (Francis Ford Coppola, 2001), and the creative research production ‘Headspace’ (Joachim Wichman Strand, 2004). The ideas and concepts presented in the theoretical discussion will be critically applied, thus merging the critical ideas and theories into a unified means of understanding and creating cinema (See Appendix c for a brief synopsis of each film).

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“The Fantastic must be so close to the real, that you almost have to believe in it.” F. DOSTOEVSKY

Chapter One - Carnival: Reality on a Bender

Many of the concepts examined in this dissertation are first and foremost literary concepts, meaning ideas that have been developed for and researched with regards to literature. But I feel that these concepts can justly be transferred to the field of cinema, and become important tools aiding in the critical understanding and production of cinema. Fuery (2003) claims that concepts like ‘polyphony’ and ‘dialogics’ and ‘the carnivalesque’ are equally if not even more usable within the field of cinema1. This is because cinema has an even greater ability for polyphony and dialogism through its continuous flow of images, sounds and texts within texts. The fantastic and the notion of enstrangement are also concepts that have been transposed from literature into cinema.

1.1 Fantasy and Enstrangement

Todorov (1973) describes the fantastic as the moment of hesitation occurring when a situation cannot be described fully through ‘real’/’normal’ systems of knowledge and understanding. Donald (1989) places the fantastic as the moment of uncertainty between the possibilities of an uncanny situation (that can be accommodated somehow within the laws of rationality) and a marvellous situation (the truly supernatural): “The fantastic implies an integration of the reader into the world of the characters; that world is defined by the reader’s own ambiguous perception of the events narrated” (Todorov, 1973, p. 31). The fantastic often occurs through the

1 See also Shklovsky’s (1973) view on enstrangement in cinema and film as poetic language in Poetry and Prose in Cinematography. In S. Bann & J. E. Bowlt (Eds.), T. L. Aman (Trans.), Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation (pp. 128-130). Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. (Original work published 1927).

2 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 3 foregrounding of extreme and unusual situations, or states of mind, the transformation of something (object/image/situation) that is seemingly familiar into something strange and uncanny (what Freud called the unheimlich), and through the representation of ‘reality’ from an unusual or peculiar point of view, enabling a displacement (or alterity) of this ‘reality’ (Jackson, 1988). The ambiguous displacement of the ‘real’ facilitates a more laborious reading of the text, making unified interpretations difficult: “… the fantastic plays upon difficulties of interpreting events/things as objects or images, thus disorientating the reader’s categorization of the ‘real’” (Jackson, 1988, p. 20). The Russian Formalists called this process of making the familiar strange enstrangement.

Enstrangement2 was a concept first developed by Viktor Shklovsky to relate a process that endows an object or, more importantly, an image with ‘strangeness’ through its removal from conventional and formulaic perception. He said that: “The purpose of the image is not to draw our understanding closer to that which this image stands for, but rather to allow us to perceive the object in a special way, in short, to lead us to a ‘vision’ of this object rather than mere ‘recognition’” (Shklovsky, 1991, p. 10).3 Cognitive enstrangement, or cognitive dissonance, is an extension of Shklovsky’s concept devised by the science fiction researcher Darko Suvin. This concept explains the ability of science fiction stories to work as a mirror to our own world, facilitating a new way of seeing the present, ‘real’ world for the reader. The notion of cognitive enstrangement can equally well be used to explain the semantic game occurring in texts that are not purely science fiction but explore the present empirical universe through narrative, ambient and/or stylistic estrangement, while still imparting cognitive ties to the ‘real’ world. It entails a creative approach that is not only a static reflection of reality, but actually a dynamic transformation of the author’s empirical world (Suvin, 1979).

2 See Translator’s Introduction in V. Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose (pp. xviii-xix) for an explanation on the added –n in “enstrangement”. 3 See Hirschkop’s Bibliographic Essay in Hirschkop, K., & Shepherd, D. (1989). Bakhtin and Cultural Theory (pp. 195-212). (Manchester: Manchester University Press) for an account of Bakhtin’s point of view as an elaboration of the theoretical moves of the Russian Formalists. Also p. 60 in Christie, I. (2000). Formalism and Neo-Formalism. In J. Hill & P. C. Gibson (Eds.), Film Studies: Critical Approaches (pp. 56-64). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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The fantastic manifests the ‘otherness’ in ‘reality’, an otherness that as a result of the secularisation of society cannot be found anywhere else but in the ‘real’ world, as Jackson states: “In a natural, or secular economy, otherness is located elsewhere: it is read as a projection of merely human fears and desires transforming the world through subjective perception” (1988, p. 24). This non-secular fantasy hollows out ‘reality’ without offering any explanations for the strangeness that ensues, thus becoming ‘uncanny’. The darker, scarier ‘reality’ now re-presented becomes the voice of the distorted mind and scrutinized the dominant notion of realism. In this way the fantastic established itself as all that is not said, or cannot be said through the realistic forms (Todorov, 1973). In much the same way the carnival was an expression of ideas and sentiments that normally had to be subdued.

1.2 The Carnival

The carnival has a long history as the celebration of liberty and freedom, through excess and manifestations of restrained attitudes. The carnival and the carnival sense of the world have its starting point in Socratic dialogue (the dialogic/dual nature of truth), and Menippean discourse/satire (Kirk, 1980). The most important feasts of the carnival and the comic spectacles and ritual coupled with them such as the “feast of fools” (festa stultorum), “feast of the ass” and the “Easter laughter” (risus paschalis), can be traced back to early folk culture and ancient pagan celebrations of fertility and agriculture like the Dionysian festivities in ancient Greece, and to what Bakhtin calls the “carnivalized folklore” of ancient times (Stam, 1989; Bakhtin, 1984b, p. 108).

These comic rituals were non-official, hyper political world-views, investigating the relationship between the individual and society. They degraded and turned up-side down of the glossy and formal rituals that permeated medieval society, opposing the official monolithic seriousness, a seriousness sanctioning and reinforcing the stable, unchanging and perpetual pattern of things. The grotesque imagery of the carnival rampant in the carvings and effigies adorning churches and the illustrations decorating religious texts depicts excess and contrast through the syncretisation of opposing images/ideas to create a temporary liberation from the established

4 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 5 order, celebrate change, renewal and becoming, the initial and the terminal, and the cyclic changes of nature (Bakhtin, 1984a, p. 24).

The carnival tries to contain and express the dual aspect of nature, life and society by representing an image or a situation that is constantly pregnant with its own opposite. The double aspect of the body (birth-death/death-birth) is incorporated into all aspects, making everything an extension or reflection of everything else, highlighting ‘reality’s’ constant process of becoming. This universal and soberly optimistic system utilizes paired imagery and thematics that are chosen for their oxymoronic relationship or for their similarities (the twin/the double) combining both extremities of change and crisis and making every element dialogically interchangeable with the other. In this way: “[The carnival] strives to encompass and unite within itself both poles of becoming or both members of an antithesis: birth-death, youth-old age, top- bottom, face-backside, and so forth, while the upper pole of a two-in-one image is always reflected in the lower” (Bakhtin, 1984a, p. 176).

The deep roots of the carnival can be found within Menippean discourse. This form of satire took its name form the philosopher Menippus of Gadara (third century B.C.) who shaped it into its classic form, although it was not until later it became a specific genre (Kirk, 1980). It is closely related to Socratic dialogue, and can be said to have had a great influence on old Christian literature and Byzantine writings, and consequently on western literature through various developments and under diverse generic labels.4 The Menippea enables the combination of what seems to be heterogenous and incompatible elements into a distinct language, or expressive mode, through the binding principle of the carnival and the carnival spirit.

Menippean discourse is characterised by a vast freedom of plot creation and philosophical invention, confident and unrepressed use of extraordinary, often provoking situations, the

4 See Eugene P. Kirk’s Introduction to his Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism (New York: Garland Publishing, 1980) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) for a more extensive discussion of the origins and motives of the Menippean satire.

5 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 6 syncresis of contrasting elements, abrupt transitions and shifts, multi-toned organic and experimental combinations of the fantastic, the symbolic and crude slum-naturalism, and representations of the unusual and abnormal moral and psychic states of man.5 The locations for these discourses are often found in the darker regions, the marginalized underbelly of ‘reality’. It is the brothel, the tavern, the dark alleyway or the dirty town square. The people involved are more often than not crazy, exhibiting excessive behaviour and skewed values. The places, people and situations represented are often observed from unusual viewpoints both physically and psychologically, dialogically reflecting and illuminating the other side (Bakhtin, 1984a, 1984b). Bakhtin continues to say that: “Carnivalization allows the bringing to life of aspects in the character and behaviour of people which in the normal course of life could not have revealed themselves” (Bakhtin, 1984b, p. 163).

Through this transgression of the established, Menippean discourse exteriorises and explores political and ideological conflicts by subverting the same politics and ideologies in its narratives: “The dialogism of [the Menippean discourse’s] words is practical philosophy doing battle against idealism and religious metaphysics, against the epic. It constitutes the social and political thought of an era fighting against theology, against law.” (Kristeva, 1980, p. 83). For Kristeva dialogism implies both the double language as well as the double system of logic. She claims that dialogics opens up the language and lets: “… symbolic relationships and analogy take precedence over substance-causality connections.” (1980, p. 72). The goal is to realize a discourse that is based on the creative and dynamic act of perception, a process that is longer than that of mere recognition. This will provide the viewers with a more munificent and revelatory viewing process, and also give the filmmakers the opportunity to re-present multi-layered and what Kristeva (1980) call polyphonic narratives offering up multiple systems of meaning.

5 See Bakhtin (1984b, pp. 114-119), Fuery (2000, pp. 129-136), and Kristeva (1980, pp. 82- 85) for a more comprehensive listing and discussion of the characteristics of the Menippean discourse.

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Dialogics6 refers to the unstable identity of the sign, the necessary relation of any utterance to other utterances, and more importantly the denial of univocal meaning and consequently the infinite spiral of interpretation. The term was coined in the 1930’s as part of Bakhtin’s research into the novels of Dostoevsky (Bakhtin, 1984b). Dostoevsky started using fantasy extensively to produce alternate and indefinite point of views with the possibility of multiple meanings. According to Bakhtin: “The fantastic serves here [in the novel] not as the positive embodiment of the truth, but in the search after the truth, its provocation and most importantly its testing” (1984b, p. 94). Dialogism propose the unlimited and undefined potential for meaning created by interlinked statements, images and ideas as a result of a cultures vast reserve and endless supply of communication. As Stam (1999) points out: In the broadest sense, intertextual dialogism refers to the infinite and open-ended possibilities generated by all the discursive practices of a culture, the entire matrix of communicative utterances within which the artistic text is situated, and which reach the text not only through recognisable influences, but also through a subtle process of dissemination (p. 202). Dialogics is a natural part of the carnival, and an essential component and technique of the carnivalesque in the process of creating texts that are multi layered and polyphonic.

The use of the stylistic and thematic features mentioned above enables Menippean discourses to create a specific language that cannot necessarily be translated into a verbal language, but is transposed into a language of artistic images (Bakhtin, 1984b). This language was transposed into literature, and became a powerful means of comprehending life, with images and techniques holding an extraordinary capacity for what Bakhtin calls “symbolic generalization” or “generalization in depth” that enables a deeper, more profound comprehension of the darker, difficult and more disturbing aspects of human existence: “Many essential sides of life, or more precisely its layers (and often the most profound), can be located, comprehended, and expressed only with the help of this language” (Bakhtin, 1984b, p. 157).

6 I have chosen to use C. Emerson’s translation of this key Bakhtinian concept from her translation of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1984. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

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In the renaissance and onward the carnival slowly transformed from a universal celebration of the oneness of everything into an individualised and atomised concept. As a consequence of this deterioration the carnival was moved from the public to the private sphere, and there formalised and disseminated into literature and art (Bakhtin, 1984b). This reconceptualization of the carnival elements made them usable in different ways and for different purposes, without losing its original function of transgressing and opposing the established truths and value systems.

1.3 The Carnivalesque

The formalization and individualisation of the carnival did not kill the carnival. Rather, in true carnival fashion, it was reincarnated as the carnivalesque, a concept sourcing its themes, images, techniques and values directly from the carnival spirit. The techniques and imagery of the carnivalesque transgress and oppose the established ‘reality’, in the same ways as the physical celebrations of the carnival proper, by disrupting and challenging the structural design (systems of knowledges and contexts of meaning) of social reality. Behind each carnivalesque image: “… there glimmers more or less distinctly the carnival square with its specific carnivalistic logic of familiar contacts, mésalliances, disguises and mystifications, contrasting paired images, scandals, crownings/decrownings and so forth “ (Bakhtin, 1984b, p. 133). And even though the ways the carnival was re-presented changed from public performances to artistic expressions the function remained the same. To consecrate inventive freedom and allow the organic combination of a variety of different elements and their rapprochement, to liberate discourses from the dominant point of view and established conventions, in order to enable a re-presentation embracing the often opposing contrasts and ambiguities of ‘reality’ and make possible a dialogic and open- ended text that more truly embody the possibility of multiple meanings and interpretations inherent in human society (Bakhtin, 1984b; Kristeva, 1980).

The main characteristic of the carnivalesque is the double aspect of the body (birth-death/death- birth) and in extension of that the peculiar logic of the inside out. It is a decentralising power set in opposition to the hegemonic project of centralisation and the officialdom of language (Stam, 1989). The grotesque realism of the carnivalesque includes both the high and the low, blending

8 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 9 them to re-present a truer picture of reality. The carnivalesque is essentially a degradation and transferral of everything that is high/spiritual/abstract/ideal to the material sphere of earth/body, and through this materializing carnival laughter/gaze ‘reality’ is made real by turning it inside out and up side down (Bakhtin, 1984a).

The constant preoccupation with and consecration of life and death, Eros and Thanatos, and the perpetual murder-enabling-rebirth implies the permanence of change and establishes life as Janus-faced ambivalence. In this way the carnivalesque establishes a new aesthetic that opposes the established truths and does not emphasize: “… harmonious beauty and formal unity, but rather asymmetry, heterogeneity, the oxymoronic and the mésalliance” (Stam, 1989, p. 94). It enables the relativisation of human existence and of human society, through an inventive freedom permitting a combination of often opposing and contrasting elements, showing us the excluded ‘other’ and creating a form that liberates the viewer from the established point of view and from traditional conventions. According to Bakhtin: “The carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exist, and to enter a completely new order of things” (1984a, p. 34).

The carnival, and the carnivalized language of the carnivalesque, make possible the transfer of deep philosophical questions concerning human existence from the abstract spheres of philosophy to the concrete images and events of the ‘real’ world, or as Bakhtin puts it: “deck out philosophy in the motley dress of a hetaera” (1984b, p. 134). Through the use of madness, hallucinations, dreams, eccentric behaviour, excess, and extraordinary (often fantastical) situations and locations the carnivalesque text and its reader can search after, provoke and test ‘truth’ and ‘reality’. This carnival gaze is, as the carnival laughter, universal, directed at everyone, gay/triumphant and mocking/deriding at the same time. It asserts and denies, materializes and buries in order to revive (Bakhtin, 1984a). The carnival becomes a polyphonic crucible melting down disparate elements and fusing them into a new compound, which brings the subject down to earth making it ‘real’ through the representation of its binary inside out quality. By breaking the ‘real’, the carnivalesque fantasy dissolves reality in order to recreate it, much in the same way the carnival ‘kills’ the monolithic point of view so that it can be reborn as something

9 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 10 new and fresh. The aim is to find a way to define and illustrate ‘things’ (objects, actions, images, ‘realities’, characters, narratives and so forth), through the use of the out of place words and images readily found in the techniques and imagery of the fantastic and the carnival, in order to go beyond the viewer’s perceptive and cognitive recognition, confounding the reader through an organic combination of mimesis and marvel. According to Jackson, by: “Breaking single, reductive ‘truths’, the fantastic traces a space within a society’s cognitive frame. It introduces multiple, contradictory ‘truths’; it becomes polyphonic” (1988, p. 23). These transformed ‘truths’ propose latent ‘other’ meanings and new realities beyond the known revealing the areas of ‘reality’ that are normally kept out of sight. By exposing that which is hidden, it enables a disconcerting transformation of the familiar into enstranged ‘reality’.

According to Kayser: “The somewhat grotesque quality of the carnivalesque devices and imagery implies a dissolution of the reality we know and the participation in an existence that is different from the empirical existence we know, and therefore enables the formation of an experience about the nature and significance of which man has always pondered” (1968, p. 22). And it is this pondering, or this cognitive enstrangement, that facilitates the film’s and the viewer’s transgression and reconsideration of the ‘realities’ within and outside of the film7, facilitating the symbolic generalization and examination of the deep often disturbing philosophical questions of human existence. Through a mirroring the world of man, these texts show us that whoever thinks the world is just as we see it is blind. But the mirror that is held up is not only a reflecting one: “… it is also a transforming one, virgin womb and alchemical dynamo: the mirror is a crucible” (Suvin, 1979, p. 5).

The carnivalesque then becomes a set of conceptual strategies that can be used to examine the temporary interface between the stasis imposed from above and the wish for change coming from below (Holquist, 1984, p. xiv). The techniques and images of the carnivalesque can be used to transgress and temporarily change the structural design enabling freedom to express critical

7 See Fuery, P. (2000). The Carnivalesque: Film and Social Order. In P. Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory (pp. 109-136). London: Macmillan Press, for a more extensive overview of cinema’s possibility to transgress it’s own as well as the viewer’s social order.

10 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 11 perspectives of social and human reality. It offers an opportunity to create a truly sincere representation of the multiplicity inherent in society, and enable filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, and Jeunet & Caro to generate a social reality that resembles our own, but yet is ‘reality’ transformed, translated, and re-presented to provide a new point of view revealing new truths and new values. These filmmakers are what Michael O’Pray call alchemists blending: “… disparate materials in the service of fantasy; they endow the real, the very materiality of the world – its objects, surfaces and textures – with an aura of strangeness and the fantastic” (1989, p. 254).

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“He who travels far will often see things far removed from what he believed was Truth.” H. HESSE

Chapter Two - The Carnivalesque and Cinema

The four films that form the basis for this critical reading all bear resemblances to each other in regards to cinematic style, themes and subject matter. They use what Eikhenbaum refers to as “… a special poetic language that is not ‘naturalistic’ but rather dreamlike (1973). They all seem to be concerned with ontological questions, the re-creation and re-interpretation of ‘reality’, and a critical examination of modern society. And most importantly can be considered to be carnivalesque in their entirety, rather than just containing or using elements of the carnivalesque.

The double aspect of the body, exemplified in the carnival through the pregnant hag, is a concretisation of the carnival’s preoccupation with birth through death and in extension the contrasts, ambiguities and ever changing characteristics of the individual and society. By drawing a connection between the perpetual cyclic changes of nature and the never ending changes of human life and the social context within which this life unfolds, through the use of the grotesque imagery and dialogic techniques of the carnivalesque, art (literature, painting, theatre and, most importantly, cinema) facilitates symbolic generalization enabling the examination of the deepest philosophical questions regarding human existence. By opposing the monolithic views of the established order through a transgression of its politics and ideologies the carnivalesque, and the uncanny and enstranged realities it permits, enable artists to re-present an altered ‘reality’. This alterity forces the viewer through a more laborious, revelatory, and munificent reading process that opens up multiple systems of meaning and knowledge through the many layered, polyphonic texts facilitated by the dialogics and dynamic amalgamation of contrasting elements offered up by the carnivalesque.

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The aspect of the double is most easily represented in cinema through the characters. In ‘Blue Velvet’, as per usual in the Lynchian universe, every main character has a mirror opposite that can be seen as both their opposite as well as their parallel. Sandy/Dorothy, through their representation of the light/dark, innocent/corrupt, love/sex, concretises the discourse of the double Lynch uses to signify the ambiguity and Janus-faced aspect of human existence:

Sandy and Dorothy incarnate two sides of one figure, each side endlessly leading to the other as in a Möbius strip. Their worlds are divided according to a traditional scheme: the blonde is associated with conventional life and daytime, whereas the brunette belongs to the night and a world of shady, fearful characters (Chion, 1995, p. 91).

The double is also apparent in the Jeffrey/Frank dichotomy, which is very similar to the Willard/Kurtz relationship in ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’, in that they both can be seen as the possible past and future version of each other. Jeffrey can become Frank, and Willard become Kurtz, if they succumb to the same temptations and perversions that Frank and Kurtz have surrendered to. The idea of the double is also an essential component in ‘Headspace’ where Avery has three different incarnations, all of them carrying with them the possibility of being/becoming Desmond. The three Avery’s are different versions both of himself and of Desmond, representing both Desmond’s internal demons as well as personifying his Id, Ego and Super-ego. In this way every character embody the binary inside out quality of the carnivalesque, carrying within them the possibility of becoming, of being dialogically pregnant with its opposite.

‘Delicatessen’ also has clear references to the double through its characters, especially the butcher. But here the aspect of the double is not as deeply philosophical and abstract as in the other films. Clapet the butcher represents both life and death, in true carnival fashion. He is the one who kills the inhabitants of the tenement building so that he can sell them the meat, in what is a truly transgressive and delightfully twisted moment of pure grotesque realism. He is both their terror and their saviour. Jeunet & Caro exemplify the more darkly comical attitudes of the

13 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 14 carnivalesque with their constant use of black comedy moments like the very inventive but perpetually doomed suicide attempts of Aurore, the complicated love triangle between Aurore, and the Kube brothers Roger and Robert and the constant hunt for (human) meat. These moments forces the viewers to interrogate themselves and their opinions as a consequence of the carnival laughter/gaze caused by others misery and cruelty. A laughter that transgress the established norms and values, creating an uncanny ‘reality’ that examines the social reality of the film and in extension our own social ‘reality’. Jeunet and Caro’s cinematic ‘realities’, especially ‘City of Lost Children’, also deploy the logic of the inside-out. Here the most grown up people are the children. The little girl Miette exemplifies all the characteristics of a femme fatale, while the strong man One is a child trapped in a grown man’s body. The film also switches around the sense of morals, making the children the most responsible and moral beings opposing the depravity and questionable values of the adults.

This inside out turning of morals, norms and values is also apparent in ‘Blue Velvet’ where themes of love and sex are intertwined and turned inside out. Although Sandy represents innocence, it is only through the involvement with her that Jeffrey is introduced to the dangerous and seedy underworld with its excess of sex, lust and madness. Frank’s love for Dorothy is so intense and so strong it is driving him mad, perhaps even turning him impotent, and resulting in him living out his passions through violent and transgressive behaviour. The immoral and cruel behaviour of Kurtz is paralleled, if not surpassed, by the moral killing in the name of righteous warfare by the government. Through this dynamic mirroring of attitudes and values Coppola creates a dichotomy questioning the outlook and actions of the establishment of that time in a way that echoes disturbingly and ominously in the presence. In ‘Headspace’ the use of a public toilet as the central location exemplifies the use of ‘darker regions of reality’ highlighted in Menippean discourse. The location is also made uncanny through the hesitations that occurs as the viewer tries to place the toilet as both a toilet and the fantastic location that is the inside of Desmond’s head. The hallway functions in the same way, it is an easily recognisable location that is made uncanny through its fantastic spatial placement facilitated through the discourse and enhanced by the sound design in much the same way as in ‘Blue Velvet’.

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In ‘Blue Velvet’ the sense of the uncanny is established through a near perfect opening sequence that is more like a short film with a complete story line than the start of a longer cinematic text. After a hypnotic credit sequence involving a slowly undulating almost hypnotic blue velvet curtain enhanced by Angelo Badalamenti’s minor key opening tune, perfectly situating and preparing the viewer for the uncanny opening sequence, like a theatre curtain being drawn to let the carnival of life unfold, we are introduced to what is seemingly a normal and respectable middle American suburban neighbourhood. In slow motion we see white picket fences, happy school children, even a bright red fire truck gliding past with smiling and waving firemen on board. As we see a man watering his perfectly green lawn, Alan Splet’s disturbing sound design kicks in, the water hose starts sputtering, the tap shakes, and the man gets an aneurism, seamlessly intercut and juxtaposed with his wife watching a black and white crime show on the television, represented by the ominous close-up of a hand holding a gun. As the man lies on the ground writhing, a small dog plays with the water from the hose and a baby toddles towards him, creating a perfect carnivalesque tableau representing the oxymoronic ambiguities of life: death- birth, young-old, life-death. The camera then continuous its journey down into the grass, again enhanced and embodied by Splet’s sound design, down under the ground and into crawling and teeming insects, the ‘other’ life foreboding Jeffrey’s upcoming plunge into a strange world.

The use of extreme and unusual situations continues as Jeffrey gets deeper involved in the ‘mystery’ surrounding Dorothy and her relationship with Frank. This relationship also transforms Jeffrey into an adult and in extension his relationship with Sandy. The nightclub sequence, the visit to the bizarre whorehouse run by the eccentric and uncanny Ben and the subsequent face off between Frank and Jeffrey are situations that are familiar to most viewers, if not from their own ‘realities’ then from other artistically created ‘realities’, but are represented through extreme and unusual imagery and with an abundance of connotations to the dangerous and seedy underbelly of ‘normal’ life that they are converted into the uncanny. Hesitation occurs as the viewer tries to connect these situations with the reality of the film, and their own reality, turning the situation inside out. The visits to the public toilet in ‘Headspace’ function in the same way. The location itself is quite normal, but the repetitive manner in which it appears in the

15 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 16 cinematic text as well as the sound design and visual presentation creates the same hesitation in the viewer and consequently a sensation of the uncanny. Since the same toilet seems to be located behind different doors, doors that we are told are supposed to lead out, an unusual and extreme situation is made real and repeated to highlight the uncanny aspect and enable an enstranged reading.

In ‘Delicatessen’ and ‘City of Lost Children’ the uncanny is generated through the production design. The poetic realism8 of these settings is removed from recognisable reality through the use of carnivalesque imagery and the hesitation of uncanny fantasy. The locations in these films are, as we have seen, directly linked to the location characteristics of the Menippean discourse. There are the back alleys and harbour areas found in so many film noir films, and the tenement building made famous by poetic realism and Italian neo-realism. But these locations are displaced in space and time. They exist in a universe removed from our own. We know what they represent, but we do not know where and at what time they exist. By simply not revealing the time/space universe that serves as a background for the filmic universe, Jeunet & Caro creates an uncanny location in which every character, action and situation will create sufficient hesitation in the viewer. This is also reflected in ‘Headspace’ where the situation and time/space context Desmond finds himself in is never explained, except on a more abstract level. The story starts in medias res and the previous history is never revealed so that hesitation in terms of time/space placement is created instantly with lasting effect.

The mysteries that entangle Jeffrey, the increasing madness and dreamlike ambience of the army camps visited by Willard as they travel further and further up the river, the strange carnival atmosphere permeating the recognisable yet bizarre locations in Jeunet and Caro’s films, and the unusual representation and time/space dislocation of the inside of Desmond’s head, as well as the fact that he wanders around in there himself are all techniques made possible by the carnivalesque and deployed to represent ‘reality’ from an unusual or peculiar point of view in

8 See Guy Austin (1996) Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, especially pp. 8-9 for an explanation of poetic realism.

16 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 17 such a way that the cinematic universes can be dislocated from ‘reality’ making the categorization of the ‘real’ difficult and enstranging what is represented so that the reader is forced to look on with new, fresh eyes that will facilitate a deeper reading hopefully revealing a new and more munificent set of ‘truths’.

‘Blue Velvet’ is a concretisation of the abstract dichotomy of love/sex and sex/violence, exemplified by the uncanny oedipal complex of Frank and in extension Jeffrey, and the constant contrasting of love with sex, sex with violence, and therefore dialogically love with violence. The film represents the predatory aspect of love, the connection of what is above ground to that which lies beneath in society and more importantly in human nature, a juxtaposition that summarizes the whole film. It is about what is hidden, the ‘other’, the underbelly of American life and in extension the dark and hidden aspects of the human psyche. It is a transgression of innocence creating a universe that is an uncanny inside-out version of the one we know so that we are forced to question what we see, what it represents and our own reactions to it. Lynch provides us with a journey into a strange wonderland through bizarre holes in the ground (in this case a human ear), and like Alice, Jeffrey jumps in freely as a consequence of his curiosity and his desperate need for mysteries, exemplifying that: “… the nature of innocence is to lust for experience, knowledge (and self-knowledge) cannot remain in stasis, growth is painful and terrifying as well as inevitable and necessary” (Atkinson, 1997, p. 33).

In ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’ the cruelties and excesses of war create the backdrop for a metaphorical journey into the dark hearts of Willard/Kurtz, thus dialogically into man the dark heart of man. The dream like ambience of the film enhances the feeling of the uncanny, and forces the viewer to constantly question the veracity of the universe represented to us, repeatedly having to deal with the dissolution of ‘reality’, and thus having to reflect on the new possible truths offered about our empirical universe through the cinematically represented universe. And because of this multi-level, dialogic aspect of the text it works as a critical enquiry of the problematic relationship between ‘reality’ and the established truth, as well as an enquiry of the dark heart of humanity, that inner core in which madness becomes sanity and values are turned upside down and inside out. These deep philosophical ponderings are facilitated by the freedom

17 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 18 of the carnivalesque, enabling the filmmaker to penetrate the abstract fortress of ontology and provide symbolic generalizations that hopefully will aid us in the exploration of what it is to have freedom of choice and what it is to be human.

‘Delicatessen’ can be read as an allegory of France during WWII, but it can also be seen as a critique of the consumer society. Both readings are equally representative, as a consequence of the dialogics inherent in the film’s many layers facilitated by the use of carnivalesque and fantastic techniques and imagery. It is also an examination of human relationships in crisis situations, and a vehicle for dark comedy providing the possibility for carnival laughter, a laughter that is both gay/triumphant and mocking/deriding at the same time, and is directed at everyone including the one who laughs. The strange but oddly realistic universe represented facilitates just enough hesitation in the viewer to create a sensation of the uncanny. This uncanny poetic realism provides settings and locations that are easily recognisable but are, because of the sci-fi dystopian backdrop and the disturbing subject matter, equally far removed form our own reality. This removal provides a freedom, both for the filmmakers and the viewer, for representing, dynamically reflecting and thus understanding our own present reality. In the practical component of this project a regular hallway and a public toilet becomes the inside of the main characters head through the use of uncanny hesitation. The characters in the film are reflections of each other, functioning in the same way as the dichotomies represented by Lynch and Coppola, highlighting the ambiguous and oxymoronic aspects of human life. The parallel facets of the characters and the uncanny representations also work to provide a more laborious reading process opening up the perpetual spiral of interpretation.

Through the use of the carnivalesque, such as the multiplication of Avery, the philosophical invention in regards to time and space displacement, and the use of locations and situations highlighted by Menippean discourse the creative production component of this project becomes a critical extension of the carnival spirit. The use of the double and the logic of the inside-out, facilitated by the situations created by the text, in combination with the hesitant and laborious reading enabled by the uncanny grotesque realism, generate a polyphonic dialogism within the text that will make easy the presentation and pondering of deep philosophical questions. Much in

18 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 19 the same way as in the other films, the characters function as ambivalent reflections and dialogically connected extensions of each other while simultaneously symbolising nothing other than themselves. The representation of images and situations that are pregnant with their own opposite, such as Avery becoming Desmond and vice versa, highlights ‘reality’s’ constant process of becoming. In this way the carnival spirit is embodied and brought to life, creating multiple layers of meaning that enables the materialization and symbolic generalization of the ultimate questions. The freedom provided by the critical use of the techniques and imagery of the carnivalesque fantasy in terms of the creative production of the film, and in extension the production of multiple meanings in the reading of the text, enabled the representation of these ultimate questions.

Through the deployment of carnivalesque techniques and imagery, as well as the hesitations of the uncanny fantasy, these filmmakers provides us with cinematic universes that are dynamic alterations of both the filmmaker’s universe as well as the viewer’s universe. Transgression of values, of realities, of official point of views free the filmmakers, the films, and the viewer from automatized perception and understanding. These transgressions are carried out in order to free the image, the text, and the reading of the text from the monolithic point of view engendered by the established order. This freedom of philosophic invention and experimental combination of contrasting elements and situations facilitates polyphonic texts in which each layer is dialogically connected to the others in such a way that they flow into and around each other. This multi level representation of reality flows simultaneously and consecutively in completely different ontological spheres in order to produce new systems of meaning and knowledge (Bakhtin, 1984b).

19 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 20

“A man saying things that have no apparent meaning. There’s a lot of power in that. It frightens people.” T. WAITS

General Conclusion

The carnival was the ultimate celebration of freedom. Freedom from the established rules and regulations, freedom to oppose, transgress and temporarily change the monolithic point of view celebrating permanence and harmony, and freedom to express yourself through dialogic discourses facilitating multi layered systems of meaning and knowledge representing the logic of the inside-out, the oxymoronic aspect of society, and double facet of life. Through the bonds with pagan celebrations of fertility and the cyclic aspect of nature, the carnival spirit became the embodiment of nature’s duality, of birth-through-death and death-through-birth. It enabled a carnival laughter, and in extension a carnival gaze, which is mocking and deriding and gay and triumphant at the same time, and always directed at everyone including the one that laughs/gazes.

This laughter/gaze asserts and denies, materialises and buries, so that it can revive that which has been put down as something new. The carnival is a degradation of high culture, a transfer of the ultimate questions from the abstract sphere of philosophy to the concrete images and situations of ‘reality’, and a turning inside out of the established politics and ideologies. This degradation was carried out to create a new perception of the world, realize the relative nature of everything and create a temporary new order.

As the carnival was transposed into and reborn as the artistic techniques and imagery of the carnivalesque, the transgressions of and oppositions to the established became an integral part of discourses facilitating the never ending spiral of interpretation, open-ended narratives with multiple systems of meaning and knowledge, and layers of texts within the text. Through the use of Menippean discourse the carnivalesque text is able to represent an alterity, facilitated through

20 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 21 the enstrangement of seemingly familiar objects, characters and situations, and the hesitation created by uncanny fantasy. The organic combination of mimesis and marvel, amalgamated through the crucible mirror, and mixed with the grotesque realism of the back alley and the carnival square create texts that revel in philosophical invention, fantastic and extreme situations and the merging of disparate and oxymoronic elements. These texts continually force the viewers to reconsider and reinterpret the ‘realities’ within the text and in extension their own ‘realities’ outside of the text. In this way ‘truth’ is always up for grabs, the structural design of ‘reality’ is fluid, and the word has ambivalent significations. The result is a text that contains multiple layers of meaning, expressed by the ambiguous and contrast filled representations of ‘reality’ that is facilitated by the freedom of the carnivalesque.

The cinematic text is no different. It is perhaps even more polyphonic with its options of multiple and contrasted storytelling enabled by the use of montage, sound, and seamless jumps in time and space. But if we then add the techniques and imagery of the carnivalesque, directly linked to Menippean discourse, dialogism and the enstrangement of uncanny fantasy, the text opens up in a new way. The layers of meaning multiply and become interconnected both with the cinematic ‘realities’ within the text, the cinematic ‘realities’ of other texts, the ‘realities’ of the creators of the text, the ‘realities’ of the viewers, and the ‘reality’ in which the text is presented. This is something that is reflected in the creative production component of this project. Through the critical integration of the ideas and concepts discussed in this dissertation the carnival spirit became a vital element in the conception, construction and production of this cinematic text. ‘Headspace’ opposes and transgresses the structural design of the established through the merging of opposing elements, highlighting of abnormal themes, representation of extreme situations and unusual point of views, organic combination of fantasy with reality, and the revival of the carnival spirit. Thus the carnivalesque creates multiple layers of meaning in cinema, layers that because of their multiplicity enable the representation and expression of the ultimate questions of life, and of death, and of the human psyche.

21 Honours Exegesis - Joachim Wichman Strand 22

Bibliography

Atkinson, M. (1997). Blue Velvet. London: BFI Publishing.

Austin, G. (1996). Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1984a). Rabelais and his World (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

–––– (1984b). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (C. Emerson, Trans.), (2nd ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Booker, M. K. (1994). Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Carroll, D. (1987). Narrative, Heterogeneity, and the Question of the Political: Bakhtin and Lyotard. In M. Krieger (Ed.), The Aims of Representation: Subject/Text/History (pp. 69- 106). New York: Columbia University Press.

Carroll, L. (1998). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the looking glass. London: Penguin Books.

Chion, M. (1995). David Lynch (Julian, R., Trans.). London: BFI Publishing.

Christie, I. (2000). Formalism and Neo-Formalism. In J. Hill & P. C. Gibson (Eds.), Film Studies: Critical Approaches (pp. 56-64). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Donald, J. (1989). Introductions. In J. Donald (Ed.), Fantasy and the Cinema (pp. 3-21, 136- 145, 226-232). London: BFI Pub.

Eikhenbaum, B. (1973). Literature and Cinema. In S. Bann & J. E. Bowlt (Eds.), (T. L. Aman, Trans.), Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation (pp. 122- 127). Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. (Original work published 1926)

Fuery, P. (2000). The Carnivalesque: Film and Social Order. In P. Fuery, New Developments in Film Theory (pp. 109-136). London: Macmillan Press.

Hirschkop, K. & Shepherd, D. (1989). Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Holquist, M. (1984). Prologue. In M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (pp. xiii-xxiii). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Internet Movie Database, The. (1990). Retrieved October 16, 2004, from http://www.imdb.com/

Jackson, R. (1988). Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Routledge.

Kayser, W. J. (1968). The Grotesque in Art and Literature (U. Weisstein, Trans.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kirk, E. P. (1980). Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism. New York: Garland Publishing.

Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (T. Gora et al., Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.

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Linner, S. (1967). Dostoevsky on Realism. (Stockholm University Press).

O’Pray, M. (1989). Surrealism, Fantasy and the Grotesque: The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer. In J. Donald (Ed.), Fantasy and the Cinema (pp. 253-268). London: BFI Pub.

Shklovsky, V. (1991). Theory of Prose (B. Sher, Trans.). Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.

Stam, R. (1989). Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Suvin, D. (1979). Estrangement and Cognition. In Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (pp. 3-15). London: Yale University Press.

Todorov, T. (1973). The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (R. Howard, Trans.). Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University Press.

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Films

Caro, M. & Jeunet, J. P. (Directors), & Ossard, C. (Producer). (1991). Delicatessen [Motion picture]. USA: Miramax Films.

Caro, M. & Jeunet, J. P. (Directors), & Ossard, C. (Producer). (1995). The City of Lost Children [DVD]. Australia: Siren Entertainment.

Coppola, F. F. (Director), & Aubry, K. (Producer). (2001). Apocalypse Now Redux [DVD]. Australia: Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

Lynch, D. (Director), & Caruso, F. (Producer). (1986). Blue Velvet [DVD]. Australia: CBS/Fox Home Video.

Strand, J. W. (Director), & Potts, C. (Producer). (2004). Headspace [DVD]. Australia: Curtin University.

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Appendix a

Film Synopses

APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX (Francis Ford Coppola, 2001) This epic war film adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” follows Captain Willard (M. Sheen) travelling with a group of American soldiers up a Vietnamese/Cambodian river in order to exterminate the renegade colonel Kurtz (M. Brando) who has become the chief of a crazy tribe of killers. The further up the river they go, and the closer to Kurtz they get, the crazier everything becomes. An allegorical journey into the heart of darkness, showing the fickleness of truth, especially when there is a war going on.

BLUE VELVET (David Lynch, 1986) Clean-cut university student Jeffrey Beaumont (K. MacLachlan) realises his Mayberry-like hometown is not so normal when he discovers a human ear in a field. His investigation catapults him into an alluring, erotic murder mystery involving a disturbed nightclub singer, Dorothy Valens (I. Rossellini) and a drug-addled sadist, Frank Booth (D. Hopper). Soon Jeffrey is led deeper beneath the surface of small-town serenity, into a dark domain where innocents dare not tread and unpredictability and depravity is the norm.

CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (Jean Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995) The evil Krank (D. Emilfork) and his henchmen have been made by a mad scientist. Krank's problem is that he is tormented by his inability to dream. He finds it necessary to try to steal the dreams of children, but since they fear him, he only gets their nightmares. One (R. Perlman), a former whale hunter who is as strong as a horse, sets forth to search for Denree, his little brother when he is kidnapped by Krank's men. Helped by young Miette (J. Vittet), he soon arrives in The City of Lost Children. An enigmatic tale of lost innocence, and the power of the dreams of children, this very stylistic film is an excellent example of French cinema du look.

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DELICATESSEN (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1991) In a starving post-holocaust city, the butcher Clapet (J.C. Dreyfus) keeps his strange array of customers supplied with meat through the cannibalistic killing of his assistants. But when his daughter falls in love with the new assistant Louison (D. Pinon), a former circus performer, only an underground band of vegetarian freedom fighters can save him from the butcher’s sharp meat cleaver. This dark dystopian comedy can be seen as an allegory of the German occupation of France during WWII.

HEADSPACE (Joachim Wichman Strand, 2004) The reeds are swaying gently in the cold wind blowing across the deserted field. Desmond (T. Nicholls) sits up suddenly, he has to be somewhere. He has to go. Now. But before he can get to where he’s going, he must find a way out. And that is not always as easy as it seems. Especially when there is only one hallway leading out, with doors that seems to take him into the same bathroom, with the same bathroom attendant, again and again. As the distinctions between Avery the bathroom attendant (M. Loney) and Desmond start to fade, Desmond realises he is caught in his own headspace. This 11 minute short film is the practical component of the honours project.