BUILDING THINGS WITH FICTIONS: WHAT FILM CAN TELL US ABOUT HOUSING

Peter King Reader in Social Thought Centre for Comparative Housing Research De Montfort University The Gateway Leicester LE1 9BH

Tel: 0116 257 7431 Email: [email protected]

Paper presented to Qualiti seminar, Theorising qualitative research: paradigms and methods, Edinburgh University, 15 June 2006 Building things with fictions: what film can tell us about housing

Introduction

Several years ago a colleague and I were discussing the last housing books we had each read. I’m afraid I cannot remember which book my colleague had read, but the last one for me had been Cooper Marcus’ House as a Mirror of Self (1995). This book uses Jungian psychology and art therapy to analyse the relation individuals have with their dwelling. Cooper Marcus looks at why some people are attached to their house, whilst others find it difficult. The book is anecdotal and based on a small number of in-depth interviews in which interviewees were also asked to draw their personal image of home. It was this anecdotal approach that I saw as the book’s principal virtue, in that it gets close to the relationship between dweller and dwelling and shows it to be intensely personal. As I was about to wax lyrical on Cooper Marcus’ book, my colleague interjected with the comment, ‘That’s not a housing book!’

The idea that a book on how we live in our house and how we respond to it, how we attach ourselves to a specific dwelling and deal with loss, love and sharing is not a ‘housing book’ is quite enlightening of the manner in which housing is perceived by housing academics. It is enlightening both in terms of what it says about methods, about what constitutes ‘the literature’, but also about attitudes to what constitutes the field of study we call ‘housing’. In essence what was deemed to be lacking in Cooper Marcus’s book – one of the few books to genuinely get past the front door (King, 2004b) – is any discussion on policy: it is a book about how we live and not about how we make and pay for aggregates of housing. It does not deal with government action, housing agencies and subsidies. Instead Cooper Marcus’s book tries to consider the implications of living quietly, privately in a place where one has chosen to be. This, though, my colleague informed me, was not ‘housing’.

But my colleague’s comment was also a challenge to me, in terms of both content and method. As regards content, were I to accept my colleague’s view I would have to admit that neither of my last two books – Private Dwelling (2004b) and The Common Place (2005) – were also not ‘housing books’ (which is exactly what my colleague has said of them). But if these books are not about housing, what do they deal with? And who are they for, and what purpose can they possibly have? It is in trying to answer these linked questions – and therefore to justify what I’ve being spending my time on – that has led me to question exactly what it is that ‘housing’ is, or could be, or should be. I have come to the conclusion that there are indeed two different subjects here, two distinct areas of study, which may have some common jargon, similar arguments, and even be of some interest to each other: but they are still, regardless of any similarities, different in what they are talking about, what they seek to establish, and, perhaps most importantly, what they mean when they use particular words such as ‘housing’ and ‘homes’1.

1 We should note that the use of the plural – ‘homes’ – is itself significant. Talking of ‘homes’ instead of ‘home’, however, radically alters how we perceive the term from the outset.

2 But there is also the issue of method and the legitimacy of using techniques and approaches from beyond the traditional social science corpus. Is it really not acceptable to use Jungian art therapy to consider housing? What does this say about housing as a field of study, and consequently the possibility of development in the future?

What I seek to do in this paper is to discuss some of the issues around the study of housing. I want to outline what are the main approaches in housing research and education and to explain how they have developed. I shall show how this development has led to a limitation of the field of study which is largely based on how housing is defined and described. I then go on to consider an approach to housing which seeks to understand the importance of housing in subjective and personal terms, and how this can be done by using film. I offer an example of this approach and then conclude with some of its problems and limitations.

I should admit that this approach has come about largely by accident: I am a housing academic who happens to have a passion for cinema, and I seem to have found a way of combining my day job with my hobby. However, I would hope that this is not mere convenience. I began to use film because I wished to look at the subjective and the personal. I wanted to understand more about how we use our housing and particularly what we do when we close the door and exclude unwanted others. This, it seems to me, is what we build and maintain houses for, but which we have neglected to study. The main reason for this, of course, is that once the researcher invades the dwelling it stops being private2. But this poses the researcher with a considerable problem, and to try to deal with this I have sought to use methods that are more akin to research in the humanities. This paper seeks both to demonstrate and justify this approach.

The nature of housing research

Housing is clearly not an academic discipline. Whilst there has been considerable growth in housing education and research since the 1970s, we cannot talk about housing in the manner we can talk about sociology, economics, geography, etc. Housing does not have its own distinctive methods and concepts and instead has to rely on more established academic disciplines. In this way housing academics tend to approach their interest through their disciplinary specialism, using accepted methods to inform their work.

This is entirely to be expected, but it does pose a problem in that the housing research community is multidisciplinary, and thus academics, if they are to be effective, need to be able to talk to each other. Whilst housing economists can and do converse with each other, this can be unnecessarily limiting, in that they may also wish to work with sociologists or geographers interested in the same housing issue. This situation has had two consequences: first, much housing research tends to be issue-led. In order to communicate the housing research community has developed a terminology and

2 This is shown wonderfully in the film Kitchen Stories (2003), which is about a team of Swedish researchers who wish to see how people use their kitchens by sitting themselves in high chairs in the corner of the kitchen and observing the residents. The aim of the research is to advise on more ‘rational’ use of the space, but the results, of course, are to inhibit the residents and so the whole process is self-defeating.

3 approach based on an understanding of housing phenomena. Second, because of this concern for the issues first, there is a distinct shallowness in the manner in which housing academics engage with their own disciplines. If one wishes to engage with other disciplines this needs to be through areas of commonality and with an agreed jargon that does not exclude others. This does not necessarily mean superficiality, but it does result in a reluctance to engage in key disciplinary debates and to embed housing into disciplines too far for fear of losing contacts with one’s colleagues from other disciplines.

The result of this is that housing research has not engaged with the cutting edge of disciplinary research and has instead concerned itself with a fairly traditional approach to its subject. Kemeny (1992), in his now seminal study of the nature of housing research in relation to social theory, argued that housing studies was confined to a narrow empiricism and, as a result, it has been left behind by advances in social sciences over the last 20-30 years. Kemeny stated that:-

A central problem of much of housing studies is that it retains a myopic and narrow focus on housing policy and housing markets and neglects broader issues. Housing studies is still too isolated from debates and theories in the other social sciences and what is needed now is further integration into these. (p. xv)

His point was that housing researchers needed to engage with concepts and theories that were quite common in disciplines such as sociology, politics and economics, but which had apparently bypasses academic housing studies. In addition, he argued that there were several examples where housing researchers had claimed to have discovered something new, in apparent ignorance of a huge already existing literature on the issue in the mainstream social sciences.

This problem, it seems to me has two sources, one related to the lack of a disciplinary framework, and the other to the institutional development of housing research. As I have stated, because of the multi-disciplinary nature of housing research, the issues lead the research and there has been no development of a specific conceptual or theoretical apparatus of its own. The result is that it tends to use concepts from the mainstream social science disciplines, but often at a superficial level in the rush to get to the issues. In addition, in ensuring that it takes other colleagues from other disciplines along with it, it rarely gets beyond the introductory level and a few key references. One can never take the conceptual apparatus for granted or assume that colleagues will be able to back-fill with the relevant knowledge and theoretical understanding. Thus, for instance, in the last 10 years there have been a number of papers applying social constructionism to housing phenomena, but each of these seems duty bound (or required by reviewers and editors) to offer a straightforward explanation of social constructionism before applying it. More recently, a spate of articles using critical realism has faced the same apparent need. What it is difficult to achieve is the implicit or integrated use of either of these approaches. Their use always remains somewhat provisional and needs constant justification. The result is that it is difficult to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of housing phenomena. Housing research, therefore, is indeed multidisciplinary, but it often only achieves this through a lack of depth.

4 The second cause of the lack of theoretical development in housing the manner in which housing research and education has developed institutionally (Kemeny, 1992). In the UK housing education has arisen out of the professional requirements of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and many academic programmes are explicitly geared at housing professionals who are funded by their employers. This has clear implications for curriculum development and the agreed knowledge and skills base that underpins housing education. But, additional to this is the manner in which much housing research has been funded and consequently on what and where it is focussed. A considerable amount of research is funded by government departments and agencies, or by bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation or the National Housing Federation, which seek to influence government policy and action. This more than any other factor has created the myopic positivism criticised by Kemeny (1992). Whilst there is undoubtedly now more theoretical housing research being done than 15 years ago, it is also the case that the pressures on housing academics to generate income have also worsened, and this has had an impact on innovation.

Some comments on ‘housing’

As I suggested, there is an agreed sense of what housing is about, and this sense has been formed to a considerable extent by the pressures considered above. In particular, the institutional framework of housing research, where the role of government plays such an important role, has framed the understanding of what housing is. When housing academics talk about ‘housing’, what they tend to mean is ‘housing policy’ (King, 1996). Housing is seen as something formed and controlled through policy discourse. This policy is concerned with the control of aggregates and seeks to impose and maintain standards in which these aggregates can be understood. There are two basic assumptions at work here: first, housing is an aggregated notion, and second it is usually used as a noun to refer to physical entities. Housing is therefore the term used to refer to an aggregation of material objects (King, 1996).

But as Turner (1972, 1976) has stated, housing can be a verb as well as a noun. Instead of seeing the term as being about material entities, it can also be seen as an activity: housing associations house people as well as build houses. Turner’s insight is quite fundamental in terms of how one views housing and research upon it. It stops being merely about things and becomes a concern with processes and relationships. Turner showed this in his work on housing standards and dweller control in Latin America, seeking to demonstrate the importance of the level of dweller control as a key indicator for successful and sustainable housing provision (Turner, 1976).

But there is a further problem with the assumption that housing is an aggregated notion, and this is what has been my main concern in recent years (King, 2004b, 2005). The preoccupation with housing policy means that research effectively ends at the front door. Researchers tend to be concerned with generalities such as numbers built, location, quality and condition, income of residents and so on. But none of these questions get beyond the threshold or consider the specific relation between particular households and their dwellings. What we do not get a sense of in mainstream housing research is the meanings which households attach to their dwellings. There is therefore another key dichotomy as well as that between noun and verb, and this

5 relates to inside or outside. We might alternatively state that this is a dichotomy between the objective and subjective appreciation of housing.

What I have tried to do is develop an approach that can help us to understand the manner in which we use our dwelling and the meanings that develop from this. What strikes me as a key problem here is how one can deal with the private nature of housing without destroying or disrupting what we are looking at. By way of analogy (and only analogy) I would suggest that a type of uncertainty principle is at work here, whereby the observation of this micro level activity alters it and creates new patterns and formations that would not be there were it not for the observation. What I have sought instead is a different approach that relies on observation from the inside itself. In this way we can hope that it is left undisturbed. This involves a subjective description of housing, even if it involves eschewing methods that might help us gain a broader perspective. As Madanipour (2003) has argued, ‘first-person’ or phenomenological accounts will be incomplete, but they are still necessary. They are necessary to complement the equally incomplete third-person or scientific approach, described by Madanipour appropriately enough, as ‘left outside’ (p. 3). First-person narratives, for all their faults, are the only means to get inside the private sphere.

Using film

Housing is something that is personal to us, even as we know it is a common and shared experience. Things that are so personal, and which frame our actions, are commonly experienced impressionistically. We gain only glimpses of their full significance: we may on occasions stop to reflect on where we are or on what we have done; in times of crisis or trauma we may be forced to bear down on important places and times in our lives; major shifts in our lives make us look back at ourselves. In all these situations we may recall places, faces and things that have been significant and which come out of the sheer commonality of our ordinary experience. But there is no consistent narrative, and no logical development: there are merely scenes, played before a consistent background.

Such an understanding of the manner in which we relate to our housing suggests some care with the methods of investigation. In particular, what means have we to understand this impressionistic sense of recall we have? It seems to me that this approach needs to make recourse to sources capable of capturing this impressionistic sense. The crucial elements here are time and space: our impressions are time-bound, yet they also connect to a particular space or place; they are located to the specific. What we remember are specific spaces at a particular given time. This notion has been honed by Bakhtin into his concept of the chronotope. He defines this concept (which literally means ‘time-space’) as ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 84). The artist aims to connect time and space into one, and where it works well, ‘Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ (p. 84). What this meant for Bakhtin was that questions of the self could only be dealt with when seen as questions of specific location (Synessios, 2001). Our sense of self, or our history, is also our sense of time and place, and this is always specific.

6 Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope is useful and one that need not be restricted to literature. As Synessios (2001) has suggested, this concept was influential on the films Tarkovsky and, in particular, Mirror (1974)3. This film is concerned specifically with the locating of memory, of remembering the places of childhood. This shows that we can extend Bakhtin’s concept beyond literature and to other areas of artistic endeavour. Indeed one might suggest that film is particularly suitable for this fusing of space and time, with its attempt, as Tarkovsky (1986) himself saw it, to stop time. Film is an artistic medium specifically intended to hold up time and to create impressions using time and space. I have therefore used film as one of my main sources, in addition to personal impressions and general critique.

This impressionistic quality gives film the capability of using place to interiorise. It can be used to show emotions and to link them to a particular context. Places can, as it were, act as a mirror to our feelings: they can set the mood by indicating feelings such as fear (for example, Panic Room (2001), see King, 2004a) and loss (Three Colours: Blue (1993), see King, 2004b). We can connect this again to Bakhtin who suggested that time could be ‘full’, and that an artist could make use of the pregnant possibilities offered by linking time and place. What this means is that time, when linked to a specific place, connects the past and future with the present. The space does not merely contain the here and now, but resonates with our past and offers us some prospect for the future. Synessios (2001) suggests that Tarkovsky captured this sense of the fullness of time in Mirror, where he uses recollection and memory, dreams and visions along with contemporary dialogue. He uses time to the full, so that it includes all potentialities and maximises the emotional and spiritual symbolism for the viewer.

But this still leaves the question of how we might ‘read’ the film, or indeed how we approach any film as a means of understanding housing and the built environment. Films, regardless of their autobiographical content, are still essentially fictions; they are artistic impressions of the world and not the world itself seen directly in the manner of the social scientist. Of course, it is a commonplace to state that all experience is mediated and thus there is no such thing as pure objectivity. But this does not allow us to dismiss the distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’.

One way through this is to agree with Bruner (2002) when he suggests that a fictional narrative can give ‘shape to things in the real world and often bestows on them a title to reality’ (p. 8). Fictions create a sense of reality by pulling together elements of our experience and imagination and giving them a palpable quality. But fictions can also have a transgressive quality, which allows us to see things in a dramatically different way from that of received wisdom, expert opinion or political consensus (Shonfield, 2000). We can see this in the reception of Cathy Come Home (1966), which helped to challenge the established view on housing by picturing the reality of homelessness and the break-up of families that resulted. Cathy Come Home was a fiction, and furthermore it portrayed things outside of the experience of the majority. Yet it came to be seen as exhibiting a particular ‘truth’ about British society in the 1960s.

But Shonfield (2002) argues that we can use film in less direct ways. First we can observe that space is often part of the narrative, and it can be seen as a key element in what drives the narrative forward, as can be seen in films such as Panic Room or The Others (2001). These houses, like the proverbial haunted house of old horror films,

3 I have considered this film in King (2005)

7 are not merely background to the action, but are characters in the films themselves. But perhaps of more relevance to our discussion here is a second aspect: Shonfield suggests that we can often understand those realities that are ineffable and hidden from view through symbols and allegories. The work of film, as with other fictions, is therefore to pull out the meaning of these unutterable and unseen realities. This is very much what a director like Tarkovsky seeks to do in his films through highlighting an object to express its particular significance, as we can see with his frequent placing of a mirror or the use of reflections in a scene. Film can dwell on the specificity of things to suggest something that is universal and meaningful beyond its particular reference in a scene.

What this suggests is that we should not approach the analysis of film with any preconceived theoretical framework. As Bordwell and Carroll (1996) have suggested, film studies is dominated by what they refer to as ‘Grand Theory’ (p. xiii), by which they mean analysis derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian structuralism. The problem of such as an approach is that a film is always read according to a predetermined model rather than seeing the film as presenting a particular problem or vision of its own. Bordwell and Carroll therefore argue for a piecemeal approach to the study of film that does not eschew theory as such, but which starts with the film rather than the theory. Their position is corroborated by Mulhall (2002) who also argues against addressing a particular film with any preconceived theory. The problem of approaching a film from a particular theoretical standpoint, be it Lacanian or anything else, is that the film is seen merely ‘as a cultural product whose specific features served to illustrate the truth of that theory – as one more phenomenon the theory rendered comprehensible’ (p. 7). Mulhall, in his study of the Alien films, seeks to develop an approach in which a film is seen as being capable of saying something substantial for itself. Accordingly, he argues that the Alien films are capable of making their own statements on philosophical issues such as embodiment, gender and what it is to be human. Therefore instead of using film to justify a theory, we should try to read a film as an entity in itself. We should seek to understand a film on its own terms as having something substantial to say to us.

An example: housing as a stage

Where films feature houses or housing they tend, perhaps naturally, to be dramatic. Perhaps the most notable (and only?) film about housing policy is Cathy Come Home (1966), which shows the degrading consequences of homelessness and bureaucratic insensitivity. When we look at houses instead of policy, the results are equally dramatic, for example, in Panic Room (2001), which depicts a woman and her daughter trapped in a house by three burglars (King, 2004a).

Perhaps the most common example of the use of houses in the history of cinema is the haunted house, a trope discussed by Vidler (1994) in his study of the architectural uncanny. Following Freud, Vidler sees the uncanny as the familiar which returns to us in an unusual or abnormal manner. The haunted house is one such familiar object that turns out to be unhomely. This shift from the familiar to the unknown is significant in that it shows how a taken-for-granted object can quickly turn to horror, as in Poltergeist (1982) and The Others (2001).

8 Whilst this is an important use of housing, I wish to concentrate on examples where housing is used, but not as a dramatising element. Rather I want to consider the opposite of this, where housing is in the background, and is used as contrast or to add subtlety to a particular portrayal or situation. I wish to dwell on those examples where housing is in the background and is thus understated, and through this to show how housing resonates precisely when, or because, it is homely, rather than when it is uncanny. Housing is what we go home to when we are finished, and so it is appropriate to see it as familiar, and as background, where the story is not of housing, but in housing; and where the story is not told through housing, but where the dwelling merely plays a part. We might say that the house is a character, not in the forthright sense of the haunted house, but as a minor player whom we see initially as not essential to the plot, but who sets up a scene, provides the mood or qualifies a particular condition. It is where the dwelling is additive but not determining. In this manner, housing in film is as housing is within our lives: it forms an ordinary part of our lives that tells others something of us and sets up the scene in some way, but is not the reason for that scene itself (King, 2005). Housing, then, is in the background.

One particular example of this, and precisely because it uses an ordinary domestic situation to offset the supernatural, is Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000). This film concerns an apparently ordinary man, David Dunn, coming to terms with the fact that he is invulnerable. He lives in a typical home with his wife and son. His marriage is faltering and he and his wife are considering separating. Their son is desperate to keep them together and needs his father to be someone special. The first time we see Dunn is on a train returning to Philadelphia after a job interview in New York. The train crashes and Dunn is miraculously the sole survivor. The rest of the film is about his increasing awareness of his supernatural invulnerability and the uses to which it can be put. In this he is continually pushed by an exotic character, Elijah Price, who is convinced of Dunn’s powers.

Shyamalan, as in all his films4, uses colour symbolically and to represent particular moods. Price dresses in purple to show off his exoticism, whilst Dunn’s clothes are nondescript. The colours of Dunn’s family home are dull greens and browns, which emphasise their ordinariness. There is no hint of design in this house, only practicality and normality. The only bright thing we see in the house is an orange note stuck to the wall with the time and number of Dunn’s train. This contrasts so markedly with the prevailing décor that we cannot avoid its significance. The colour orange again denotes danger later in the film, when it is used for the overalls of the shopping mall maintenance man whom Dunn follows and who we find is a murderer and kidnapper. So the colour orange is used to alert us to an imminent danger. But in contrast, the Dunns’ home contains nothing special, nothing grabs the eye, and thus it operates as the opposite of the supernatural. It is this taken-for-grantedness and obviousness of the domestic which can so readily be used as background. The home is used precisely because it is nothing special. But this ordinariness is essential to the development of the plot, which hinges on the distinction between the normal and the abnormal, and the means by which we come to notice it.

A rather different example of this apparent incidental quality, which uses a dwelling to describe the psychology of the characters, is Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953). This is the story of two young lovers, Monika and Harry who, after Monika

4 See, in particular, his use of red as ‘bad’ and yellow as ‘good’ in The Village (2004).

9 has left home and Harry has lost his job, go off in a motor boat to the islands off the coast of Sweden for the summer. They are forced to return as summer ends and because Monika is pregnant. Their idyll does not last long into their marriage with Monika resenting the confinement of domesticity and motherhood, whilst Harry finds a good job and begins studying to be an engineer. Monika cannot accept her situation, whilst Harry can, and so the film ends with him literally holding the baby as Monika leaves.

The film is one of contrasts: between freedom from responsibility and the drudgery of commitment; between ideals and reality; and between order and mess. All of these contrasts are formed through the portrayal of domesticity. We see the contrast between the orderly nature of Harry’s aunt, who keeps Harry’s father’s house tidy, and tries to do the same later for Harry and Monika’s flat, and the disorder of Monika’s parents, with their rather squalid, cramped and noisy flat. Bergman also uses a disordered domestic environment to show Monika’s capabilities and interest in being a mother and housekeeper. What this disorder is meant to register is first, a lack of competence; but second, it also represents a lack of commitment. Monika is not prepared to accept that care is a permanent obligation and not merely a summer fancy: one must remain committed to specific others – husband and child – and to the broader society and its morals. We can suggest that these are represented by Harry’s aunt, with her sense of duty and civic responsibility shown in a scene with the registrar, where the aunt convinces him to let the two young people marry.

But what takes Bergman’s film beyond the quotidian, and which makes it a genuine cinematic statement, is that it also considers the idea of breaking out of domesticity. The two young lovers see no need for a proper dwelling, spending the summer on a boat. Yet this attempt is doomed, and we know it is as soon as Monika announces she is pregnant. At this point responsibility starts, and the couple have to return to domesticity: parenthood and climate make this inevitable. They seek to impose an order on their lives, to which Harry adapts, but Monika cannot. At the end of the film is one of Bergman’s greatest filmic gestures, when he has Monika (played by Harriett Andersen) challenge us directly, with a prolonged and provocative stare straight into the camera, daring us to criticise her, but almost forcing us to look away. This one scene transforms the entire film: prior to this moment we have seen Monika as flighty and perhaps insubstantial. But with this prolonged look she takes the initiative away from the viewer and challenges our opinion of her.

Monika’s provocative stare is contrasted with the last time we see Harry’s face. We see him reflected in a window as he holds up his daughter: we see his image as moderated, as mitigated by what is around him, and by the vicissitudes of the environment, whilst Monika proclaims her freedom. As if in his mind’s eye, we see Monika lying languidly on the boat and running naked to the sea. His is a look of wistful regret rather than of confrontation. We leave Harry as he walks off with his daughter, and we sense he will cope as a parent, even as his personal effects are being sifted over by bailiffs and carted off. Harry accepts the ordinary, with its swings, its opportunities and closing down of possibilities. Monika, on the other hand, cannot do this; she is always looking for the extraordinary, the next adventure, and we find this challenging and provocative, like her stare into the camera. We are left to speculate on whether Monika would succeed or ever settle, but we sense she will not.

10 Bergman’s use of the domestic rests on the ability of his audience to notice the ordinary and the exceptional: to be able to contrast the responsibilities of life with their opposite, and to come to some judgement about the main characters from this. Yet he also challenges these assumptions, directly through the stare of Monika, and by resisting the temptation of a ‘happy ending’ where she sees the ‘error’ of her ways. Bergman manages to convince us of Monika’s allure even as we see her as deceitful and neglectful. He does this in an entirely naturalistic manner that does not make use of any of his more metaphysical tricks in later films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and Persona (1966). Much of this naturalism is in the contrasts between the various domestic settings and what they tell us of the motivations and commitments of the main players. What Bergman plays on, therefore, is a commonly held conception of ‘how we live today’.

Again housing is in the background. Summer with Monika is ostensibly a tale of young love and its consequences. Yet it is also about commitment and acceptance. Harry finds he can accept what he has, and adapts, be it to life on a boat, to living rough and scavenging for food, or being a parent, finding a job and studying. It is Harry who breaks off from his studies to calm their daughter, whilst Monika ignores her. This is because Monika wants to be elsewhere: she is constantly looking for something other than what she has. She does not accept her role as wife and mother and cannot find accommodation in domesticity. All this is shown, I would suggest, through the manner in which Bergman sets up the physicality of his scenes – the unmade bed, the dirty clothes and the squalor of their tiny flat. So this is not a film about housing, but one that is able to use our conventionality about how we live to convey meaning to us.

A final film I wish to look at here is Dreyer’s film, Ordet (1954). This film centres on a family in rural Denmark. The family consists of Morten Borgen, the patriarch, and his three sons, Mikkel, Johannes and Anders. Mikkel, the eldest son, is married to Inger whose death and apparent resurrection are at the heart of the film. Johannes is a theology student driven mad and who now thinks he is the risen Christ. Much of the film is set within the farmhouse, and more particularly the large main room where meals are prepared and served. Much of the dialogue in the film has a formality to it, based as it is on strains within the family over faith (and its lack), love and madness. This formality is dependent on and conditioned by where it takes place. The apparent space in the dwelling expands and contracts according to the emotional ebb and flow of the film, as scenes move from small private rooms, to the large common space, and then outside to the windswept coastline.

In contrast to Bergman’s Summer with Monika, Dreyer’s Ordet is an obviously staged and stylised piece. Many of the scenes appear like a filmed play. There are obvious set-piece dialogues and scenes which are full of symbolic and philosophical meaning. Yet the film has an intensity and a motive that is enthralling, particularly in the second half of the film which shows Inger’s death in childbirth and her subsequent resurrection, apparently on the word of Johannes. The manner in which Dreyer stages the film emphasises the static quality of domesticity. There is a lack of movement, and we sense the solidity and permanence of artefacts and the spaces between them. These come to represent the spaces between the family members and with other villagers. The interior of the farmhouse is dominated by a large shared space where the family congregates for meals and to talk. We only get glimpses of other rooms.

11 The only other rooms we enter are Anders and Johannes’ shared bedroom in the opening shot of the film, and Mikkel and Inger’s room on several occasions, most notably when Inger is laid out in her coffin. On this occasion the room appears much larger and is very nearly empty of furniture apart from some chairs and the open coffin. Unlike the rest of the dwelling, in this scene the predominant colour is white – the curtains, the walls, and Inger’s gown. There is a sparseness here, but also a sense of freshness and purity, given by the diffused light seen entering the windows covered with white net curtains.

Dreyer’s use of space in this long final scene of the film is magnificent. It begins with openness and light, where we see the grieving family and friends congregating, and the priest saying his words over the coffin. Mikkel, who has lost his faith, is finally able to cry and show the fullness of his emotions at the loss of his wife. But as the scene develops with Johannes’ entrance and his summons to Inger to rise, the space becomes ever more enclosed so that all the audience can see is Inger and Mikkel. As we are opened up to the infinite by Johannes, through what purports to be the revealed word of God, we are shown its effects at the most personal level by this use of a close-up. By the complete reduction of any background, Dreyer emphasises the spiritual and the inner life which is reborn in both Inger and Mikkel, and so it is appropriate that the last words of the film are ‘Life … life’.

Ordet operates, therefore, through the use of confinement of space to create a sense of meaning and to heighten the symbolism. In another scene, the conversation between Morten and the tailor, Peter Petersen, over the possibility of Anders marrying Peter’s daughter, Anne, takes place in a bare and spartan room in Peter’s house, where there is no evidence of warmth. This is no room in which to compromise or to seek solace and sympathy from those certain of their views. Morten is from a different protestant sect to Peter and thus the match is initially declined (Indeed, Morten took some persuading initially to allow Anders to pursue the suit of Anne). The principles of the two men are too rigid to admit the prospect of compromise or accommodation, and thus their children seem fated to be kept apart. This dialogue takes place within a confined space cropped by the camera, and this merely emphasises the closed minds and heavy, portentous thoughts of the religiously dogmatic. We sense the rigidity of principle and the inability of the two men to compromise or shift ground in these surroundings. Both men exude sadness, almost as if they know the futility of a discussion where neither can give way. Of course, after the death of Inger, Peter agrees to the match. He does this amidst tragedy, but within the light, uncluttered room where Inger is laid out. This, by contrast to Peter’s house, is not a space that shows dogmatism or the limiting of possibility, and this is emphasised dramatically by Johannes’ words ordering Inger to rise up.

Dreyer uses a very limited space – a few interiors only – to put across complex philosophical and theological ideas on the nature of faith, tolerance and commitment. What the film demonstrates above all else, however, is the need for accommodation, and to accept the conditions and trauma of others. In doing so, we can be reconciled and see what joins us together instead of what separates us. The film is concerned with the rigidity of principles and the consequences of this: with what happens when abstractions instead of human emotions are enacted in human relationships. Yet the family patriarch comes to see the faults of his rigidity and starts to see beyond it. He does this by becoming aware of the qualities of his family, seeing them as individuals

12 with needs and feelings, and not as the subjects for principles, which, in any case, are not of their making. The film is about what keeps a home and family together; with the need for acceptance and how we are forced to try to achieve this if we are to survive and thrive.

Out of this discussion we can see that housing is not at the forefront of our lives, even as it provides the space in which we operate. What we see is housing that is meaningful not as an end in itself, be it as object of design or as an asset, but as a means that allows us to fulfil our own ends (Clapham, 2005; King, 1996, 2003). Yet it also demonstrates the centrality that housing has in our lives despite this background quality. It is the very ubiquity of housing and its common place or ordinary nature that gives it this importance, even as we feel able to ignore it. Indeed, as I have argued in my book The Common Place (King, 2005), it is this sense of the ordinary that is the particular quality which gives housing its meaning. The simple amenability of the dwelling is its principle virtue bringing with it a sense of stability, complacency and security. This is what I take Bachelard (1969) to mean when he sees the main purpose of the house as providing for a ‘protected intimacy’ (p. 5). This intimate protection cannot be provided in a deliberative and organised sense but through the regularities and predictabilities of the dwelling as part of what we take to be ordinary. In other words, as Cavell (1988) states, it is what we are in the midst of. Our dwelling and ourselves are, so to speak, all of a part, and so we can suggest that the manner in which we use the dwelling is demonstrative of its meaning for us.

Some limits

I see film as a useful and interesting way in which to consider certain aspects of housing, and one which opens up the field of housing studies to new possibilities. It allows us to dwell on notions of use and meaning, and to focus on the impressionistic qualities of housing as lived experience. It also concentrates us on the specific and the personal in a manner which would be hard to achieve through more positivistic methods. But this does not mean that there are no problems or concerns with this approach, and I want to conclude by considering these. My aim is not to deny that there are problems, nor is it my aim to discount them. What I hope to show is that the advantages outweigh the possible problems, provided we do not overreach ourselves or see this approach as doing more than it can.

The first point is to stress that I do not see this approach as being used instead of more traditional positivistic approaches to housing studies. Rather it should be seen as additive: it looks at something different from housing policy analysis, as well as seeing it in a different manner. The significance of this approach, along with other attempts to use literature and fiction in the built environment (Manzi, 2005; Shonfield, 2000), is that it allows us to consider what is personal and particular rather than what is general, abstract or aggregated. This is not to denigrate the latter approach, but rather to suggest that there is more to housing than building, and that what matters to most people is how they can use the one they have. Thus this is not an alternative but an addition to the methods open to housing researchers.

The second issue is that of academic rigour, and relates to questions of what procedures we might use and whether they can be described as in any sense as

13 scientific. What this boils down to, I would suggest, is whether, or how far, it is appropriate to use the approaches of the humanities to deal with what is normally seen as the province of the social sciences. However, it is precisely the humanities, and the speculative writing and thought on which they are based, that are best able to deal with the subjective and personal elements we are seeking to uncover. This, of course, does not answer the criticism, but it does throw it back on those who wish to limit the range and scope of the field of housing research.

What is more important, it seems to me, is how we choose the material we use to inform our analysis, and what we seek to use film for. All fictions are particular and are themselves subjective statements. We need to be aware of this and therefore not rely too much on one item or place too much emphasis on it. We need to pay attention to the quality of the film, to where a film is seen as a particularly powerful statement, be it Cathy Come Home or Blade Runner (1982)5; or indeed we may use a film because it is so popular and therefore has a wide resonance. However, it is inevitable that the choice of material on which to base an argument will itself be subjective and therefore open to question.

The final point to deal with, and which is perhaps the most common criticism of this approach, is that it is really something of an indulgence. Why, we might ask, should we look at films when we should be concerned with the homeless and other vulnerable groups? What is the point of this rather effete form of study when they are people on the streets? Instead, the argument runs, we should be concerned with collecting data, making representations to government and seeking to change things. But, of course, this presupposes that collecting data will change things and neglects who is funding a good deal of the research.

But I would suggest that this subjective approach to housing is not an indulgence in that it seeks to show what the significance of housing is, not as a series of abstract standards or as an anonymous stock of dwellings, but as something we see as meaningful and seek to use to fulfil our purposes. What this sort of research seeks to do is to show what housing is for, why we all need it and why we always will. And this, it seems to me, is a good reason to continue doing it.

5 A film which is seen as making some important statements about the nature of the city and urbanism generally.

14 Sources

Books and papers

Bachelard, G (1969): The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Books.

Bakhtin, M (1981): The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin, University of Texas Press.

Bordwell, D and Carroll, N (1996): ‘Introduction’, in Bordwell, D and Carroll, N (Eds.): Post- Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. xii-xvii.

Bruner, J (2002): Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cavell, S (1988): In the Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Clapham, D (2005): The Meaning of Housing: A Pathways Approach, Bristol, Policy Press.

Cooper Marcus, C (1995): Housing as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, Berkeley, Conari.

Kemeny, J (1992): Housing and Social Theory, London, Routledge.

King, P (1996): The Limits of Housing Policy: A Philosophical Investigation, London, Middlesex University Press.

King, P (2003): A Social Philosophy of Housing, Aldershot, Ashgate.

King, P (2004a): ‘The Room to Panic: An Example of Film Criticism and Housing Research’, Housing, Theory and Society, Vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 27-35.

King, P (2004b): Private Dwelling: Contemplating the Use of Housing, London, Routledge.

King, P (2005): The Common Place: The Ordinary Experience of Housing, Aldershot, Ashgate.

Madanipour, A (2003): Public and Private Spaces of the City, London. Routledge.

Manzi, T (2005): ‘Fact and Fiction in Housing Research: Utilizing the Creative Imagination’, Housing, Theory and Society, Vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 113-28.

Mulhall, S (2002): On Film, London, Routledge.

Shonfield, K (2000): Walls Have Feelings: Architecture, Film and the City, London, Routledge.

15 Synessios, N (2001): Mirror, London, I B Taurus.

Tarkovsky, A (1986): Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, Austin, University of Texas Press.

Turner, J (1972): ‘Housing as a Verb’, in Turner, J and Fichter, R (Eds.): Freedom to Build, New York, Macmillan, pp. 148-65.

Turner, J (1976): Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments, London, Marion Boyars.

Vidler, A (1994): The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press.

Films

Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott.

Cathy Come Home (1966), directed by Ken Loach.

Kitchen Stories (2003), directed by Bent Hamer.

Ordet (1954), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

The Others (2001), directed by Alejandro Amenábar.

Panic Room (2001), directed by David Fincher.

Persona (1966), directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Poltergeist (1982), directed by Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg.

Mirror (1974), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

The Seventh Seal (1957), directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Summer with Monika (1953), directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Three Colours: Blue (1993), directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Unbreakable (2000), by M. Night Shyamalan.

The Village (2004), by M. Night Shyamalan.

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