CINEPHILE vol. 3 no. 1 Spring/Summer, April 2007 Table of Contents
Editor’s Introduction 2 Contributors 3 Containing Their Rage Jennie Carlsten 4 The Global Social Problem Film Andrew DeWaard 12 Representations of Western Tourism in Cinema Tara Kolton 19 Interview With Filmmaker James Longley 28 War Films Without War Brenda Cromb 33 The Family Myth in Hollywood Slavoj Zizek 42 Medea’s Family Reunion Christine Evans 47 (Zombie) Revolution at the Gates R. Colin Tait 61 Book Reviews 71
CINEPHILE Vol. 3 No. 1, Spring/Summer Issue, June 2007.
ISSN: 1712-9265 CINEPHILE (formerly UBCinephile): The Film Studies Journal of The University of British Columbia Copyright: The University of British Columbia Film Program Publisher: The University of British Columbia Film Program
Editor: R. Colin Tait Faculty Advisor: Dr. Ernest Mathijs Program Administrator: Kate Castelo, Gerald Vanderwoude Original Art by: Alissa Staples
Editorial Board: Jennie Carlsten, Brenda Cromb, Andrew deWaard, Christine Evans, Tara Kolton, Renée Penney, Lindsay Steenberg. Special Thanks to: Lisa Coulthard, Zanna Downes, Christine Evans, Brian McIlroy, Ian Patton, Richard Payment, Dave Cooper, Bern Staples, Sarah Gay.
UBC Film Program Suite 235A Brock Hall Annex 1874 East Mall Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1 Canada tel: (604) 822-6037 fax: (604) 822-0508
www.film.ubc.ca/ubcinephile
Hollywood and Liberalism 1 Editor’s Note: Hollywood and Liberalism R. Colin Tait
“We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in ‘reality,’ and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
– Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, 2006
elcome to the third issue of Cinephile: The by recontextualizing it within industrial, theoretical and University of British Columbia’s Film Journal. historical terms. This endeavor entails repatriating and WOur mandate involves considering this cinematic dislodging the political connotations of the word within the zeitgeist, while challenging the basic assumptions which media as most often expressed in the historical conflation permeate our field. We consider film studies an important of “Commie” and “Pinko” respectively. It is imperative emerging discourse, particularly when we consider the that we clarify that this enterprise aims not at reviving the absolute dominance of visual culture in our society. Our now-defunct project of “political correctness” but rather current theme, “Hollywood and Liberalism,” follows our for precision about the words we speak (and images that we tradition of addressing topics which engage the pressing trade in), in addition to dealing with the meaning-effects of issues of film, while at the same time proving its ongoing these words and images. We propose that there needs to be relevance to society at large. space to let ideas breathe, and that this involves a nuanced In our shorthand culture, most often communicated discussion which exceeds either/or partisanship. As an through talking points, it seems natural to assume that exemplar of this mentality, the statement that anyone is either Hollywood and Liberalism are synonymous concepts. “with America or with the terrorists” only impoverishes the However, even a brief look at the history of Hollywood public sphere as it leaves room for only the one-dimensional demonstrates that the opposite is true. The institutional left and right positions, ignoring ahead, behind, up, and and systemic logic of “Hollywood” exists as a miniature down. The questioning of anything outside of the party lines version of U.S. Capital, embedded in the larger logic of Left and Right, replete with accusations which begin with of the increasing corporatization of society. Historical the empty signifier “anti” (American/Israeli/nationalist, etc.) events – ranging from the institutions self-censorship via only serves to greater undermine the idea of “freedom,” the repressive and draconian policies of the Hays Code, by limiting and censoring everything we do and say in a McCarthyism, and the increasing spread of Hollywood as the democratic society. dominant mode of world cinema – all speak to the essential We will illustrate this contemporary deadlock by fact of Hollywood’s hegemony, not to mention its inherently investigating film’s tangible industrial, ideological and conservative formal qualities. metaphorical contributions to perpetuating and dispelling It is the residents of Hollywood who perpetuate the these myths. Until these positions are clarified and redefined, myth of liberal Hollywood. The recent fundraising effort the current perception of both these discourses (conservative in Hollywood, where prominent Democratic presidential and liberal alike) are akin to the recent farcical (and scary) hopefuls kowtow to the “cultural elite,” does nothing to depiction of “The Jew” in Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Borat: separate the perception of this link, nor does the annual ritual Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of of the Academy Awards. If anything, the metalinguistic Kazakhstan, 2006. We propose that the rhetoric used to entity known as Hollywood more often represents its precise define both the liberal and the conservative is as absurdly opposite – a place where starlets get drunk and crash their propagandistic as Borat’s monstrous othering of “the Jew” as (electric) cars. We must further consider that the films which a mythical egg-laying beast with claws and horns. stand for Hollywood’s “liberal” efforts do not represent a We are incredibly fortunate to have one of the world’s significant fraction of the profits that Hollywood garners. prominent thinkers join us in our endeavor and are happy Rather, they accounted for a mere 5% of the total American to present a new article by Slavoj Žižek in this issue. I domestic gross. In short, we should recall that none of 2005’s cannot fully express my gratitude for this collegial gesture, Best Picture Academy Award nominees – which included the and thank Professor Žižek endlessly for his contribution to most unabashedly “liberal” films in recent history – none of our journal. It is only fitting that in an effort to clarify our these nominees even came close to cracking the top 20 box- positions within the field of public discourse that we follow office earners for that year. Professor Žižek’s recent imperatives to think before we Dealing specifically with the semantics of “liberalism,” speak, read before we write and learn before we do either. our goal is to disentangle the term’s popular meaning
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Contributors
Jennie Carlsten received her M.A. in Film Studies from the University of British Columbia, and her B.A. in Communications (Media Studies and Film Concentration) and Political Science from the University of Iowa. Her research concerns include audience reception and spectatorship, ethnic representation, political identity, and memory construction. Jennie is particularly interested in Irish and Northern Irish cinema.
Brenda Cromb completed her Honours B.A. in English and Cinema Studies at the Univeristy of Toronto. Currently, she is an M.A. Candidate at UBC. She recently presented a paper on Maggie Cheung and transnational stardom at the 2007 FSAC Graduate Colloquium. Other recent work has included papers on Takashi Miike’s Audition and on melodrama in the films of Pedro Almódovar. Brenda plans to complete her degree in 2008.
Andrew deWaard Andrew deWaard is an M.A. Candidate in Film Studies at the University of British Columbia. His broad research area is popular/consumer/celebrity culture and the television/music/film industries that (re)produce it, viewed from a political-economic lens. Intertextuality, Steven Soderbergh, Medium Theory, and Paul Virilio especially tickle his fancy. His latest work is “Joints and Jams: Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur,” in The Spike Lee Reader (forthcoming).
Christine Evans received her Masters degree in Film Studies from the University of British Columbia and her Bachelor’s degree in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto. She is currently undertaking her Ph. D. in Film Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where her research focuses on Slavoj Žižek’s unique contributions to film theory. She has published articles on shame and the lamella, psychoanalytic structures of belief, aphanisis and narrational strategies in cinema, the work of Slavoj Žižek, and the ‘ethics’ of representation. Her research interests include psychoanalysis and cinema and the philosophical comprehensions and expressions of love and theology. She thinks that baby ducks are really cute!
Tara Kolton graduated from Rutgers University, 2004, with a B.A. in English (with a concentration in Cinema Studies) and is currently a M.A. candidate in Film Studies at the University of British Columbia. Tara recently attended the 2007 FSAC Graduate Colloquium where she delivered her paper, “Traversing the Internal: Metaphysical Landscapes in Contemporary Cinema.” Her research interests include French cinema, film music and sound, and transcendental style in cinema.
Alissa Staples is a painter, translator, and illustrator who received her B.F.A. in Studio Art at UBC. In her illustrations for this issue of “Cinephile,” she explored the various styles of sequential art and a merging of both traditional and digital painting media. She lives in North Vancouver.
Lindsay Steenberg is a doctoral candidate at the University of East Anglia under the supervision of Professor Yvonne Tasker. Her dissertation is concerned with the representation of female investigators and forensic science in contemporary crime thrillers on film and television. She received her B.A. from Queen’s University at Kingston and her M.A. from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests focus on gender and violence within the contexts of postfeminist and postmodern media culture.
R. Colin Tait earned his Honours. B.A. in Cinema Studies at The University of Toronto and is currently an M.A. Candidate in Film Studies at the University of British Columbia. Colin’s research interests include The Crime Film, Nostalgia, Transnational Cinema models and Contemporary American Film. His recent works include analyses of I ♥Huckabees (UBCinephile, 2006), The Royal Tennenbaums (FSAC Graduate Colloquium, 2006), Schizopolis (FSAC Conference 2007) in addition to essays on Ocean’s 11 and David Lynch. Currently, Colin is completing his thesis entitled “Assassin Nation: Theorizing the Conspiracy Film in the Early 21st Century.” His essay “Politics, Class and Allegory in Inside Man” will be appearing in The Spike Lee Reader (forthcoming).
Slavoj Žižek is a Senior Reseacher in the Department of Philosophy, University of Lubljana, Slovenia, and Codirector of the Center for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. His many books include, The Parallax View, Enjoy Your Symptom!, The Metastases of Enjoyment, For They Know Not What They Do and The Sublime Object of Ideology.
Hollywood and Liberalism 3 Containing Their Rage: Anger and the Liberal Cinema
Jennie Carlsten
“Anger concerns the inadmissible, the intolerable, and a refusal…Without a phenomenon of current Liberal culture: the disavowal anger, politics is accommodation and influence peddling, and to write of politics without anger is to traffic with the seductions of writing.” of anger and the discomfort with the status of anger as an – Jean-Luc Nancy, La Comparution (1991) inevitable, and indeed necessary, component of individual and communal recovery. Often ignored or elided, anger - “Disappointed is a lover’s word. What about rage?” specifically, the expression and containment of anger - is in – Tobin Keller (Sean Penn); The Inerpreter (2005) fact the organizing principle of these films. The incomplete attempts to deny and defuse anger are symptomatic of number of films produced and distributed in the a wider tendency in American, and especially Liberal U.S. during the years of the Bush administration American, culture, which increasingly views anger A – films which have been identified as “Liberal” as a retrograde, undesirable force to be combated by by those critics and pundits inclined to assign such labels progressively-minded individuals. Anger is a troublesome – have revolved around the crux of personal anger and and uncomfortable concept within the Liberal camp, even public injustice. While films such as The Constant Gardener as the “angry Liberal” is attacked from without by both the (Meirelles, 2005), 25th Hour (Lee, 2003), and The Interpreter media and conservative spokespeople. (Pollack, 2005) are clearly inheritors of a tradition that Hollywood has, of course, long been argued to possess includes earlier Hollywood films like On the Waterfront a liberal bias. Whether there is any validity to such a claim (Kazan, 1954), Twelve Angry Men (Lumet, 1957), and To is a matter that has been dealt with elsewhere and will no Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962), the formal devices and doubt continue to be debated. What is certainly true is that thematic contradictions of these more recent films illuminate “Liberal” has meant different things in different times and
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 the nature of the “Liberal film” has undergone fundamental than this, we must consider a cultural climate that disallows changes. For the purposes of this discussion, I am most liberal anger. Within this climate, a Democratic presidential interested in the shift that has occurred in the Bush-era, candidate effectively loses the race the minute he loses his post-invasion, hybridised Hollywood-indie-international temper, as Howard Dean famously did. Activist mother milieu. At the heart of this shift is a reorientation vis-à- Cindy Sheehan, her son killed in Iraq, is seen by many as vis anger. Recent Liberal filmmaking reflects an extreme an embarrassment for her refusal to suppress her fury and discomfort with anger; The Interpreter, 25th Hour, and grieve quietly. And when rape victim Liz Seccuro receives
“Within a social context that promotes forgiveness and positivity as fundamentals of personal happiness and spiritual fulfillment, the Liberal code encourages followers to view the wounds of history with an eye to reconciliation.”
The Constant Gardener provide just a few examples of an emailed confession from her unprosecuted attacker, 25 this discomfort and of the Liberal cinema’s tensions and years later, the public debates her right to justice on chat contradictions. How these tensions and contradictions are boards and in the media, many demanding that she ‘let it go’ managed and expressed is largely a question of form, and and forgive her assailant.2 within the recent Liberal narrative cinema, it becomes Robert A.F. Thurman, in Anger (the fifth book in an possible to identify a subset of films that together might be Oxford University series on the Seven Deadly Sins), both called a disorderly Liberal cinema.1 describes and endorses the predominant Western liberal Within a social context that promotes forgiveness and perspective on anger, a perspective which has shaped the positivity as fundamentals of personal happiness and American Liberal ethos. Thurman portrays anger as a spiritual fulfillment, the Liberal code encourages followers socially and personally destructive force, and advocates a to view the wounds of history with an eye to reconciliation. Buddhist-influenced spiritual attack on anger in individuals Less happily, in its attempts to promote compromise, and in society. He argues that anger, once viewed in both tolerance and compassion, the code suggests that there is Eastern and Western cultures as deadly (e.g., a mortal sin) an enlightened way to remember, grieve, and recover from and associated with hell, unfortunate reincarnations, or loss, both as a community and as an individual. In so doing, other eternal agonies, has lost much of its overtly spiritual the code denies the productive role of anger in moving power: anger “is not really thought of in the contemporary individuals to action and restoring the injured self. religious West as that serious a problem” (Thurman, 17). In early 2007, amid recognized opposition to the war in The associations with the soul have been replaced, says Iraq and following the November 2006 elections that put Thurman, with an understanding of anger as a negative Democrats in power in the House, there is an undeniable emotion; concerns are no longer spiritual, but health- sense of frustration with the Bush administration and the oriented. Thurman goes so far as to argue that “…folks are attendant lies and misinformation. Liberal anger has been fond of anger…” and he decries the attempts by modern building in the face of Bush’s foreign policy, attacks on Western women and minorities to harness anger as a tool civil rights at home and abroad, and the widely perceived against oppression (18). Despite Thurman`s concern that arrogance and abusiveness of the administration. While his is a minority view in a society that does not take anger this may come as no surprise to many observers, what is seriously enough, his propositions – anger is dangerous to surprising is the stunted quality of this anger. The public both physical and spiritual health; anger is not a tool but response seems muted and insufficient. One might ask why a crutch – are more widely reflected in the contemporary individual anger has not translated into greater collective American Liberal rhetoric. action. The rage seen elsewhere in the world is expressed Thurman goes on to compare this holistic view to the with far less vehemence within the borders of the United view of anger presented in certain streams of Eastern States. spiritual thought – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism – which Cynicism or defeatism might explain some of this. More propose “enlightenment” as the evolution out of anger
1 The word “disorderly” here will, I hope, invoke multiple meanings, as these films are both “lacking regular or logical order or arrangement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College Edition, 1985) and “turbulent or unruly; fractious or undocile” (Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, 3rd Edition, 1995). 2 “Rape Victim Seeks Long Path to Justice”. CBS News, February 24, 2007 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/24/ap/national/ mainD8NGCND00.shtml
Hollywood and Liberalism 5 wherein you can love not only your friends but also and equally your emerging field of “Happiness Studies”), and spiritualism. enemies, wanting them all to be as happy as you, at the extreme end of the “The problem,” explains Ehrenreich, virtuous circle of mutual surrender beyond not only hells of fire but also temporary heavens of superficial pleasure, in the supreme bliss of freedom for anyone with a lingering loyalty to secular rationalism, is that beyond all dualities such as self and other (39). the prescriptions don’t stop at behavior. Like our country’s ambient Protestantism, the Cult of Positivity demands not only acts but faith. It’s not Thurman asserts that modern Western individuals, by enough to manifest positivity through a visibly positive attitude; you must adopting this evolutionary practice, can achieve physical, establish it as one of the very structures of your mind, whether or not it is social, and spiritual contentment. justified by the actual circumstances (Ehrenreich, 10)
“There is an obvious tension between the ‘Cult of Positivity’ and the anger, fear, and apprehension felt by individual citizens. This tension emerges, unsurprisingly, in the cinema.”
ilm and cultural criticism, where they address the This positivity means not only hoping for the best, presence or absence of anger at all, tend to treat anger forgiving one’s enemies, or putting one’s faith in the inherent Fas though it were interchangeable with violence. goodness of others; but more insidiously, in demanding such Predictably, Thurman likewise confuses anger with hope, faith, and forgiveness from others. Ehrenreich quotes violence in his discussion, and sets up a false opposition Martin Seligman, a major proponent of positive psychology, which places anger against love and compassion. Finally, as conceding that such positivity is only possible in nations Thurman discusses anger in terms of addictive behaviour. that “are wealthy and not in civil turmoil and not at war.” This conception of anger – as something natural and (ibid.) Confusingly, Seligman seems to intend that the U.S. understandable, yet at the same time, a weakness to be be included in this grouping. conquered because of its dangers to physical, psychic, There is an obvious tension between the “Cult of and social health and harmony – has come to dominate Positivity” and the anger, fear, and apprehension felt by progressive thinking about this complex emotion. individual citizens.4 This tension emerges, unsurprisingly, in Far from being ‘fond of anger,’ Liberals (and the Liberal the cinema. Within this climate, the so-called “Liberal” films cinema) are fearful and distrustful of the concept. Anger, of Hollywood and independent cinema are notable for their along with a gamut of other ‘negative emotions,’ is seen as engagement with the notions of anger and reconciliation. hazardous not only to individual health, but to the liberal Films like Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000), Babel (Iñárritu, 2006), vision. Increasingly, the refusal of anger is treated as a The Constant Gardener, The 25th Hour, The Interpreter, 21 natural component of the progressive Liberal worldview.3 Grams (Iñárritu, 2003), The Life of David Gale (Parker, The conception of anger as a wholly negative force is rarely 2003), and Syriana (Gaghan, 2005), to name a few, have questioned, although Barbara Ehrenreich has recently, and been identified (or more pejoratively, accused) as Liberal refreshingly, touched on it with a critical look at the main filmmaking. stream view of personal happiness. Ehrenreich describes In each, a wounded protagonist navigates disillusionment, the current of over-reliance on forgiveness and optimism loss, and the defeat of ideals, in service of the film’s as a “Cult of Positivity”; a tide that encompasses the self- ostensible Liberal agenda. To varying degrees these films improvement industry, corners of academia (such as the are critical of the U.S. Administration, as well as being anti-
3 In considering whether a Liberal worldview necessarily demands such a conception of anger (I argue that it does not), one might turn to the work George Lakoff has done in defining the core principles of the Liberal American ethos. In electoral terms, argues Lakoff, the most important points of identification are values and cultural stereotypes. Together, these compose a Liberal model of the word, what Lakoff calls a “nurturant parent” model centered around values of empathy and responsibility. For a fuller discussion of the Liberal model, see, e.g., Lakoff’s Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. 4 Of course, the rejection of an enforced positivity can also be found in the model of survivor therapy put forward by therapists such as Judith Herman. Herman identifies three stages to recovery: the establishment of safety; remembrance and mourning; and reconnection with ‘ordinary’ life. In the stage of remembrance and mourning, the individual tells the story of his or her trauma. The goal is not catharsis or exorcism, but integration. The action of organizing and narrating one’s story – through the (highly cinematic) techniques of flooding or testimony – permits that integration. The link between narrative, anger, and recovery is explicit; in this second stage, the individual expresses rage and chooses how to remember and grieve on his or her own terms. Resistance to mourning, explains Herman, can appear as “…a fantasy of magical resolution through revenge, forgiveness, or compensation” (Herman, 189). If the revenge fantasy arises from helplessness and imagines a restoration of power, the forgiveness fantasy is just another attempt at empowerment. The survivor “imagines that she can transcend her rage and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love” (ibid).
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 corporate, anti-death penalty, pro-environment, anti-U.S. anger, particularly in its inability to recognize or reconcile aggression, and/or anti-war in general or specific terms. They the contradictions in its own position. Ultimately, the film’s take a social problem perspective on crime and a sympathetic ideological posturing disturbs, not because it is insincere, but view of immigration rights and minority concerns. Where because it is hollow and self-defeating. they suggest solutions, they tend to favour Democratic The Interpreter deals with similar subject matter to the policies. While some L/liberals might in fact wish to distance rest of the Bush-era Liberal dramas. Silvia (Nicole Kidman) themselves from the particulars of these films, the consensus is a U.N. interpreter, an idealistic woman raised in the – in the form of critical reviews, media promotion, and fictional African nation of Motobo. It is gradually revealed
“At the heart of this dichotomy lies our discomfort with anger, our insistence on the silver lining which is the triumph of the human spirit, on the containment of rage, and our desire to view even the most horrific events as opportunities for forgiveness and personal redemption”
audience discourse – ensures their Liberal designation. that Silvia has a history of revolutionary political activity The immediate post-9/11 tendency towards escapism before her arrival in the U.S. and her apparent conversion has given way slowly to what Mark Cousins calls a “new to mainstream Liberal politics. In her capacity as a U.N. engagement with reality” (Cousins, 2006). This reality, it employee, Silvia overhears a threat to Matoban President should be noted, remains somewhat removed; while films Edward Zuwani, the genocidal dictator responsible for the like Crash (Haggis, 2004) and World Trade Center (Stone, deaths of her family. Zuwani, it is explained, is visiting the 2006) deal directly with recent America, more frequently, the U.N. in an attempt to gain sympathy and avoid international Liberal films consider events at a remove, geographically or trial for his crimes against humanity. Silvia’s dark personal temporally, using ‘other’ realities to comment on the present. history – including the loss of her family and her romantic While Cousins praises the increased political involvement of and political involvement with Zuwani’s revolutionary both Hollywood and independent cinema, post-9/11, Slavoj opponent – makes her not only an ambivalent witness, but Žižek decries the “abstention from the political” that marks a likely suspect in a plot against the dictator. Tobin Keller the same films; by obscuring the cause behind events, the (Sean Penn) is the Secret Service agent who begins by films retreat into abstraction (Žižek, 2006). Both points are investigating the plot and subsequently becomes Silvia’s instructive. In fact, there is a dichotomy within this Liberal confidant and protector. Tobin has suffered a traumatic loss cinema, which approaches the political even as it shies of his own: his unfaithful wife was recently killed in an away. At the heart of this dichotomy lies our discomfort auto accident caused by her lover. Their anger provides a with anger, our insistence on the silver lining which is the shared motivation and connection for Silvia and Tobin, both triumph of the human spirit, on the containment of rage, of whom, it is suggested, have withdrawn into isolation and and our desire to view even the most horrific events as passivity. opportunities for forgiveness and personal redemption. The Some of the film’s ideological murkiness arises from its Liberal films manage to do what is not permitted elsewhere: indecision about Silvia’s character. On the one hand, she they are pissed off, and they say so. Ultimately, though, is set up as the moral centre of the film. “She is the U.N.,” Hollywood demands not merely or necessarily closure or says another character, and certainly Silvia is presented as the happy ending, but containment. Anger is expressed, but a model for a pro-United Nations, internationalist, liberal it is also harnessed, controlled, and finally dissipated. To a citizen of the world. Sure, she has engaged in violent acts and great extent, how successfully the films are able to engage in been associated with unsavoury characters in the past, but this pursuit is matched by their use of disordered narrative Silvia is now older, wiser, and craves what she calls “quiet structures diplomacy”. In the film’s heavy-handed climax, she forces Zuwani, at gunpoint, to read from his own autobiography’s mong the Liberal films named above, The dedication: “the gunfire around us makes it hard to hear.” Interpreter is perhaps the one most aptly labelled a And yet – the point is precisely this: Silvia achieves at A‘Hollywood’ film, in terms of its production, cast, gunpoint what she could not as a quiet diplomat, not only and crew as well as in its adherence to classical Hollywood’s coming to terms with her past by confronting Zuwani stylistic conventions. The Interpreter, moreover, embodies and averting his assassination, but even, the film absurdly Hollywood’s unhappy relationship with Liberal anger. It suggests, forcing the dictator to confront his own troubled is the clearest example of the accepted Liberal stance on conscience.
Hollywood and Liberalism 7 The Interpreter disguises its ambivalence about Silvia’s of actual justice for the Matobans goes unaddressed; clearly, motivations and value system within a conventional thriller what counts here is that it has brought some closure to Silvia, plot, positioning her as a familiar femme fatale whose “real” allowing her to exorcise her personal anger and finally heal. identity is part of the mystery – is she the vulnerable heroine This closing sequence is followed by an epilogue in which or the dangerous villianess of the piece? This, in turn, Tobin names his own dead wife, and the two mourners part reduces Tobin to a conventional hero/patsy figure, and the ways. The disagreement within the film itself reflects the film to an action-thriller-whodunnit, rather than following very real struggle played out all over the world in the wake through on the emotional and political complexities at which of genocidal and repressive regimes: what does it mean to it gestures. forgive and forget; what is the difference between mourning
“In their use of flashback and disordered narrative, the disorderly cinema questions our memory of events, showing the distance between reality and the figuring of events.”
The film’s ambivalence about anger and its place in and wallowing; how should people commemorate their recovery is apparent too, in its regard for the invented losses? The constant play in the film between the words Matoban tradition of the “forgiveness ritual”. With “dead” and ”gone” underscores the film’s own uncertainty. considerable condescension, the Matoban Ku are suggested to be closer to enlightenment, their traditional ways holding he Interpreter uses not only conventional valuable lessons for the cynical Westerners. Silvia explains characterization but conventional editing, in a mode to Tobin that through the forgiveness ritual, the Ku are able of linear storytelling that distances the events of the to mourn their dead, release their anger, and move on. The T filmic present from those of the past. The overall effect is ritual involves binding an accused killer, and dropping him one of reflection on, rather than interrogation of, the past. into the water; the family of the killer’s victim may then Looking at a photograph of her younger, revolutionary self, choose to either save the killer or let him drown. If the family Silvia is able to say “that’s not me.” The form of the film lets the offender die, says Silvia, “they’ll have justice but reinforces its thematic disavowal of anger. Conversely, other spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save Liberal films seem to insist “that IS me/you/us,” using form him, if they admit that life isn’t always just, that very act can to draw explicit connections between past and present, anger take away their sorrow. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.” and recovery, loss and the responsibility to take action. In Her speech could come straight from a self-help bestseller, these films, the use of flashback and disordered chronology in its insistence on forgiveness and its condemnation of any dominates. (lazy/unenlightened/morally suspect) mourner who makes Flashback and framing devices have been particularly the wrong choice. “Justice” and “recovery” are presented as associated in Hollywood cinema with film noir and incompatible events. Tobin’s acknowledgment that he cannot melodrama, where they lend themselves handily to forgive either his wife or the rival who caused her death psychoanalytic readings. By returning the viewer to the past – “not a very Ku thing to do” – is a simultaneous admission along with the mourner/victim, flashback becomes a means that he is in need of some serious Liberal intervention. to demonstrate the process of recovery. In this way, flashback Interestingly, the film reveals an internal disquiet when it replicates the second stage of recovery described by Herman rejects another piece of the Ku tradition: the refusal to name et al, shaping past events in a meaningful narrative, and may the dead. When Tobin rightly identifies Silvia’s anger over function as flooding or testimony, parallel the ‘talking cure,’ the deaths of her family, she silences him with a finger to his and invoke Freudian models of associative memory. In the lips: “we don’t name the dead.” Naming the dead, she later recent Liberal films, flashback may be used quite simply, as explains, is seen as an obstacle to moving forwards. This, of in The Interpreter, where it serves (in one isolated usage) course, is in direct opposition to Silvia’s brother Simon and hermeneutically to unlock an enigma and simultaneously his compulsive list-making and naming; ultimately, Silvia aid and demonstrate Tobin`s interpretation of events. obtains the notebooks in which Simon has methodically Increasingly, though, the Liberal cinema uses flashback, listed the names, ages, and cause of death of Zuwani’s bifurcated storylines, and anachrony to create interrogative victims. Silvia adds Simon’s name and, in anticipation of and critical relationships to history, marking a distinct shift her meeting with Zuwani, her own. As the camera tracks from the expository use of such techniques in classical down the empty halls of the U.N. and over the rooftops and Hollywood as well as from the poetics of modernism. skyline of New York, Silvia’s disembodied voice reads out Maureen Turim, writing on the use of flashback in cinema the names. Whether this act of naming brings about any sort prior to the 1990s, points to certain ideological implications
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 of the flashback. Both heightening viewer awareness of relationship. structure and producing extreme identification by shortening Addressing the trend of “movies…that move forward the emotional distance between viewer and protagonist, a dramatically by going backward in time”, David Denby narrative relayed through flashback most frequently links points to Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) as the archetype, and discrete events in a causal pattern, endows events with claims that Tarantino explicitly created an impression of the an aspect of fatalism, and promotes moral didacticism. “eternal present” that nevertheless links moments through History, presented in this way, is further subjectified and their causal impact on one another (Denby, 2007). Denby “urges us to assume that the subjective reaction of a fictional goes on to contrast the use of the disordered narrative in individual somehow constitutes a collective subjectivity, a films like Pulp Fiction with the use in later films, including
“Most significantly, perhaps, the use of flashback and, more generally, disordered narration, effectively counters in these films the suppression of history perpetuated by the Conservative discourse.”
shared experience” (Turim, 103). Modernist filmmaking, those mentioned here. He rightly points out that the effect though, has frequently used flashback to interrogate those is quite different, although his analysis of that difference same effects. The new class of Liberal films owes as much is, I believe, mistaken. In Babel, for instance, Denby finds to the Modernist inversion as to the models of film noir the disjointed nature of events to be “hostile” to the viewer; and melodrama. Clearly, flashback in the Liberal films is “the editing withholds information, not so much to create investigational and confessional, but it is also used ironically suspense as to uncouple the intent of an act from its result” and self-consciously to call into question the viewer’s own (ibid.). In fact, this hostility might be seen as a deliberate relationship with and understanding of history and memory. effect, not the unintended and unfortunate consequence In the Liberal films, flashback often conveys a “certain Denby identifies. More accurately, this hostility is a tone of critique and retrospective guilt” such as that manifestation of anger, not (only) with the viewer, but on Turim identifies in the Hollywood traditions of noir and behalf of the viewer and expressing in form that which the melodrama (122). More essentially, the disorderly Liberal narrative struggles to contain. cinema employs the technique to invoke the audience’s The Constant Gardener and 25th Hour are but two sense of irony and to place emphasis on the absences in the examples of the disorderly Liberal cinema, and provide narrative, those pieces of memory and history which are some alternative to the Hollywood model of The Interpreter. not known or explained, or for which our explanations must Each uses the device of the flashback to present the hero’s be called into question. Most significantly, perhaps, the personal loss as an enigma to be solved through the gradual use of flashback and, more generally, disordered narration, accumulation of clues; on one level, the declared mystery effectively counters in these films the suppression of history (who betrayed one protagonist; what is the conspiracy hidden perpetuated by the Conservative discourse. Nowhere is from the other) and on another level, the recovery of the two this desire to suppress history more evident than in the men as they move from passivity to anger and action. rhetoric surrounding the terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the subsequent U.S. response. It has been observed that the he Constant Gardener, directed by Fernando isolation of “9/11” as a singular date, alongside the use of the Meirelles and based on a John LeCarre novel, tells the term “Ground Zero,” suggests that the story of the present Tstory of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat stationed in political reality begins with the attack on the Twin Towers. Africa. His wife Tessa has been murdered and in his grief, Our rhetorical framework conveniently “posits this day as he begins to look into the circumstances of her death. Tessa one that is simultaneously without history and the beginning is an idealist and an activist, who may or may not have been of history.” (Beckman, 2004) In the disordered films of an unfaithful wife; she died while investigating the actions the Liberal cinema, we are carried beyond finite points of Western pharmaceutical companies in Africa. Justin is and singular events, unfixing the narrative and suggesting the “constant gardener” of the film’s title: loyal and placid, that there are multiple places at which to begin to tell the more inclined to parroted speech than action, unwilling to stories of our national and personal disasters. The careful take risks on behalf of others. While Justin is shown to be and ‘rational’ ordering of events gives way to an enraged essentially a kind and moral person, he is not a whistleblower spilling forth, much as, in an intimate argument, speakers or activist. His political inaction is paralleled by a lack might jump between the immediate offense and that varied of demonstrative emotion; Justin admires but is also slights and insults accumulated throughout the course of a embarrassed by his wife’s outspoken and passionate ways.
Hollywood and Liberalism 9 Viewing Tessa’s mutilated corpse, Justin shows no outward of Monty’s downfall and to detail the complex and tense emotion; he merely identifies the body as his companion relationships between the various characters. Anger is the turns away, vomiting. unifying element of the film; every character and every scene Critics have rightly objected to the film’s self- is marked by the emotion and it is this anger, rather than righteousness, air of ‘white guilt,’ and its condescension an unfolding narrative, that provides the momentum and towards its African subjects in particular. For the most part, relationships between scenes. critics of the film have made the tacit assumption that the The central moment of the film occurs when Monty purpose of the film is to educate, enlighten, or ennoble the confronts his reflection in a bathroom mirror. Seeing the
“Anger is the unifying element of the film; every character and every scene is marked by the emotion and it is this anger, rather than an unfolding narrative, that provides the momentum and relationships between scenes.”
viewer; in short, they have read the film as being “about” words “fuck you” written on the mirror, Monty launches Tessa. Tessa is, in fact, a paragon of the Liberal code: into a furious rant: “Fuck me? Fuck you! Fuck you and this forgiving and able to set aside her anger for the greater whole city and everyone in it.” He goes on to curse, in turn, good. Having just lost her own baby, Tessa nurses the child everyone from Enron executives to Arab terrorists to George of an AIDS victim in her hospital bed; her fight against the Bush and Dick Cheney, Jesus Christ, every identifiable ethnic pharmaceutical companies is motivated not by anger, but by group, his best friend, girlfriend, father, and even the city of love, and she is positioned as a willing martyr to the Liberal New York itself: “Let the fires rage. Let it burn to fuckin’ ash cause. then let the waters rise and submerge this whole, rat-infested On the other hand, it is possible, and more productive, place.” Finally, a defeated Monty looks himself in the face to read the film as being “about” Justin and one individual’s and concludes “No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had movement through the first shock of loss into anger, it all and then you threw it away, you dumb fuck.” Monty reshaping incomprehensible events into a reasoned narrative then tries to scratch the words off the mirror, but can’t. and taking action. Tessa is not, after all, the sympathetic It is a highly performative scene: stage lighting and centre of the film; it is Justin. Tessa’s character is revealed Monty’s exaggerated gestures (gestures not replicated by his in fragments, through flashbacks, which the viewer must ‘reflection’, which in fact stands still and provides a surrogate piece together. Ambiguous and contradictory pieces of audience) create the effect of a rehearsed soliloquy. As information are presented, rendering Tessa an unreliable Monty speaks, his performance is intercut with individual site of identification or moral attachment. Once allowed tracking shots of the groups he attacks. In this scene, Monty expression, it is Justin’s anger which propels the narrative not only acknowledges the depths of his rage, and his own and with which the viewer can relate. The film reflects the responsibility, but invites the audience to participate with dangers of indifference and inaction. Redemption, insofar as him in his performance and to identify with both his anger it is permitted, comes through anger, not forgiveness (Justin’s and his guilt. Anger is presented as something that is not sacrificial death is the only possible ending, of course, as this ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ but unavoidable. Though it may be anger must finally be contained). The Constant Gardener shocking and distasteful, it cannot be ignored but must be has been described as “the angriest story LeCarre has ever encountered. told” (Ebert, 2005) and it seems that, for many, this open anger is the most difficult aspect of a problematic film. he disjointed nature of the film’s narration adds to the effect. The film moves from one angry moment to the ike The Constant Gardener, Spike Lee’s 25th Hour Tnext, without reconciliation. The eventual attempt at operates in two registries of grief and anger; closure and containment – Monty’s choice to accept his fate LMontgomery “Monty” Brogan’s personal story of and go to prison – is framed as artificial and incomplete. By loss is set amid the larger context of 9/11 and the impact on including a lengthy montage of an imagined future in which the city of New York. The film centres around Monty’s last Monty escapes and lives ‘happily ever after,’ Lee creates a day before entering prison to serve a long sentence for drug- future which is more ‘true’ than the unrepresented, but more dealing. Monty spends his last day on the outside saying plausible, alternative eventually chosen. This imaginary goodbye to family and friends while also learning which future contains the film’s only images of peaceful stability of his loved ones betrayed him to the Drug Enforcement and the sequence is notable for its static camera, muted Administration. The film makes extensive use of both colours, and lack of tension. The viewer knows, though, that motivated flashbacks and montage to account for the events this is an imagined condition: nothing is really this simple
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 and like the words on the mirror, the reality of Monty’s loss that led to the fire in the first place. To pretend otherwise – and of our own loss and anger – cannot be erased. seems dishonest and dangerous. Ehrenreich writes, “what In their use of flashback and disordered narrative, the is truly sinister about the positivity cult is that it seems to disorderly cinema questions our memory of events, showing reduce our tolerance of other people’s suffering…creating the distance between reality and the figuring of events. The an empathy deficit that pushes ever more people into a harsh truth and the retelling, the imagined and the visible, are insistence on positivity in others” (11). At its unrealized best, juxtaposed, as in The Constant Gardener, where the events a Liberal cinema may address this empathy deficit, force us of Justin’s murder are intercut with the two very different to recognize our individual and collective responsibilities, (and equally incomplete) eulogies given at his memorial and allow the necessary and healthy expression of anger.
“In their use of flashback and disordered narrative, the disorderly cinema questions our memory of events, showing the distance between reality and the figuring of events.”
service. In this way, the disorderly cinema appeals to the Works Cited viewer not just to remember, but to provide context, seek out the truth, and hold our speakers responsible. Closure is Beckman, Karen. “Feminism in the Time of Violence.” achieved through the actions of protagonists who are forced The Scholar and Feminist Online Winter 2004. http://www. to accept responsibility not only for their own misdeeds, but barnard.edu/sfonline/reverb/beckman1.htm those of their communities. Resolution may not be violent, Cousins, Mark. “Cinema Gets Real.” Prospect June but it is always angry. In their attempts to contain that anger, 2006. http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details. the films call upon the model of classical Hollywood and php?id=7458 privilege personal redemption over any sort of collective Denby, David. “The New Disorder.” New Yorker March action. Like dockworker Terry Malloy, Justin and Monty are 5, 2007. 80-85. compelled to turn their grief to anger and act; whereupon “Disorderly.” Def 1. The American Heritage Dictionary, their anger is quickly contained - and the credits roll. Monty Second College Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. cannot be allowed to take his anger out into the world, except “Disorderly.” Def 2. Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, in a fantasy. Ultimately, too, both men must turn their anger Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. inward. Monty’s rage against himself is made manifest when Ebert, Roger. “The Constant Gardener.” September 1, he first begs and then provokes his best friend to beat him 2005. to the point of disfigurement. Justin resolves the narrative http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ conflict of The Constant Gardener through his own death. article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50826001/1023 Justin’s anger dies with him; his is not the triumphant walk Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Pathologies of Hope.” Harper’s down the pier, as in On the Waterfront, but a walk into the Magazine February 2007: 9-11. white light by which the film represents both death and Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic memory. Books, 1997. The Liberal code insists on this containment. In doing Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and so, it may produce more than simply films with confused Conservatives Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ideologies and unsatisfying resolutions. In language that 2002. seems very much in tune with the Liberal disavowal of anger, Nancy, Jean-Luc. “La Comparution / The Compearance: Robert Thurman uses the analogy of fire to explain his view. From the Existence of ‘Communism’ to the Community of ‘Existence.’” Political Theory 1992, Vol. 20, No. 3: 371-398. When things catch fire, you give maximum attention to putting it out, using “Rape Victim Seeks Long Path to Justice”. CBS all reasonable methods at your disposal to do so as quickly as possible. You do not first feel bitterly angry at the fire, shout and scream at it, curse its News, February 24, 2007 http://www.cbsnews.com/ name and so on. You think of that as a waste of time and energy. So you stories/2007/02/24/ap/national/mainD8NGCND00.shtml need not bother to get angry with the unenlightened when they harm you, Thurman, Robert A.F. Anger. New York: Oxford just make every effort to minimize or avoid the harm (Thurman, 85). University Press, 2005. Turim, Maureen. Flashbacks in Film: Memory and Yet once the fire is out, we may be right, and we are certainly History. New York: Routledge, 1989. human, if we feel anger with the flames for the damage they Žižek, Slavoj. “On 9/11, New Yorkers faced the fire in the have caused. The emotion guides us to protect against the minds of men.” The Guardian September 11, 2006. http:// recurrence of fire, it teaches us the power of fire, and it forces www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329573427-103677,00.html us to acknowledge our own responsibility for the conditions
Hollywood and Liberalism 11 The Global Social Problem Film
Andrew deWaard
s Justin Rosenberg famously stated: “‘Globalization’ multi-language, globe-spanning mediation on communication was the Zeitgeist of the 1990s” (2). While debates follows a chain of events linking an American tourist couple, Acontinue to rage surrounding the concept of a Japanese father and daughter, two Morrocan boys, and globalization and globalization theory, it is undeniable that a Mexican nanny’s cross-border trip with two American we now live in a much more “globalized” world than we children. Blood Diamond (Zwick, 2006) tackles conflict did fifty, twenty, even ten years ago. In typical Hollywood diamonds in war zones, The Constant Gardener (Meirelles, style, it took some time for mainstream cinema to embody 2005) takes on the global pharmaceutical industry, Munich characteristics of this sweeping socio-politico-economic (Spielberg, 2005) explicates international terrorism, and Lord change, but its effects have now most certainly arrived. of War (Niccol, 2005) satirizes global arms distribution. Hollywood has, of course, always been a global institution. The GSP is a result of postmodern genre hybridity, an integral But like globalization itself, the transformation is not so much characteristic of New Hollywood. As seminal genre theorist a matter of innovation, but degree. The changes taking place Steve Neale notes, “New Hollywood can be distinguished – both globally and cinematically – are not necessarily new, from the old by the hybridity of its genres and films… but what is new is the rapid rate at which they are occurring. this hybridity is governed by the multi-media synergies From worldwide release patterns and digital technology1 characteristic of the New Hollywood, by the mixing and to piracy and the New International Division of Cultural recycling of new and old and low art and high art media Labour,2 the changes are happening exceptionally quick. One products in the modern (or post-modern) world” (248). The such development – simultaneously an embodiment as well GSP’s hybridity is comprised of three main ingredients: the as an artistic response to transnational flows – is the emerging original social problem film of early Hollywood cinema, cycle of global social problem films. the distinct influence of documentary/docudrama, and the My case studies in elucidating the global social problem multilinear, web-of-life (or as will later be theorized by way film (the GSP)3 will be Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000), of Deleuze: rhizomatic) plotline. There is usually a dash of with its three intersecting plot lines exploring the illegal thriller, a pinch of sardonic wit, and the whole bastardized Mexican-American drug trade from the perspective of user, recipe occurs in a global melting pot. enforcer, politician and trafficker, and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005), a geopolitical thriller that explores the SociallyWell-Adjusted political, military, economic, legal and social aspects of the global oil industry. Another recent example of the GSP is Fast n what might well be considered the textbook for the Food Nation (Linklater, 2006), the fictional interpretation social problem film, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: of Eric Schlosser’s expose of the same name detailing the IMadness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to economic, environmental and social consequences of the the Fifties provides an extremely thorough and systematic fast food industry, weaving stories from across the United analysis of the social problem film. Peter Roffman and Jim States and Mexico. Babel (Iñárritu, 2006) is another: this Purdy explicitly define the genre according to its didacticism:
1 Robert E. Davis, “The Instantaneous Worldwide Release: Coming Soon to Everyone, Everywhere,” in Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, ed. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 73-80. 2 Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood 2 (London: British Film Institute, 2005). 3 In a nod to Miller et al.’s convenient dropping of a letter in their acronym, NICL, I’ve taken the liberty of dropping a letter in mine, GSP, to parallel such other globe-impacting acronyms as GNP and GDP.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 “the central dramatic conflict revolves around the interaction As Slavoj Žižek remarked, “On September 11, the USA of the individual with social institutions (such as government, was given the opportunity to realize what kind of a world it business, political movements, etc.)… it deals with social was part of” (47). While Žižek astutely identifies America’s themes very much on the surface of the dramatic action” largely ideologically-reaffirming response, we might also (viii). Similarly, another look at the social problem film finds witness a certain global social consciousness arising out it “distinguished by the way its subject was usually given as of the ashes of Ground Zero. Though certainly not limited much weight as its stars or story: the films used individual to the events of 9/11, this emerging global consciousness human dramas to present a morality tale with wider social – a concern for the global ramifications of our actions and repercussions” (Brooke). Notable examples of the original decisions – parallels the one that gave birth to the original social problem film include I Am a Fugitive from a Chain social problem film.
“There is usually a dash of thriller, a pinch of sardonic wit, and the whole bastardized recipe occurs in a global melting pot.”
Gang (LeRoy, 1932), Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town The second major factor in the development of the (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Best original social problem was the “golden era” of the Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946). Hollywood studio system. Guided by the Production Code, Roffman and Purdy place the social problem film’s a basic set of conventions and a consistent ideological rise and peak during the 30s and 40s, though Kay Sloan framework was established which propelled Hollywood to locates its origins during the silent era with what he terms central prominence in the popular culture landscape. The The Loud Silents. The social problem film can be located social problem film was able to capitalize on Hollywood’s periodically during the tumultuous times of the 60s and 70s, studio formula and present social problems that complied with Watergate, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam with the Code’s ideological viewpoint. From the standpoint War providing ample social strife. The 80s are typically of production, the GSP is in a similar situation through remembered for the blockbuster’s rise to preeminence, but which it can exploit the Hollywood system. Rather than a independent auteurs kept the spirit of the social problem studio formula, the GSP is a product of the middle-tier that film alive with films such as John Sayles’ Matewan (1987) developed in the 1990s between the “independents” and and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). But the recent the “majors”: the “major independent.” Following in the wave of social problem-focused Hollywood films suggests footsteps of Disney’s success with Miramax, every major that the GSP constitutes a new and emboldened cycle in studio acquired a stable of subsidiaries (sometimes referred the social problem genre. If its forefather was concerned to as “stindies” or “mini-majors”) in order to profit from with an individual in conflict with a social institution, the notoriety gained at the Academy Awards and prestigious GSP exponentially multiplies both dimensions. Rather film festivals.4 Negotiating the fine line between art and than focusing on a single individual, we get a multitude of commerce, the major independents provide the opportunity interconnected individuals; instead of a solitary institution, for big-budget, celebrity-starring, heavily-marketed films that we get the network of social institutions. Both Traffic and can still retain their artistic merit and message to thrive within Syriana follow a series of individuals in their interactions a landscape dominated by blockbuster filmmaking. Examples with the intertwined systems of law, military, economics, and of this new mode of production, Traffic was developed with government. Specifically how this is accomplished will be Universal’s USA Films (now Focus Features) and Syriana considered below, but first we can trace the GSP’s origins in was developed by Soderbergh’s own production company the original social problem film. Section Eight Ltd. (a partnership with George Clooney) and Roffman and Purdy locate two key reasons for the Participant Productions (Jeff Skoll’s production company that emergence of the social problem film, reasons we will witness focuses on films which inspire social change), with financing in the emergence of the GSP as well. The first was the strong from Warner Brothers. The product of an emerging global sense of social consciousness that grew out of the Depression consciousness as well as fortuitous industry developments, and the subsequent rise of fascism. Along with the novels of the GSP is in a unique position with which to raise awareness John Steinbeck and the songs of Woody Guthrie, audiences of pertinent global problems. were hungry for social and political commentary. Seventy years later, the GSP is in a similar situation, albeit a vastly Keeping it Real different social and political climate. Though Traffic predates it, the attacks on the World Trade Center of 9/11 mark a ocumentary filmmaking – and its offshoot, certain entrance – whether desired or not – onto the global docudrama – is the second key influence for the stage for America. Dglobal social problem film. As the primary focus of
Hollywood and Liberalism 13 the GSP is shedding light on a real- world problem, the effort to achieve a sense of realism is vital. Stylistically, the use of ostentatious cinematography is rare, but if used, serves a utilitarian function. Traffic, for example, uses distinctive colour palettes to clearly distinguish its three plotlines: the East Coast scenes are shot in bright daylight to produce icy blue, monochromatic tones; the Mexican scenes are overexposed and use ‘tobacco’ filters for grainy, bleached-out sepia tones; and the San Diego scenes use the risky technique of ‘flashing’ the negative for a halo effect to complement the vibrant hues. Documentary-invoking handheld camerawork often compliments this realist, utilitarian cinematography. The use of graphic matches with sound bridges is another stylistic convention of the GSP, its editing embodying its objective to find and explore global connections. In the conclusion of Syriana, for instance, a shot of the videotaped burial requests of a young Pakistani terrorist, Wasim (Mazhar Munir), slowly fades into a graphically-matched shot of the energy analyst’s (Matt Damon) sole surviving son, while Wasim’s chilling dialogue bridges the edit: “From the dust a new person will be created.” The toll this oil addiction will have on future generations across the globe is rendered explicit by this stylistic convention. Primarily, realism in the GSP is produced through a reliance on non- fiction resources in the scriptwriting process. Although based on the 1989 British television miniseries Traffik (Reid, 1989), Stephen Gaghan made significant changes to his in high school (the basis for Caroline, Robert Baer’s memoirs, See No Evil: adaptation after a year’s worth of the prepschool drug abuser) and The True Story of a Ground Soldier obsessive research, interviews with continued throughout pre-production of in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism. key political figures in Washington, the film. Robert Baer became the basis for and investigative trips to San Diego Syriana has a similar non-fiction George Clooney’s character, Bob and Tijuana. Most notably, the drug background, including its confusing Barnes, who similarly undertakes cartels were shifted from Columbia to title. The term ‘Syriana’ is a metaphor various clandestine Middle Eastern Mexico to correspond with the real- for foreign intervention in the Middle operations, including a failed life relocation of drug production that East, used by Washington think-tanks assassination plot.6 Because of this occurred in the preceding decade. to describe a hypothetical reshaping fictionalizing of non-fictional memoirs, Another element of realism is Gaghan’s of the region to ensure continued the film carries this unique statement own drug addiction, which, according access to oil. The screenplay is loosely in the credits: “While inspired by a to Sharon Waxman’s account, started adapted5 from former CIA case officer non-fiction work, this motion picture
4 For more information, see Allen J. Scott, “Hollywood and the world: the geography of motion-picture distribution and marketing,” in Review of International Political Economy 11:1 (February 2004), pp. 33-61. Alisa Perren, “sex, lies and marketing: Miramax and the Development of the Quality Indie Blockbuster,” in Film Quarterly 55:2 (2001), pp. 30-39. Justin Wyatt, “The Formation of the ‘major independent’: Miramax, New Line, and the New Hollywood,” in Contemporary American Cinema. ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 74-90.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 even the slightest criticism towards American governmental policy, there were accusations of those “typical Hollywood liberals” and their “anti- American” values. An op-ed in the Washington Post claimed that “Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction” (Krauthammer). I will leave the validity of that statement to the reader’s discretion. Seth Feldman’s analysis of the genre, “Footnote to Fact: The Docudrama,” focuses on the function of such films. His analysis of the three most popular incarnations of the docudrama – Roots (Chomsky et al, 1977), Holocaust (Chomsky, 1978), and The Day After (Meyer, 1984) – finds them “firmly grounded in events that had already achieved a central place in the public imagination. What all three programs then spoke to were the personal, psychological reasons for that centrality” (349). The same could be said for Traffic’s engagement with the War on Drugs and Syriana’s interconnection of the War on Terror with Big Oil: prevalent issues in the forefront of the social imaginary seen through the eyes of a range of (mostly) sympathetic characters. However, it must be noted that unlike Feldman’s examples, Traffic and Syriana are dealing with contemporary, ongoing issues that demand attention and action; they are not simply ruminating on past events. Furthermore, Feldman’s reading of the conservative, comforting nature of the docudrama is not applicable to the GSP. Roots, Holocaust, and The Day After attempted, according to and all of the characters and events is to concentrate on the facts and Feldman, to provide “explanations portrayed in it (except for incidental avoid editorializing or opinionated of an incomprehensible world to the archival footage), are fictional.” The bias; in practice, of course, this disenfranchised,” but failed to offer fine line between ‘real’ and ‘reel’ is rarely occurs. The inherent problem “a deeper understanding of historical certainly blurred, and a rare breed of of bias in docudrama became a forces; rather it is the durability of docudrama is formed. newsworthy event this past year with [the] familial order” (349) that is Docudrama, which quite obviously ABC’s “controversial”7 airing of The celebrated. Conversely, the GSP’s combines elements of documentary and Path to 9/11 (Cunningham, 2006). greatest strength is its illumination of drama, typically involves recreations Syriana, also a dramatization of real socio-politco-economic forces through or dramatizations of documented events, was subject to criticism for its narrative means. And while the GSP events, and may involve real footage political bias as well. As is the case is also concerned with the familial of the events themselves. Its aim with any cultural text that ventures order (Syriana in particular focuses on
5 To the dismay of Gaghan, it was deemed an Original Screenplay by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 6 Critics accused the film for changing the assassination plot’s target from Saddam Hussein in the book to a benevolent, liberal prince in the film. My response would be: Mohammed Mossadegh. 7 “Controversial” in this case being newspeak for “blatant right-wing propaganda,” see Max Blumenthal, “ABC 9/11 Docudrama’s Right-Wing Roots,” in The Nation. 11 September 2006.
Hollywood and Liberalism 15 fathers and sons), here the solidarity Tanzanians; and Why We Fight of intolerance throughout the ages, of the family is seen to be in decay in (Jarecki, 2005), an exploration of rather than its global connectivity. the face of such dire global problems. the American military-industrial Multiple storylines focused on a The GSP is thus a unique variant complex’s quest for global domination. single locale are also not uncommon of the docudrama, but without its These bold documentaries share in the history of Hollywood, Grand conservative trappings. a similar sensibility and global Hotel (Goulding 1932) and Dinner at Finally, I would be remiss not consciousness with the GSP: they are Eight (Cukor 1933) being the earliest to mention the recent resurgence informative indictments for change. incarnations. The disaster film also
“The same could be said for Traffic’s engagement with the War on Drugs and Syriana’s interconnection of the War on Terror with Big Oil: prevalent issues in the forefront of the social imaginary seen through the eyes of a range of (mostly) sympathetic characters.”
in documentary filmmaking that Rhizomataz! relies on multiple characters united is largely concerned with global in adversity; horror films, to a lesser connections and consequences as he final – and most degree, rely on a similar structure. well. This strain of global social revolutionary – aspect of The pioneer of the web-of-life problem documentaries might be seen Tthe GSP is its innovation on plotline is Robert Altman, and as as a parallel cycle to the GSP, sharing the web-of-life plotline. Instead of such, he had a tremendous influence similar tactics and worldviews. The the traditional two primary lines on the GSP. Nashville (1975) is a all-time highest grossing documentary of action, the 1990s saw a surge of landmark film, not just for the GSP, film is Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, films weaving together a variety of but for cinema as a whole. With 2004), which lampoons the Bush plotlines involving a multitude of Nashville, Altman weaves a cinematic administration and its corporate characters. Again, this is not a matter web the likes of which had never cronyism for exploiting the 9/11 of precedence, but degree. The last been seen before in mainstream film: attacks towards an aggressive foreign fifteen years produced a tremendous densely interconnected storylines, a policy with dire global consequences. increase in multilinear filmmaking; massive ensemble cast, and a satirical An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, some prominent examples include mixing of presidential politics with 2006), third highest grossing, is a Slacker (Linklater, 1991), Reservoir the business of country/gospel music. passionate and informative plea for Dogs (Tarantino, 1992), Short Short Cuts, “an L.A. jazz rhapsody” clarity and action against worldwide Cuts (Altman, 1993), Pulp Fiction (Wilmington) is inspired by nine climate change. Other popular (Tarantino, 1996), Magnolia short stories by Raymond Carver examples include The Fog of War, (Anderson, 1999), Snatch (Ritchie, and follows 22 principal characters.8 (Morris 2003), outlining the global 2000), Amores Perros (Iñárritu, Altman’s signature style – overlapping threat of the American military as 2002), and Crash (Haggis, 2004). dialogue and a wandering, zooming seen through the eyes of Robert S. As we will see, the GSP utilizes this camera to capture his web of McNamara, architect of the Vietnam multilinear form for political ends. improvising characters – complements War; The Corporation (Achbar, 2003), David Dresser dates the this formal experimentation, as it did a psychological examination of the multilinear narrative back as far as in Nashville. corporate organizational model that Intolerance (1916), D.W. Griffith’s Utilizing the web-of-life plotline has dominated economic, political silent-era epic spanning 2,500 years, creates an expectation within the and social forces around the world; paralleling four different ages in viewer for unforeseen relations and Darwin’s Nightmare (Sauper, 2004), world history. For our purposes, we causal connections among the film’s which explores the global network might consider Intolerance as the disparate characters. With the GSP, created around the Lake Victoria birth of the GSP nearly a century the web-of-life is woven on a much perch, from European supermarkets before its popularization, though it larger scale: the global web-of-life. to Russian arms dealers to exploited concentrates on the enduring problem Thus, the connections made are
8 The postmodern mark of pop culture significance, Short Cuts was parodied, along with Pulp Fiction, in an episode of The Simpsons entitled “[3F18] 22 Short Films About Springfield.” CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 far more startling and unexpected. defines philosophy as the creation by a post-Fordist disposable workforce In Traffic, a teenaged drug abuser of concepts that define a particular and led astray by radical Islam, (Erika Christensen) in a Cincinnati range of thinking with which to simultaneously provides an entry and prepschool affects her father’s grapple with reality. One such an exit from this rhizome. ability as the newly appointed drug valuable conception is Deleuze and A rhizome “has neither beginning czar (Michael Douglas) to combat Guatarri’s own rhizome, formulated nor end, but always a middle (milieu) a corrupt Mexican General (Tomas in A Thousand Plateaus, which is a from which it grows and which it Milian) who has just enlisted the help concept based on multiplicity, aiming overspills” (21). Perhaps this explains of a double-crossing cop (Benicio to move away from the traditional the common reception of Syriana’s
“The film has thus utilized the structure of the rhizome in its plot structure to illuminate the rhizomatic quality of its subject matter. The viewer is supposed to get lost in the film’s complex story and be even more bewildered by its fruition.”
Del Toro) in his effort to continue binary structure of Western thought. plot as too complex to follow. As supplying cocaine to a jailed San- A figure borrowed from biology, the Roger Ebert states with precision: Diego based drug kingpin (Alec rhizome is a model in strict opposition “we’re not really supposed to follow Roberts) whose wife (Catherine Zeta- to the conventional figure of the tree [the plot], we’re supposed to be Jones) continues the family business which operates on the principles of surrounded by it. Since none of the while under the surveillance of a foundation and origin. The rhizome, characters understand the whole rogue African-American DEA agent on the contrary, is proliferating and picture, why should we?” (emphasis (Don Cheadle) who has just lost his serial; it operates on the principles of added). The film has thus utilized the Puerto-Rican partner (Luis Guzmán) connection and heterogeneity. There structure of the rhizome in its plot to a Mexican hitman (Clifton Collins can be no points or positions within structure to illuminate the rhizomatic Jr.). This is, of course, just one line a rhizome: “any point of a rhizome quality of its subject matter. The of connection between the central can be connected to anything other, viewer is supposed to get lost in the characters, many more could be made. and must be” (7). Neither mimetic nor film’s complex story and be even more It is here, in the limitless possibility of organic, a rhizome is a mobile and bewildered by its fruition. Like every interconnection, that the GSP presents bifurcating series of lines; it only ever useful answer to a difficult question, its revolutionary act. In his essay attempts to map, never resolve. the GSP reveals even more complex “Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age How appropriate, then, that questions instead of offering a tidy of Transnationalism,” David Dresser Syriana deals with an actual resolution. concludes with this provacation: hypothetical “remapping” of the In order to present this rhizomatic Middle East. As “the rhizome pertains subject matter, the GSP’s form must Multiple storylines, the simultaneity of events to a map that must be produced, be rhizomatic, which in turn requires forever skewing chronology and linearity, constructed, a map that is always a rhizomatic production process: “To and chance encounters are, after all, not only the very core of global noir, but the very detachable, connectable, reversible, attain the multiple, one must have a stuff of the hypertext that is digital and cyber modifiable, and has multiple method that effectively constructs it” technologies. Is global noir, then, the future of entryways and exits and its own (Deleuze 22). The complex, erratic cinema, and is the future here? (534) lines of flight” (21), Syriana works productions of Traffic and Syriana to outline the map of law, military, are examples of such a process that Short answer: Yes with a but; long politics, economics, and terrorism that constructs the multiple. Referring to answer: Deleuze with an if. But first, is the global oil industry. The terrorist it as his “$49 million Dogme film” some background. act in the film’s conclusion shows its (as qtd. in Waxman 315), Soderbergh With their two volumes of detachability; the globe-spanning directed and shot Traffic with the Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972’s locales in which the story take place spontaneity and freedom he enjoyed Anti-Oedipus and 1980’s A Thousand show its connectability; the double with his self-financed efforts. Three Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix and double-double crossings by CIA months, ten cities, 110 locations, Guattari set out to enact, among other agents show its reversibility; and the and 163 speaking parts: the shoot things, a transformation of “the image anti-trust regulators in the film’s legal was a frantic affair. The cast and of thought.” Rather than the grand plotline show its modifiability. The crew travelled light and quick, “like pursuit of truth or reason, Deleuze young Pakistani character, victimized the Grateful Dead” (as qtd. in 317)
Hollywood and Liberalism 17 according to Benecio Del Toro. Unable than heroine or cocaine ever will, it A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and to secure permission to shoot in the hinders legitimate scientific research, Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University White House, Soderbergh and Douglas and its racially biased enforcement of Minnesota Press, 1987. went on a tour and stole footage is the central reason for an exploding Dresser, David. “Global Noir: Genre guerilla-style. This is true rhizomatic prison population. As Robert Wakefield Film in the Age of Transnationalism.” technique: “Speed turns the point into so poignantly states in Traffic’s Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith a line!” (Deleuze 24). Syriana was a conclusion, “If there is a war on drugs, Grant. Austin: University of Texas similarly complex endeavour; shooting then many of our family members are Print, 2003. took place in over a dozen locations the enemy. And I don’t know how you Ebert, Roger. “Review: Syriana.” around the globe, including Geneva, wage war on your own family.” rogerebert.com. 9 Dec. 2005. Dubai (the first Hollywood production Oil addiction is one of the
9 The original statement is “The logic of the network is more powerful than the power in the network,” Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 500.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Representations of Western Tourism in Cinema: Fantasies, Expectations and Inequalities
Tara Kolton
“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of the world, as well as the mobility of the image itself – which nameless energies.” ensures a virtual sense of travel and tourism in a thrilling There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and way. At once, the cinema allows us to access actual locations slides. in the world which may remain physically inaccessible “Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others to us, as it also by necessity of the idea of ‘capturing’ a see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be a part of a collective perception. This literally moving image (a deliberate process of framing, selection colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.” and presentation) presents an essentially virtual image of Another silence ensued. actual locations. In the political economy of cultural display, “They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said. “virtualities, even in the presence of actualities, show – Don DeLillo, White Noise. what otherwise cannot be seen. Tourists travel to actual destinations to experience virtual places” (Kirshenblatt- he idea of tourism has always been central to cinema; Gimblett qtd. in Dicks, 4). Essentially, the virtual nature of from the earliest days of the “around the world” silent cinematic images enhances our expectations and fantasies Tfilm, the medium has offered a completely new way for of actual places. Cinematic representations of travel not only people to see and experience other parts of the world, places increase our desire to visit exotic and far away locations, but we would likely otherwise never experience ourselves. It is reinforce a certain image of these places in our minds. It is the unique mobility of film – its ability to circulate around this very exact representation of a place which we desire and
Hollywood and Liberalism 19 expect to encounter, experience, and preceding the post-9/11 climate of developed world to experience these consume for ourselves. Western paranoia, Danny Boyle’s worlds ‘authentically,’ yet fail to really The dominating images of the The Beach (2000) and Bernardo engage with local culture, instead world that Hollywood, and Western Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1991) meeting extreme danger and trauma; cinema more generally, set forward are, on the surface, strikingly different cinematographic fetishisation of reflect most cohesively an exoticized kinds of films in their production beautiful foreign landscapes further fantasy projection of the non-Western processes and aims: The Beach, a enhance viewers’ desires to travel to these locations, while their narratives’ “In a world that is markedly growing “message” ultimately delivers a strange warning about deviating from the well- trodden road of conventional tourism. increasingly uncomfortable with In addition to the highly conflicted attitudes towards Western tourism that American dominance, and where the these films project, the problematic production processes of the films Western traveler is seized by paranoia themselves directly correlate to the increasingly Western-centric, and expectations of danger and virtualized image of the world as an all-encompassing travelogue. hostility, cinematic representations of Hollywood productions which (in the case of The Beach, quite infamously) journeys to lush, foreign lands offer a engage in actual physical impact upon the world, altering landscapes and safe way to experience the world.” cityscapes to suit the productions’ needs, further confuse our ability to world that is at once enticing as it US-UK Hollywood co-production distinguish an ‘actual’ location from is filled with danger and trauma filmed on location in Thailand, and a ‘virtual’ place. In a world where for the traveler who deviates from The Sheltering Sky, directed by one of tourism and cinema work hand in a conventional path of exploration. art cinema’s contemporary auteurs, an hand, many film productions continue In a world that is markedly growing abstracted narrative filmed on location to increase the amount of locations increasingly uncomfortable with in the Sahara Desert of Niger. Despite that are rendered accessible, desirable American dominance, and where the the obvious narrative similarities and visitable. We can view the way Western traveler is seized by paranoia that the films share – countercultural that Hollywood (and perhaps Western and expectations of danger and Americans who venture into foreign cinema in a general sense) deals with hostility, cinematic representations of terrain and whom there are forced to travel as directly reflective of the way journeys to lush, foreign lands offer encounter themselves – they also share that American and the Western world a safe way to experience the world. uncannily similar core thematic issues tend to view the rest of the world To borrow Anne Friedberg’s concept where a dichotomy is broken down as the site of its conflicted fantasy of the “mobilized virtual gaze,” we between the ‘traveler’ and the ‘tourist.’ projections. Cinematic representations can now sit safely back in our seats Essentially, these films engage with the of travel beyond the safety zone of and engage in cultural “window countercultural notion of an ‘authentic’ the West project an image of a world shopping” without going anywhere or lifestyle of travel as being superior which is at once alluring and hostile, subjecting ourselves to the potential to the commercially exploitative, and which manages to ‘enlighten’ Western perils of travel. Many contemporary the intellectually shallow industry of travelers before it ultimately reinforces films which deal with the Westerner tourism. It this ideology that almost the relevance of Western values, traveling to the less developed world any film dealing with American and ultimately portray the ‘rest of project a fantasy of self-discovery and tourists in the non-Western world the world’ as a place that is open to “authentic” experience for the traveler, (running the scale from Hollywood to exploitation for the pleasure and benefit as well as an inevitable confrontation art cinema), sets forward, and which of the West. with extreme danger upon seeking this reflects the overarching romanticized Tourism: A Historically Inequitable unconventional encounter. gaze through which the West views Industry the rest of the world. It is an endlessly he exoticized gaze of the contradictory lens through which the he World Tourist Organization Western traveler thus implies traveler’s desires and experiences defines tourism as: “the a subsequent fear of the non- are ideologically reflected in such activities of a person traveling T 1 T Western world. Released in the decade films: Americans venture to the less to a place outside his or her usual
1 This contradictory perspective on travel to the less-developed world as at once enticing and terrifying is most recently exemplified in Alejandro Iñàrritu’s Babel (2006) which certainly reflects the post-9/11 cultural climate of terror paranoia, as even wealthy Americans going the “safe route” on a Western tour bus in Morocco are subject to an unfortunate, accidental shooting incident.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 environment for less than a specified economic reasons do not have the that the Western world (particularly period of time and whose main purpose same privilege to travel First World America here) views the less developed of travel is other than the exercise of nations: where the Westerner’s dollar world as a place that can teach the an activity remunerated from within will go far abroad, the currency of a traveler something about himself. the place visited…” (World Tourism less-developed nation would barely In some ways these films attempt to Organization 1991 qtd. in Dicks 48). register in the West. The Western critique the West’s exploitation of other By definition, tourism necessarily world is afforded a great mobility that nations through tourism, yet ultimately includes some kind of distance or the rest of the world simply cannot they remain grounded in the historical removal from the ordinary activity obtain. As well, economic and class implications of travel and inequality. of the location being visited: tourism divisions have been routed in tourism While on the surface, both of these includes the promise and expectations of an experience. Key to this exploration is tourism “Key to this exploration is tourism as as a historically conflicted and unequal industry. We can see tourism a historically conflicted and unequal as at once extremely exploitative to regions of the world, resulting in drug industry.” trafficking and prostitution in certain areas. At the same time, we cannot deny the essential role that tourism since its rise in popularity in America: film’s travelers are searching for plays in many economies (especially at the turn of the 20th century it was a something outside their comfort zone, in many tropical, less-developed further exclusive industry open only to eventually the journey as far away nations), which actually thrive on society’s upper crust (37). Today, it is from the Western world as possible their tourism industry. The greatest fair to say that international travel is at becomes a retreat into the self. inequity of tourism is that it is a the least, a middle class privilege. First, I would like to briefly necessarily unequal industry that exists Thus, the films which I have consider the global impact of cinema essentially for the residents of those chosen to explore here, in regards to on tourism, and what it is capable of developed nations of the world, who their representations of tourism, by as an industry. Photography has often can actually afford the luxury of travel. necessity centre around white, (at been linked to a promise of ‘artistic International travel is an expensive least) middle class American tourists authenticity,’ as the invention of venture, and Western tourists who who travel to less developed regions photography and cinema resulted in a are able to fund the plane ticket reap of the world. While it is easy to certain freeing and mobilisation of the the benefits of visiting less developed view Hollywood’s representations of world. Walter Benjamin argued: nations of the world, where the American tourists who journey to the Western dollar goes a long way. Travel East as a quite limited perspective, Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, in this sense, these narratives must our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad and tourism is essentially a privilege stations and our factories appeared to have us of, with little exception, the Western necessarily be Western-centric and locked up hopelessly. Then came film and burst world: the touristic experience channeled this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of a through this particular Western gaze.2 tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of If tourism is about ‘getting away from it all’, it It is foremost and nearly exclusively its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and is clear that not everyone is able to get away, and the Westerner who journeys into adventurously go traveling (Benjamin 1973, qtd. in Dicks, 19). that not everyone is getting away from the same the developing world. The split that ‘it.’ Evidently, the 45 most highly developed Central to my focus here is the idea that countries in the world account for three-quarters the The Beach and The Sheltering of international tourism departures […] This Sky are instead concerned with is cinema opened up to us the possibility fact gives the spectacular growth in tourism the dichotomy between ‘kinds’ of to travel without going anywhere, as a marked asymmetry, since by and large it is travelers: specifically, the traveler well as the promise of adventure. Not Europeans, North Americans, Australasians versus the tourist. I will return to this only can we see the world through film, and the Japanese – the minority world who are but we also experience a kind of thrill taking trips into the cultural mosaic of the less idea later, but what is relevant for developed nations – the majority world (48). now are the films’ fascination with through watching travel images – an and countercultural regard for the adventure and thrill that relies on the Particularly relevant to a juxtaposition ‘authentic’ travel experience. In both moving image. The visceral experience of tourism to the Global Hollywood of these films the romanticized ideal of the world through cinema cannot industry is the fact that it is a minority of travel outside the Western world as quite be met by reading about or population that is dominating the an experience of self-discovery and looking at still images of a location. It world’s majority population. The adventure is explicitly opposed to the is particularly the thrill-seeking desire “Third World” and less developed cheaply exploitative and ‘safe’ route of that cinema both creates and satiates nations for very clear and practical conventional tourism. It is in this light that I want to focus on.
2 A film about a non-Westerner touring the West would be highly improbable, yet an intriguing premise; perhaps this rupture most recently exemplified in Larry Charles and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006).
Hollywood and Liberalism 21 We can see the very beginnings of IMAX experience today. The sense of jumping, hang-gliding, parachuting, cinema, even one to two minute shorts, flying and motion that IMAX cinema and skiing; as well as theme park as being highly focused around this projects upon larger-than-life screens, rides such as roller coasters. Very new opportunity to see and project is largely what attracts patrons. We often, Hollywood films are similarly the world. Tom Gunning has explored go to see these films for that sense concerned with portraying travel to the travel genre as “one of the most of adventure impossible in the real exotic lands as rife with excitement, popular and developed” forms of world, where we can feel like world danger, and ultimately an active, ‘hands on’ experience. A film like The Beach certainly exploits this desire to experience “We can see the very beginnings of travel in a thrill-seeking way through Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), its cinema, even 1-2 minute shorts, as male protagonist, who pronounces the moment he steps off the plane that he being highly focused around this new is looking for adventure, something entirely different. His journey across opportunity to see and project the Thailand, from Bangkok to its extreme outskirts, is an appropriately world.” daring adventure. Perhaps the way that he and his two French traveling early cinema (Clarke, 214), the unique explorers while sitting back in our companions must ‘plunge’ off of a ability of motion pictures to essentially seats. In David B. Clarke’s essay “From high cliff into a lagoon below, before represent movement, combined with Flatland to Vernacular Relativity”, the they can encounter the paradisiacal the rapid mobile camera, presenting author explores the early days of the beach, is directly correlative to this travel on screen as a thrilling attraction “stationary trip” (228) through Hale’s fantasy of the active adventure. for the earliest film-going audiences. tours, in which “life-size moving They journey across the country by An early film such as The Georgetown images were projected onto a screen at train, ferry, then smaller boats, until Loop (Colorado 1903) is a notable case the front of a mocked-up train, using finally they must cast most of their of a film that not only managed in a rear projection to hide the projector belongings aside to swim a couple few minutes to capture the treacherous, from view. Mechanisms swayed the miles to reach the island. Richard rugged mountain-scape of Colorado, carriage and provided sounds of a and his friends’ willingness to ‘give but to do so in an exhilarating, action- moving train” (227). From the very up’ their possessions correlates with packed way that carried the audience origin of cinema, tourism and film the idealized notion of the anti- along on a fast-paced, jaunty, elevated went hand in hand in a natural kind of materialistic, Western life-traveler who train ride, while also capitalizing on way: not only allowing us to see parts is merely weighed down by luggage possibilities for tourism promotion. of the world, but to experience them in and other tangible ties to home. The film is simply three minutes a thrilling way. Thus the expectation Over the course of the film, Richard of footage from a camera anchored of excitement is associated with virtual partakes in ‘extreme’ and comically to the top of one of the train-carts, images of tourism and travel. exaggerated activities like drinking resulting in an exhilarating ride. The snake’s blood and killing a shark in the Georgetown Loop was, significantly, Virtual Thrill-seeking ocean with just a knife. Though The a railroad created as Colorado’s first Beach’s view of Southeast Asian travel tourist attraction; not the most practical t is essentially from the sensations is quite problematic, and it is never route, running double the length of that cinema affords us that we quite clear whether or not it is taking the distance between the adjoined Ican derive thrill-seeking touristic a somewhat reflexive stance towards towns, but certainly the most exciting desires. Yet, the movement and its protagonists’ adventures, the film route. Much akin to a roller-coaster adventure of cinema is not easily is not without its redeeming elements. ride, the Loop provided visitors with replicated when our feet are actually For instance, there is the relevant an adventurous and scenic route on the ground, even walking through insight that Richard views his travel (Colorado Historical Society). Perhaps these locations ourselves. The camera experience much like playing a video we can then consider this one of the creates a distanced and defined way game (and oddly enough he manages to earliest “tourist films”, as it clearly did of viewing and experiencing the obtain a GameBoy while on the remote quite a lot to mobilize the image of this world, and the thrill-seeking that island commune, directly contradicting attraction around the US and the world. comes into play in many tourist’s any notion that this group of life- But perhaps more relevant here is the expectations can perhaps be tied back travelers have actually given up the fact that the film introduced an exciting to such virtual representations. Any commodities and comforts of home): cinematic experience for viewers hands-on experiences where we can even while experiencing something, around the world, who did not actually experience similar thrills must be quite we try to channel our experiences have to go anywhere to experience deliberately sought after (and come into a coherent narrative which would this thrill. The ‘flying’ sensation that with a price, both literal monetary afford us with the clear direction and such a film simulates for the viewer expenses, as well as physical danger): accomplishment of playing a video is like a primitive version of the ‘extreme sports’ such as bungee- game. At one point in the film, isolated
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 in the woods, Richard descends into (Viriginie Ledoyen) had taken of the destination in order to ‘capture’ ‘Heart of Darkness’ mode and pictures (nearly all white) beach commune, it, before ever really seeing or himself inside a video game, chasing jumping joyously into the air. The understanding it. After the small down his enemies, winning points photo is captioned “parallel universe” rowboat carrying three American for his achievements. The entirety and the film ends with Richard musing travelers – husband and wife Port and of the film’s plot coincides with the that all that matters in life is finding Kit (John Malkovich, Debra Winger), sense of purpose a video game gives a place where you belong, even if and their friend Tunner – mysteriously us, which is so lacking in reality: it’s temporary — isn’t that kind of arrives in Africa, Tunner (Campbell within the first ten or so minutes of temporary satisfaction the ideal of Scott as the ‘tourist’ of the trio) the film, Richard receives a map to a travel? immediately takes a photograph with paradisiacal, isolated beach. Thus he gains a clear ‘mission’ to accomplish and a sense of purpose, something that “The impact of standing behind a is really only experienced in video games and narrative representations camera and seeing the world is a of adventurous travel, so far from the wandering aimlessness we may curious one, as it distinctly alters our experience on even the most well- planned getaway. perceptions of reality.” Our familiarity with the narrative structures of Hollywood films themselves (with the standard the young African boys who help expectations of accomplishments, Cameras – Capturing but Missing the them with their luggage on the dock. turning points, and closure) could be Moment Though cameras are not a prominently said to influence our perception of the featured subject after this moment, this world and our lives. When it comes to t is significant that in many observation of the tendency of tourists travel, we relate a Hollywood sense of these tourist/traveler films, to photograph a place before even of structure to our journeys, forming Iwe see protagonists using and experiencing it is an apt one: this initial similar expectations of self-discovery standing behind cameras. The impact image will essentially prove to be a and authenticity to the protagonists of standing behind a camera and false impression of what becomes a of films like The Beach and The seeing the world is a curious one, as disastrous trip. This opening sequence Sheltering Sky. The irony is that it distinctly alters our perceptions of relates to the film’s prominent theme Richard’s journey (despite the veneer reality. A central part of tourism seems of ‘missing’ an experience while one of purpose in his map and mission) to be the consumption of images, is experiencing it. Throughout The is quite aimless and floundering, the preoccupation with seeing and Sheltering Sky, Kit and Port seem to embedded in the same desire to retreat capturing the world through a camera keep “missing each other”: though they from the world that we also see (albeit lens: travel together, they sleep in separate more explicitly) in The Sheltering beds, and one is always asleep while [Tourists] know the rituals, how we are Sky. Travel for the protagonists of supposed to behave, and where we are expected the other is awake. Occasionally they both films is an escape route, yet to point our camera, if we want to capture the find themselves separated from each there is no real sense of what they are ‘true essence’ of the ‘authentic’ scene before other by great distances, as well as escaping from, other than a vague us. And yet, in holding a camera to our eye, they each take turns being unfaithful. desire to live a more authentic and free we also effect a sense of distance, ostensibly Finally, Kit and Port manage to spend removing ourselves from our surroundings. It is lifestyle. In The Beach, the commune as if we can glimpse - for a fleeting moment - a some time together, taking a bike of Westerners on the deserted island in world somehow made strange by the very act of ride into the desert. “I miss this” Port Thailand is essentially a retreat from observation.(Dicks, xi). says to Kit while they ride together; civilization, a way for its citizens to a curious, but not unusual, sentiment remove themselves and to have as little The strangeness and distance towards considering they are experiencing the impact on the world as possible, as our surroundings created by the act moment in the present. Bertolucci is well as to smoke as much free hashish of standing behind the camera is very certainly concerned here with the idea as they can. The film’s conclusion is similar to the distance we effectively of missing out on experiences while intriguing in the sense that it attempts experience when, as travelers, our they happen, this scene in particular to erase the many traumatic things expectations of the world are shaped reflecting the ways in which we tend that have happened along the way by virtualities such as cinematic to channel our experiences in the and Richard’s direct responsibility representations of various familiar (and present as if already looking back on for those events, as well as to try to unfamiliar) locals. This preoccupation them as memories or photographs. distract from the thought that he hasn’t with capturing the authenticity or How often on a vacation do we think really gained much positivity or self- essence of a place essentially distances about capturing the sights and places knowledge from this experience at us from that place. in front of us in order to later show all. The film’s ‘happy ending’ features The very beginning of The off to others, to tell a good story? Kit Richard receiving through email, Sheltering Sky reflects the touristic and Port’s scene together goes further significantly, a photograph Francoise obsession with photographing a to show how the two awkwardly Hollywood and Liberalism 23 romanticize this moment between and national park location – now Sheltering Sky as Kit and Port speak to them in the desert. As Port brings Kit completely empty and beautiful. Citing Tunner about their undecided plans to to a high cliff from which they can Benjamin, Bella Dicks explores the stay in Africa for “a year or two”: only see endless desert below, they way in which camera close-ups and are drippingly ecstatic, and make love detailed shots do not only “‘make Tunner: We’re probably the first tourists they’ve while Port rambles on about how here more precise what in any case was had since the war. Kit: Tunner, we’re not tourists. We’re travelers. the sky is protecting them. Ultimately visible, though unclear’; rather, they Tunner: Oh. What’s the difference? Port: A tourist is someone who thinks about going home the moment they arrive, Tunner. Kit: Whereas a traveler might not come back at One of the striking similarities of The all. Tunner: You mean I’m a tourist. Beach and The Sheltering Sky is their Kit: Yes, Tunner. And I’m half and half.
preoccupation with the “authentic” So ultimately, tourism is associated with a conventional, safe way of experience of being a traveler, as experiencing a foreign land — as if the attachment to home makes a person opposed to being a tourist. weak, and unable to ‘truly’ experience something of depth through travel. Being a traveler essentially describes a what The Sheltering Sky is concerned restructure the subject’s relation with lifestyle choice and a flexibility to stay with is the fleeting nature of such reality itself” (Dicks, 20). These final somewhere for a long time if it seems experiences, just as the mysterious old images appeal most directly to our fit. In The Beach, though the beach man narrates at the end of the film: life touristic senses, and as will be explored commune collapses at least within a often seems limitless, and time seems more in detail later on, emphasize few months of Richard’s arrival, he inexhaustible, yet how many more a desire to go and see for ourselves is prepared to live there for “a year or times will we actually do something or – a strange mixed message in that the two” as well. go to a place in our lifetimes? Taking a appeal of the beach in the film was Another striking connection picture becomes a way to freeze time that it was completely isolated from between each film’s central trio of eternally, even if the image of reality tourists. travelers, is the way that we know created is different from what we essentially nothing about these actually experienced at the time. Tourist and Traveler Fantasies, characters’ pasts: they are ‘romantic’ Expectations, and Countercultural figures who arrive out of nowhere, inally The Beach toys with the Ideologies with no attachments to society, family, idea of the ‘disposable camera,’ or the past. Once again, we do not Fand perhaps kind of disposable ne of the striking similarities know what they are trying to escape, memories – disposable in the same of The Beach and The only that they desire to. The first lines sense that Richard seems to fleet from OSheltering Sky is their Richard speaks in The Beach are: “My one cheap thrill to another, always preoccupation with the ‘authentic’ name is Richard. So what else do you ready to move on (and naturally, forget) experience of being a traveler, as need to know? Stuff about my family, in pursuit of something more exotic opposed to being a tourist. From the or where I’m from? None of that and enticing. Francoise (Richard’s very start, each film has its characters matters. Not once you cross the ocean French love interest), who previously overtly state that they are somehow and cut yourself loose, looking for photographs the night sky and stars, outside of the mainstream. As Richard something more beautiful, something must leave her manual camera behind arrives in his hostel in Bangkok, he more exciting and yes, I admit, as the group has to plunge into the speaks of his fellow adventure-seeking something more dangerous.” In The water just to get to the beach. Once travelers with a degree of contempt: Sheltering Sky when Port is asked what on the beach she obtains a disposable “The only downer is, everyone’s got his travel plans are, he responds “My camera (where she takes the group the same idea. We all travel thousands only plan is, I have no plan.” All we photo that Richard receives at the end): of miles just to watch TV and check know about these people are that they it is ironic then that this ‘disposable in to somewhere with all the comforts are American, their plans are open and image’ is the one that ends up framing of home, and you gotta ask yourself, undefined, and that they are ‘artists’ the end of the film, and leaving Richard what is the point of that?” Richard with a countercultural, bohemian as well as the viewer with a completely defines himself as a lone traveler stance towards life and convention. different impression of the commune who is seeking something different It is no coincidence that the central than the wild deterioration and and expresses his disdain throughout protagonists of both The Beach and destruction we previously observed. the film for going the conventional, The Sheltering Sky are essentially (at But quite notably, the film doesn’t end touristy route. The dichotomy between the least) middle class, bohemian/ here – a credits sequence intercuts tourist and traveler is made more countercultural types: the aim or with gorgeous images of the beach explicit from the first moments of The promise of self-discovery upon travel is
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 essentially a desire/expectation which Essentially the protagonists of both a manifestation of the isolated retreat is strongly linked to a countercultural The Beach and The Sheltering Sky and self-reckoning the protagonists stance on the world. Essentially, we embody this idea of seeking escape experience. Similarly in The Beach, can link this desire to travel freely from the ‘shackles’ of their middle- Richard and his friends’ journey and not to adhere to the conventions class existences back in the US. Yet it pushes into farther less-traveled of Western society’s touristic norms is a notably aimless, drifting search, terrain, and finally to the isolated to a countercultural way of thinking and there is no ‘coherent vision’ of beach, where the commune of fellow (and thus the ideals of The Beach, a Hollywood production, which criticizes tourism at the same time as it “Essentially the protagonists of both promotes exploitative travel, are quite conflicted). Certainly, all of those who travel may not identify with bohemian The Beach and The Sheltering Sky ideals, but it is a fair estimate that those who are traveling into the non- embody this idea of seeking escape Western world are certainly likely to have inclinations to at least temporarily from the ‘shackles’ of their middle-class depart from the mainstream. Those who identify themselves as, or aspire to existences back in the US.” become ‘life travelers’ are Westerners with an illusion that their ventures outward into the world are a successful authenticity and freedom ultimately nearly-all Western “travelers” becomes way to escape conformity and the represented in these films. Essentially, a kind of regressive retreat back to a dullness of their ordinary, ‘oppressive’ the protagonists of the films remain different kind of society, albeit with 4 lives in the Western world. Considering attached in some ways to their old all the same kinds of people. The the gap previously explored between lives and certain comforts of home. commune members seem to believe the Western world and the less Their encounters are highly traumatic, they have accomplished something developed world’s exclusion from the resulting in sickness, violence, murder, revolutionary, but in their very retreat privilege of tourism, the problematic and death; ultimately they must return from the world, they are deluding issues of this Western ‘oppression’ are back to their homelands at the end. The themselves into believing they are rendered clear, as well as the ultimate trauma encountered in an exotic world, leading lives of authenticity. The folly of expecting to be liberated as well as the inevitable exile, seem commune is not changing the world, upon encountering the East. It is in to be mainstays of films that portray but ultimately experiencing a life of 3 this way that we can see the inherent American travel to the East. This leisure, casual sex, and drug use. self-deception of the countercultural traumatic removal from these lands traveler who thinks that traveling to directly conflicts with the Western ven the attempted retreat from Asia will make him more “free”. In countercultural desire to escape. The Western society and capitalism The Rebel Sell, author Joseph Heath culture does not meet ‘authentic’ Eis contradictory and certainly critiques this fantasy projection of the travelers with open arms (if they even unsuccessful in these films -- or, it can West onto the non-Western world: attempt to engage with the national be argued, this retreat is impossible culture at all), and they eventually find since it is the Westerner’s wealth which Westerners have been using Third World that they were better off where they has afforded them this very luxury of countries as a backdrop for their own personal came from. escape into the non-Western world. voyages of self-discovery for decades. The Heath writes that whether a The commune society of The Beach temptation to do so flows quite naturally from subject takes a journey outward into and the increasingly fragmented trio the countercultural idea. If our own culture is a system of total manipulation and control, the exotic, or a journey into the self, of The Sheltering Sky all at some perhaps the best way to shake ourselves free “either way, escapism became a central point desire and rely on the comforts from the illusion is to immerse ourselves in preoccupation of the counterculture” of home. As Dicks writes: “What some other culture—preferably one that is as (255). It becomes clear in both The [tourists] are getting away from are radically distinct from our own as possible. Beach and The Sheltering Sky, societies which are disproportionately Thus the countercultural critique has always been tempted by exoticism—uncritical that what starts as a journey to the affluent, consumerist, technologized, romanticization of that which is most different. outskirts, to find what is “off the centralized and regulated. This One can indulge in the exotic through travel, to beaten-trail” – increasingly further inevitably shapes the kind of escape places like India and Central America […] In away from large, “tourist friendly” that is sought” (Dicks 48-49). Just every case, the goal is the same: to throw off the cities – eventually becomes an as much as the protagonists attempt chains of technocratic modernity and to achieve the revolution in consciousness that will allow inward retreat for the protagonists. to escape from these ‘oppressive’ us all to live a more authentic life (Heath, 252- In The Sheltering Sky, the endlessly ideals of Western consumer society, 53). expansive Sahara desert itself becomes they ultimately come back to these
4 It is a telling detail that not one native of Thailand inhabits the beach, the only Thai people on the island are the hashish harvesters who guard the supply and mysteriously allow this select group to remain on the hidden beach.
Hollywood and Liberalism 25 same values. In a central scene of The end so disastrously is worth further beach is constructed as a hidden, Beach, Richard and Sal must go to consideration. Though the brief ending sacred paradise where only select the mainland to stock up on supplies with Richard at an internet café seems people may tread. Indeed, the film’s for the commune: the requests that to quickly pass over the major damage actual ending with these final images are put in show that in no way are the which has been done, the attempt of the island — now empty, now group surviving ‘off the land,’ requests at a ‘happy’ summarizing of what appearing even more beautiful and ranging from batteries to toiletries. Richard has learned is unsettling for pristine than before — perhaps was a specific inclusion on Fox’s part in their deal with Thailand’s government to “Despite Richard’s affirmations that help promote tourism. Despite The Sheltering Sky’s more abstract approach to the landscape, the he learned something, the overall marketing taglines for the film itself reflect a distinct attempt to attract ‘message’ of the film seems to be that viewers through the promise of lush scenery: “sensual and erotic,” “every following the more-traveled path of fantasy is brought to light.” Though possibly not a film that makes a viewer tourism is the safe way to be.” want to run out and travel the Sahara, one cannot deny the gorgeous desert cinematography and experience Even more telling is their dependence the viewer. Richard narrates as if he pleasure from a virtual engagement in on a rice supply, which proves their has learned something important, travel through the film’s treacherous inability to feed themselves from fish but if we evaluate the film, we may land and cityscapes. Further, despite and vegetation on what is a quite lush arrive at the conclusion that Richard’s being on an opposite pole from the island landscape. In The Sheltering attempts at authentic, adventurous production process of The Beach (in Sky, Tunner’s smuggled bottles of travel was excessively misguided, terms of its Hollywood production, champagne become the only way selfish, and disastrous for most of those and controversial case of damaging the for Kit to survive train rides, as well he crossed paths with. The values of national park), The Sheltering Sky’s as more generally the misery of the “home” and the West are reinforced production also required a significant group’s North African travel. Food in the film as Richard comes to the reconstruction of the landscape. and water essentially will be the cause conclusion that one must always return Camels had to be imported for filming, of Port’s illness and death by typhoid to where one came from. Despite and a fort was built in the middle of fever. The need for a doctor and proper Richard’s affirmations that he learned the Sahara. Never before had Niger hospital care is one thing that Port can’t something, the overall “message” of seen such a production take place (The obtain in the outskirts of Niger, and the film seems to be that following Sheltering Sky). In this way we can despite the Foreign Legion’s efforts to the more-traveled path of tourism is look at Bertolucci’s film in a new light: save him, he cannot survive, leaving the safe way to be. Or perhaps the key an art film, which still had to capitalize Kit in a state of insane wandering. to understanding The Beach’s highly on its exotic images to sell itself, and Essentially it is this series of conflicted messages is once again in a production which altered, at least marked traumas encountered upon the gorgeous, travelogue-style images temporarily, the landscape of the traveling in each film that stand in the of Thailand’s Maya Bay which end the Sahara Desert. most direct opposition to an exotic film. It is these images which we are When we consider the way that romanticization of travel. Port dies, left with and remember, as if the film transnational productions themselves Kit is left alone to become a Muslim can’t decide whether or not it wants impact the environments where they man’s concubine. Richard is sent to live to critique a traveler’s impulses and locate themselves, as well as creating alone in the forest for a few weeks and desires, or to actually promote tourism. increased desires to visit these places regresses to a primal state, has a direct through their manipulated images hand in four fellow American tourists Cinema’s Global Impact: Tourism and landscapes, it raises all kinds of being shot dead by Thai druglords, and Production questions of just what is a real ‘natural’ and ultimately is responsible for the environment or city anymore. The deterioration of the commune and leads It is likely that The Beach’s Beach is a particularly famous and the human raft in exile from the island conflicted representation of tourism controversial case in this respect. back to the mainland. It is curious that on film, which at once critiques the Toby Miller’s Global Hollywood 2 these essentially negative portrayals ‘herd mentality’ of must-see tourist focuses on the increasing ways that of travel experiences are the final locations, actually increased the influx production is being outsourced in an outcome of these films which deal with of tourism to Phi Phi Islands National exploitative manner to Third World travelers’ desires and expectations. Park (on Maya Bay of Thailand) and less developed nations (for the The Sheltering Sky is certainly more with its fetishistic cinematography of same reason that tourists go to less critical and concerned with the fleeting beautiful, exotic landscapes. Certainly developed nations: because simply put, nature of time and experience, but this should be viewed as a great irony, their money can go a long way). In for The Beach, a Hollywood film, to considering that in the film this same the case of Thailand: “at 2002 rates in
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 U.S. dollars, here is one example of a production which caused damage between two very distinct worlds — budget calculated for production in the to the physical environment, but it the mobile minority, and the immobile U.S. versus Thailand that covers labour, is fascinating that a film so overtly majority. Or perhaps the idea of the equipment hire and fees. It helps to concerned with a certain kind of ‘traumatic encounter abroad’ comes explain why low-budget U.S. features critique of tourism and exploitation, as a fear that one day the rest of the are increasingly locating there” (Miller expressing disgust at the way that world will strike back against Western , 167). Once again, we can tie global tourists abuse Southeast Asian nations, dominance (certainly a foreshadowing tourism to the Hollywood industry: not only reaped physical damage upon fear, that since 9/11 has multiplied the desires of Westerners are put to a national park itself, but actually used infinitely). One thing is certain: in a the center, and they are able to take advantage of less developed nations’ weaker economies for their own pursuit of pleasure and adventure. “Perhaps we should see Fox’s bulldozing Paradoxically, the lawsuit that Thailand’s government filed against of Thailand’s beaches as a metaphor Fox is an exemplary case of striking back against Hollywood’s careless for the way that Hollywood tramples domination. Environmental activists in Thailand protested the “arrogant heavily upon the world...” despoliation” they observed take place as Fox produced The Beach in Maya world which is becoming increasingly Bay, part of Phi Phi Islands National tourism promotion as a way to get the uncertain and uncomfortable with Park: production out of trouble. An influx of tourism to a natural area subsequently American dominance, these films Natural scenery was bulldozed in late 1998 results in more physical damage. The become a way to sit back and travel in because it did not fit the fantasy of a tropical cycle of contradictions in purpose a way that allows us to see the world in idyll, sand dunes were relocated, flora rearranged and point of view of a Hollywood ways in which we never possibly could and a ‘new’ strip of coconut palms planted. production seems endless here. otherwise, as well as they ultimately The producers paid off the government with a donation to the Royal Forestry Department It is also notable that the remote suggest that perhaps the smartest and and a campaign with the Tourism Authority of and pristine beach essentially was safest way to travel is through this very Thailand to twin the film as a promotion for the not good enough on its own for virtual experience of the world. country. Meanwhile, director Boyle claimed the the film to proceed: once again the film was ‘raising environmental consciousness’ idea of the virtual nature of cinema Works Cited among a local population that was allegedly ‘behind’ US levels of ‘awareness’—typical is complicated. Not only is the Hollywood arrogance, and especially idiotic cinematography of the landscape Clarke, David B. and Marcus A. when there was no US legislation capable of fetishised and presents the viewer with Doel. “From Flatland to Vernacular handling the environmental scandal, which an image that can’t be replicated in real Relativity”, in Landscape and Film, was dealt with in overseas litigation where experience, but the “natural landscape” ed. Martin Lefebvre. New York and proper laws and precedents existed, via the Environmental Act (Justice for Maya Bay of the film is actually no longer natural, London: Routledge, 2006 International Alliance; 2000; Ghosh, 2003; leaving us with the question of what Colorado Historical Society. Flanigan, 2002: 84). (Miller , 167) places in the world we can actually Georgetwon Loop Railroad. consider “natural.” Are there really any accessed: 13 Dec 2006.
Hollywood and Liberalism 27 Longley in Fragments: An Interview with Award-Winning Filmmaker James Longley
R. Colin Tait
This past September, at the 25th Annual Vancouver Colin Tait – First off, let me say that I was really impressed International Film Festival, documentary filmmaker James with your film. I think it’s obviously timely, not only given Longley was on hand at the Canadian premiere of his what we continue to find out coming from Iraq, but also a important and timely film Iraq in Fragments. This film, really important historical record. in addition to winning all the major documentary awards at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, was nominated James Longley – Thanks. in the Best Documentary Feature Category at the 2006 Academy Awards. The documentary, which chronicles the CT – I really appreciated how you managed to put a human unfolding reality of the year in-between the invasion of Iraq face back onto the Iraqi people. I wonder if using children to by American forces and the lead up to the civil war in the tell the story of the new Iraq was part of a strategy on your country, records the three major regions of the country and part. presents a compelling portrait of the people, their landscapes and their hardships that face their daily lives in Post-War JL – Well, maybe. But mainly it’s merely practical. It’s just Iraq. far easier to film kids than adults. Adults, they want to go Cinephile was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work, it’s just harder. With kids, they’re interested. They to sit down over breakfast to discuss Longley’s important get excited by the idea; nobody pays attention to them, they film with him. like it if someone pays attention to them. Generally, nobody
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 wants to know their opinion and You have to start the story early and JL – Yeah. It’s very old, it’s very new. suddenly someone asks them about follow it no matter what happens. No Things are happening all the time. their world. So I think for kids, being matter whose life it is things are going People’s ideas are changing. In that in a film like this, we filmed for a year, to happen. Pick anybody practically. first year, people went from accepting they’re more interested in it. It becomes Things are changing, their wife is Americans and thinking that they were cathartic for them. And also they just having a kid or they’re about to get doing something good to sort of hating tend to be better subjects. They’re married… them and hoping they would leave… changing really fast, their lives are moving from being a kid to a teenager within a couple of years after that so it’s possible to capture the changes “I just didn’t want to be in the in their lives. So for longitudinal documentary work they just tend to be richer material. situation where the United States
CT – So it’s not necessarily a started dropping bombs and you really metaphorical choice? have no idea anymore what the truth JL – It also works on that level, but when you’re making a documentary is.” your first considerations are practical. If you’re not going to have access, if CT – So the chances are eventually… and wanted to kill them, you know? So you’re not going to have permission, on that level things are changing a lot. then you can’t make the film. JL – There are actually story elements As a filmmaker, that’s exciting like you would need in a fiction film to be in a place where things are CT – It’s interesting in the first section, that are taking place in people’s lives. changing and it’s not just things that dealing with the child Mohammed, So those anchor the bigger picture; are happening in the lives of your almost this wisdom that he seems to things that you’re trying to do. The characters but things are happening in have in these monologues that are thing is a lot of times in documentary the life of the country. If you have that overlaid in the film. Which is opposed you find yourself essentially making situation where you can be recording to the fact that he can’t write his a film that follows a lot of the rules things on a lot of different levels – the father’s last name... of fiction just to keep the audience country, the personal level, it is to me, interested. the most exiting kind of filmmaking. JL – Right. He’s uneducated. But as Iraqi kids go, he’s fairly inarticulate. CT – Right. CT – This film really takes place in, When I was first interviewing him I not a magical time, but the in-between was thinking to myself “do I really JL – There are a lot of documentaries time that you described as the current want to interview this kid?” I’d ask that don’t do that, but they might civil war situation and the invasion of him to tell me about his family and not appeal to such a broad audience Iraq by America. That’s what is really he’d say “I have three uncles, and three and no one will ever see them. As a compelling about the film. uncles…” and he’d be repeating himself documentary filmmaker you want all the time. He was so shy that he people to see your work. Even if you’re JL – You know, it’s a gradual slide. could barely speak. And normally he’s making a film about a difficult subject okay, but on camera, it took him about in a foreign language, you want it to be CT – …and that’s clear. You can really a year to get into it. accessible in some way. The way that see this trajectory within the course of you do it is having these characters your film. CT – In terms of filming, I know you you can identify with and things that spent two years doing it, but did you are happening in their lives. A plot JL – Thanks. do a cycle of two years by visiting one emerges. There’s some kind of arc. spot after another…? This film doesn’t really follow that in CT – The obvious question now would a conventional way but as a filmmaker be what was your impetus for making JL – Yes. I would start a story then you still have to pay attention to these the film? move on. I filmed the Baghdad story things. I feel like I have to. for a month or two then before I wore JL – Mostly I just wanted to see the out my welcome, I’d take a break from CT – One of the things that the film country. I knew that the United States it, go start a different story and then reminded me of is the post-World War was going to invade and I was upset film that for a while, build up those II films like Rome: Open City…This about that. Not just me but most of relationships and then come back to the idea of a look to what is essentially a the other people I know. I just didn’t first one for a week or two. brand-new country… want to be in the situation where the
Hollywood and Liberalism 29 United States started dropping bombs you have to always go through the CT – Well, Thomas Friedman is and you really have no idea anymore process of people discovering, bit-by- always telling us that the moderate what the truth is. Do you know what I bit… (mockingly) “Oh my god, there’s Muslim population of the world mean? It goes out the window…and I a civil war?” and “Oh my God, they needs to have a dialogue amongst just hate being lied to. I hate it. I really hate us?” and then gradually come to themselves… want to know what’s going on, and I the inevitable conclusion that they have want to have my own opinion based on to withdraw from the country. But it JL – Thomas Friedman is an idiot. my own experience. I don’t want to be takes so long, and so many people get I’m sorry but he is. Anyone who told what to think. I have that kind of killed in the meantime, but here we are. argues that having a larger number of compulsion. McDonald’s makes you safer and more democratic is just talking out of his ass. He was a good correspondent back in “So is it better? I don’t know, I the day when he was covering Beirut in ’82 but…I’m sure he’s a smart guy. don’t think it is. I’d prefer not to be But ever since he started getting paid to stay in nice hotels and talk to all the responsible for that death rate. I don’t right people I think he just really lost it. know, I say we give it to Saddam if that’s CT – I guess what I’m asking is that from the media depiction of the Muslim world it looks like that no one the choice.” is talking about anything at all, but…
So I wanted to go there. I wanted to CT – There were a couple of people JL – The only thing that people do see it; I knew it was going to happen. It during the Q and A following the film is talk about their situation and what’s wasn’t something that I thought I could who seemed to have a great deal of going on. stop. I mean, I spoke out against it. So resistance to some of the ideas, not in the end I wanted to be there to see it your ideas, but the question of whether CT – They seem, at least in your film, myself. To really know what was going Iraq is a better place now. What do to be very aware of what’s going on… on. To be able to have a conversation you think accounts for that kind of with someone and really know what resistance? There were repeated JL – And if you go to United States, I’m talking about. questions relating to the idea that there’s no real debate. You know, people are no longer being killed by people watch TV. The official debate CT – What’s interesting to me is Saddam Hussein and that this is a good and the actual debate that goes on in it seems to stand as a record. Like thing. the United States is kind of on the you said, there weren’t a lot of non- level of…well, what is it on the level embedded journalists in the country. JL – I don’t know what to say. It of?…Terry Schaivo and that kind of strikes me that if you’re a person, it thing. They’re not really thinking about JL – Yeah. And it’s no big secret the makes no difference to you whether the larger issues. direction the country is going and you’re going to be killed by Saddam The United States just did away people’s opinion of it. I think there’s a or by someone else. The death rate with habeas corpus. That’s a big deal! Zogby poll or something. Two-thirds because of politics is just as high, if But that’s not up for debate. That’s of Baghdad residents oppose the not higher than before. So is it better? I not a big issue on the public’s mind. occupation and want the U.S. to leave. don’t know, I don’t think it is. I’d prefer I didn’t see any headlines about it in So if you think about it, if you’re in not to be responsible for that death the newspaper. We just did away with the United States and you know that rate. I don’t know, I say we give it to the most basic fundamental rights two-thirds of the population opposes Saddam if that’s the choice. in a system of laws and democratic you being there there’s some sort of representation and so forth and so contradiction going on. CT – If you read the New York Times, on and nobody says ‘boo’ about it. The fact is from the very beginning and read someone like Thomas Whereas, in Iraq, people are concerned you could say that the whole trajectory Friedman’s column, he’s always talking about it, all this stuff that’s going on, of how this was going to go was clear. about how Muslims need to have an and they talk about it. open dialogue about their culture. But CT – Yeah. what’s interesting about your movie CT – Maybe they don’t have a ‘star is that it seems like all the characters culture’? JL – This has happened before in in your movie, that all they do is talk history. This is not the first time that about politics… JL – They just don’t trust the TV as a Western power invades a country much. for imperial ambitious reasons. We JL – What was the first part of your know how it’s going to end, essentially. question? CT – In Fahrenheit 9/11 one of the There’s no mystery here. And yet, still biggest attacks against the film was
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 leveled at the scene that takes place you know, the trains run on time, conferences and some speeches. just before the bombing of Iraq. more or less. It’s cleaner. The state You know, he’s not a great speaker. People seemed really offended by this is functioning. They’re living under His father, that’s something else. This ‘Utopian’ imagery of Iraq as a place draconian sanctions, so of course happens all the time, you know, the where children play and that kind of it’s falling apart, but, it was working father is famous and well-respected thing… better than under American occupation and then he’s out of the picture and with total anarchy. You know, an gets assassinated in 1989 and then JL – Yeah, the kid flying the kite, astronomical crime rate, people his older brother is killed, who was right? I mean, the fact is, kids did fly getting killed in the street…and this apparently more ‘with it’ than he was. kites before the war. I was there. I saw uncertainty. (laughs) And then you get this guy it! (laughs). I guess Michael Moore Before there were rules, right? who’s really young, I mean, he’s in his may have fallen into the position of Don’t oppose the regime, do your bit twenties, coming to power with not a having to describe too much while and you’ll probably be alright. Now lot of experience and people follow him having too little time. He only has five there are no rules. You go out and because of the legacy. seconds to cover pre-war Iraq so he you try to drive to work, maybe you throws in the shot just to remind people get killed. So people are afraid to go CT – What do you think of the whole that there are people in Iraq and if outside, they’re afraid to send their Orson Welles statement, where he said you bomb them, that’s not necessarily children to school. It’s a civil war. something to the effect that if he didn’t great. There’s this slowly boiling civil war have to do all of his own fundraising he I think Michael Moore is a nice going on and absence of security and could have made lots more films? guy, but I wouldn’t want to make so on… Michael Moore movies. It’s not my In that power vacuum these JL – Well, his problem was that he style, but I know where he’s coming religious groups, the militias are made fiction films. In my case, if I want from. It’s not like he keeps it a secret coming to power because people to make a film, I’ll find a way to do it. (laughs). want that. They want security. They In these two documentary features I’ve want someone in charge and if the made, I haven’t had to ask anyone’s CT – I guess my next question would government is weak, it will be someone permission. I just go do them. And be, since your film begins with this else. And maybe it’s just a micro-thing then once you’ve been in Iraq for two similar expression of the beauty of like Sadr City is controlled by the years and filming three hundred hours Iraq… Sadr militia and Motkada al-Sadr, and of footage you’ll always find someone those are the people who keep security. who will want to put in the money to JL – The thing is in my film, it’s They’re the people you’d go to if you finish it. Because no one else has that. different. Because, it’s being portrayed need something, like if your house has If you work for TV chances are as the subjective view of this kid. In his been destroyed or whatever, they’ll they’ll never allow you the ability to mind, the pre-war Baghdad is far more help you out. They’ve become the new go somewhere for two years and film. pleasurable because there’s security. de facto government. Do you know They’ll say “you’re working for us, You could go out, you’re not afraid… what I mean? do you have insurance?” It suddenly etc…Whereas now, he talks about how becomes more complicated, do you scary the war is and how frightening it CT – Is it the kind of thing that know what I mean? Whereas, if you is now with all the gunfire and ‘we’re has happened elsewhere with any work for yourself, you don’t have to afraid to go outside.’ nationalist/factionalist group…? worry about any of that. That is the majority of the opinion for the non-political Iraqi. But what JL – This is politics. But people forget CT – So you won best director, best are you going to do? If you’re living that politics is not about Republicans editing, best cinematography, at the in a dictatorship, as long as you don’t and Democrats having their ad on TV, Sundance Film Festival and you did the oppose the dictatorship, you can get by. politics in that kind of place is more sound and music… If you’re living on a subsistence about functional politics. level, your main concern is the stability JL – (laughs) They don’t have a sound to earn a living for your family. It’s not CT – You mentioned al-Sadr. I thought award… like, “Oh can I write an article in the it was interesting that your film also newspaper and not get tortured…” So documents his, I don’t know if I know CT – But if there was one, you the majority of the population is really enough to say “rise to power,” but obviously would have gotten it operating on that level, the level of “is definitely the shift in his policies at the there. Is that a practical issue or a the society working?” on a day to day very least. Like the change from being megalomaniacal issue? level. a political figure to a militant one. JL – Maybe if I had the money to CT – Right. JL – But the film really isn’t about him hire a great composer or something or though. I didn’t have the access. Even maybe if I had some guy to follow me JL – And it was before, it’s just that if I had wanted to. I never interviewed around with a bunch of microphones it was a dictatorship. But it works, him. I filmed one of his press to record all the sound I would have done it.
Hollywood and Liberalism 31 Although, it is actually an thing is sometimes you’ll be working only have so much time. advantage to be by yourself. I mean I with someone and they’ll show you If it takes me three years to was always working with one Iraqi guy. something and you’ll say “Okay great” make a film, I’m only going to make And I only have this three-hundred and it goes into the film… eight films in my life. This is a big dollar microphone. In the future, consideration. I don’t want to have to finances allowing, I might get a nice CT – You also talked about objectivity wait five years between projects. I need stereo microphone… a little bit last night. What are your to go out and make another film. views on objectivity in documentary? CT – …To replace the three-hundred CT – How long did it take you to edit dollar microphone… this film?
“This is politics. But people forget that politics is not about Republicans and Democrats having their ad on TV, politics in that kind of place is more about functional politics.”
JL – …and train the translator guy JL – People have this idea that JL – I was editing in Iraq and doing how to use it. Because otherwise, they documentary is supposed to be translation. There are about two get bored. Especially when nothing’s objective, fair and balanced and all this thousand pages of translation that are being translated. Usually I just tell stuff. But that’s a lie. That’s not how it all time coded. You know, time code them to get lost for a while, so maybe goes. Everybody is subjective. to time code, sentence to sentence. I’ll give them a job next time. I mean, We would do that with the translators that’s the way it goes. CT – What do you think about the sitting in a room in northern Iraq, It’s a low budget film and most resurgence or popularity of the that part. So I would type in the composers would probably want the documentary form? translations and they would be feeding equivalent of the entire budget to do me dialogue. the soundtrack, and I don’t have that JL – Michael Moore deserves some So I edited the rough cut of the first kind of money, so it’s just cheaper to credit for making it more populist chapter while I was still in Iraq and do it yourself. If you don’t know how to and making films that could appeal to then the last two chapters were finished make music, you learn (laughs). And if everyone, and they’re kind of funny. in Seattle. So it took from April 2005 you don’t want music, just don’t have it. My films aren’t big on humour, though. until last November [2005]. And then From my point of view, I like to all the post-dubbing, sound mixing, CT – Yeah. make documentaries that are theatrical. colour correction stuff happened in I’m not interested in television. I like early January. JL – I do know how I want things. On the idea of the 40-foot screen and the the other hand on my first documentary audience and as I say, I like fiction CT – What’s next for you after the I did everything myself. I mixed cinema as much as documentary. I festival circuit? it myself, I did everything on my really like that aesthetic. computer and it was just the translating Even though I’m interested in JL – I don’t know. I’ve been looking that I needed help with. I do like to subjects that are real, I’m not really around a little bit. I just went to make my own music though... interested in fiction film, although I Lebanon. I think that I would like like to watch it. Because I feel like, to do something in Iran, but I don’t CT – So you can pick up that last “why would you want to make stuff know whether or not they’ll give me award? up?” there’s so much going on. a visa. We’ll see. If I had my choice There are so many reasons. In of anywhere to make my next film it JL – I don’t think about it in those doing documentary instead of fiction would be Iran. terms. I don’t know about auteur there’s the independence of it. You theory, but I do like to be the author don’t have to ask anybody because of the movie. I don’t like anyone else it’s so cheap and you can just go do it telling me what to do on a creative yourself. And not have to wait. Just like level on the film. I like to work with Orson Welles said, why waste all this other people but I want the final time waiting for funding? You don’t word on how it’s going to be. The want to do that. Life is short, and you
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 War Films Without War: The Gulf War at the Movies
Brenda Cromb
t has become a cliché to say that war has changed since the end of the Cold War; but have war movies changed? this tendency to erase death itself from war should not seduce us into Though Slavoj Žižek does not explicitly mention the endorsing the standard notion that war is made less traumatic if it is no I longer experienced by soldiers (or presented) as an actual encounter with Persian Gulf War of 1991 as an example of what he calls “war without war,” Jean Baudrillard’s ruminations on the another human being to be killed, but as an abstract activity in front of a stage-managed conflict make it clear that it can be seen as screen or behind a gun far from the explosion […] While such a procedure makes the soldier less guilty, it is open to question if it effectively causes an example of modern warfare, where technology decreases less anxiety…(33). the risk of deaths (on “the right side”). Žižek states that “the public expects a guarantee that there will be no That the technological screen distances soldiers from their casualties,” and that the news media’s coverage of a modern enemy – like the American (and coalition) soldiers who conflict tends to undermine deaths on both sides (2000, 33). fought in the Gulf War and who largely avoided close contact Baudrillard notes that CNN’s coverage had such tendencies with the Iraqis – may not actually protect them explains in the Gulf War, complaining that “[i]t is a masquerade of much of the obfuscation and misdirection engaged in by information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution movies dealing with the Gulf War. Žižek goes on to ask the of the image, the image of unintelligible distress. No images question that seems to be at the heart of Gulf War cinema: of the field of battle, but images of masks, of blind, defeated faces, images of falsification” (40). Žižek writes that:
Hollywood and Liberalism 33 what if the truly traumatic feature is NOT the These suppressions of deadlock are one given the popularity of Vietnam and awareness that I am killing another human being reason we turn to Hollywood; they are World War II films. It appears that (to be obliterated through the ‘dehumanization’ and ‘objectification’ of war into a technical especially common in films that deal the desire to weave the Gulf War procedure), but on the contrary, this very with real-life catastrophic events, like into the symbolic narrative, to create ‘objectification,’ which then generates the need war films. a cinematic “Gulf War” – the way to supplement it by the fantasies of a authentic Of course, the first sequence in Vietnam films have done for the personal encounters with the enemy? (2000 Saving Private Ryan is balanced by Vietnam War, or World War II films 33-34) have done for World War II – is simply not present. One explanation is that, as Baudrillard titled his controversial “Remarkably few feature films have essay: “[t]he gulf war did not take place.” While something definitely did been made that portray the events of take place, it was so radically different than our traditional understanding of war that we may not even be able to the Gulf War onscreen, especially given call it ‘war’ anymore. Žižek describes the popularity of Vietnam and World this as well: It is already a journalistic cliché that a new War II films.” form of war is now emerging: a high-tech war in which precision bombing, and so on, does the job, without any direct intervention by ground In the few films that actually do the remainder of the film’s highly forces […]. Old notions of face-to-face conflict, deal directly with the Gulf War, we conventional, conservative narrative, courage and so on, are becoming obsolete (2002, can see attempts by the filmmakers as Krin Gabbard notes (135). Gabbard 35). to resolve the anxieties around the goes on to question the ideological enemy and the “realness” of a war purpose of a film that valorizes soldiers Because of this conflict between what experience that Žižek sees this in traditional warfare in a time when war is symbolically supposed to mean “warfare without warfare” (2002, war no longer means invasion and and what the Gulf War actually was, 11) producing. hand-to-hand combat. “As an apparatus filmmakers have sidestepped the war Žižek spends a small portion of the state, Saving Private Ryan itself or otherwise distanced the war- of The Art of the Ridiculous does what it has to do: it re-creates a time events from it, often depending Sublime discussing the depiction fascination and a reverence for war so on older films or other narratives as of brutality in war films. Using that, someday in the not too distant shorthand, as opposed to showing the Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private future, the state can put this fascination purported “real catastrophes” of war. Ryan (1998) as an example, Žižek and reverence to use once again,” These issues may be less pressing explains that in the depiction of Gabbard writes (rather presciently now than the were before the current war, the brutality of hand-to- in 2001, just before the dawn of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their hand combat may seem like the ongoing “war on terror”) (138). In the attendant violence, but the legacy of horrifying Real, but is in fact the same anthology, Frank P. Tomasulo the first Gulf War is still well worth fantasy. He contrasts the privileged echoes these concerns: “Although set teasing out. face-to-face encounter to the in the past, Spielberg’s ‘antiwar’ film realities of modern, technology- has ideological ramifications that affect n one of the Jarhead’s (Sam driven, push-button warfare, in spectators now and in the future, and Mendes, 2005) most intriguing which there is little to no contact provide the self-perpetuating jingoistic Isequences, the men are assembled with the enemy. Žižek contends that justifications for future unilateral in a movie theatre, watching what is often presented as “harsh military invasions, incursions and Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford realism” in Hollywood movies is, interventions” (127). Though made Coppola, 1979). The men all sing in Lacanian terms, anything but. after the Gulf War, Saving Private along loudly with “The Ride of This formulation provides a way Ryan clearly still presents an image of the Valkyries” as, in the film, the to get past the “politically correct” war as “a necessary and life-defining helicopters prepare to attack a small reading of an “important” film that experience” (138); it is under this type Vietnamese town. The theatre is full purports to show the “real horror” of narrative that films about the Gulf of cheers and Anthony Swofford, our of any human tragedy. As Žižek War are operating. The Gulf War’s hero, clutches his face ecstatically puts it: failures as a “war” in the Spielbergian as women and children are showing sense are likely responsible for how fleeing the hail of bullets dramatically the images of utter catastrophe, far from rarely the War has made it to the unleashed by Robert Duvall and his giving access to the Real, can function as screen, and how it is generally not men. There is a clear irony intended in a protective shield AGAINST the Real. In the scene. Though Apocalypse Now is sex as well as in politics, we take refuge fodder for more traditional “war films.” in catastrophic scenarios in order to avoid Remarkably few feature films have known as a quintessential anti-war film the actual deadlock (of the impossibility of been made that portray the events of and that scene in particular is famous sexual relationship, of social antagonism) the Gulf War onscreen, especially for its portrayal of the “real” horror of (34). war, for all the jarheads, it is thrilling.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 In a 2005 Harper’s Magazine “I am the enemy”: Friendly Fire he gave the order to fire on a friend’s article, Lawrence Weschler discussed tank, assuming it to be an enemy this sequence at length in light of n both Edward Zwick’s Courage vehicle. He tells a reporter: “I just Anthony Swofford’s claim in his Under Fire (1996) and Jonathan want to get something clear this time, memoir (of which Jarhead is an IDemme’s The Manchurian just want somebody to be a hero.” adaptation) that “Vietnam films are Candidate (2004), Denzel Washington A rare unmotivated flashback – one all pro-war” (quoted on Weschler plays a Gulf War veteran investigating that is not driven by a story being told by one of the soldiers Serling interviews – shows Walden singing “Angel from Montgomery,” including “That may be true, but the pop the line “just give me one thing that I can hold onto,” implying that she, cultural recycling that dominates the like Serling, longs for a something simpler and more clear-cut than her film makes it much more a film about own experience of war. However, though the film constantly alludes to the failures of official narratives of war, films than a film about war.” it does resolve with what the viewer is meant to take as “the truth”: it turns out that one of Captain Walden’s men 65). Weschler describes how Walter an incident that took place during the shot her after disobeying an order Murch, editor of the original Valkyrie war, only to learn that soldiers he had of hers. When help arrives for the sequence, was the one had to “harrow assumed were killed by the Iraqis group, whose helicopter crashed in a the distinctly unsettling task of were actually the victims of “friendly dangerous area, Walden sends her men revisiting and revisioning a scene fire,” the real life leading cause of ahead to save a more severely injured he labored over for months almost death during the war. In the former, man. She tells them to come back for thirty years ago […] this time, alas, he plays Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel her. Instead, when they have boarded in an entirely new and even more Serling, charged with investigating the rescue helicopter, Staff Sergeant disturbing light” (66). Weschler posits the possibility of giving a posthumous Monfriez (Lou Diamond Phillips) that the Valkyrie scene’s implication Medal of Honor to Captain Karen tells the pilot that Captain Walden is of the audience in war pornography Walden (Meg Ryan). The film follows dead, paving the way for the planes “somehow magically [serves] to Serling on his interviews of the men that came with their rescue to firebomb inoculate the film against any form of who were with Walden on her last the area. Her death was caused not by eventual co-optation,” and suggests mission. Though the men’s stories an Iraqi soldier, but indirectly by her that Jarhead represents “the unlikely do not match, but there is pressure own men and directly by the American achievement of a war film that might from the army and from the White bombing. Though the Iraqi enemies in fact never be susceptible to military House to close the investigation and presumably were the ones who shot pornographic co-optation” (76). That award Captain Walden the medal, as down Walden’s helicopter, the real may be true, but the pop cultural it would make her the first woman to enemy turns out to be within the army recycling that dominates the film receive the Medal of Honor for combat itself. The shooting that another group makes it much more a film about films duty. The bluntly stated desire of the just above them heard as they were than a film about war. Jarhead – and government, a big Other1 if there ever being rescued is revealed to have been the other Gulf War films I will discuss was one, to create a traditional story of Karen, fighting right up until the end. – reflect a problem removed from the heroism about the war is emphasized In other words, the official story put actual human death in warfare: the with an underlying sense that “what forth by the big Other turns out to be (always failing) measure of experience really happened” will never match the true. Courage Under Fire – through against representation, to the point that official, more traditional story. Denzel Washington’s character – asks representations overwhelm experience. The film is heavy-handed about the viewer to distrust the authority Postmodernism is a well-worn trope, Serling’s negotiation of traditional of the army and the simplicity of the but it is one that fits here: the eliding ideas of heroism and courage in his “official story,” but in the end, this of “real” wartime catastrophes to place investigation; it becomes more than authority is reaffirmed. They are right the war into comprehensible narrative his job, it becomes a quest to find a to honour Walden: she is a hero, clear tropes, the avoidance of consideration ‘true’ story of uncomplicated heroism. and simple. And so is Serling: the for the people on the other side of the This is meant to be motivated by opening sequence of the film shows the buttons that were pushed (because that Serling’s inability to cope with his first part of a tank battle. Incidentally would require them to have existed). own wartime experience, in which (and notably), all the Iraqi combatants
1 In Lacanian theory, the big Other is the illusion of an outside subject that orders the world: God, for instance, is a big Other. “The Army” is also a big Other.
Hollywood and Liberalism 35 are seen through the technological literally tell Serling that he should the (corporate-owned) media. The distortion of night vision goggles. In learn to forgive himself. It turns out traditional narrative of heroism that the chaos, one of his men mistakes a that the President can put that medal we see being told over and over on tank from their squadron as belonging on Walden’s pretty little girl just as television reports on the film’s faux- to the enemy and Serling gives the the White House aide had hoped, in CNN – in the exact same “talking order to fire. The scene ends abruptly a sequence that is edited in parallel points” – about Vice-Presidential as he realizes that the tank he has to Serling’s visit to his dead friend’s candidate Raymond Shaw’s single-
“It is almost as though the story was produced in order to justify the deaths and work them into a comprehensible Hollywood narrative, so unfathomable is it that the men could have been killed by the invisible Iraqi enemy.”
hit was that of his friend; his actions parents. It is as if Citizen Kane (Orson handed heroism in battle turns out to throughout the film, including his Welles, 1941) were remade, only be nothing more than a manufactured drinking problem, are presented as Kane’s friends do have all the answers, story to jumpstart Shaw’s career, stemming from his guilt surrounding and instead of being burned, Rosebud just as much as a simulacrum as this battle. Toward the end of the film, is placed in a museum. Baudrillard’s vision of the Gulf War Serling allows a reporter to listen to an In The Manchurian Candidate, as media puppet show. At one point, audio-tape of the proceedings of that the battles that American soldiers corporate-sponsored political candidate night. The other half of the opening fight are not with themselves and each Shaw tells Ben: “I am the enemy,” battle sequence is revealed: after the other, but they are still pointedly not effectively erasing the threat of any incident, Serling orders all tanks to with Iraqis. It turns out that the battle external enemy. This is especially turn on their lights, which, as his that Ben Marco (Washington) and his compelling given the film was made commanding officer asserts, prevents comrades remember – one for which while the United States was again the loss of countless more lives (but Raymond Shaw was a decorated engaged in a controversial war in Iraq. notably because they would have killed hero – was in fact a false memory, However, the question that is never each other, not because the Iraqis implanted by corporate America. The asked about the invented battle and would have killed them). The problem film never shows us any parts of the the time Shaw and Marco spend time is not that Serling is not a hero, it is that war that actually happened in the under hypnosis is this: why did the he cannot see himself that way. diegesis. The events that the soldiers two young men who were murdered The effect of the broken up battle falsely remember are rendered in a – by a hypnotized Marco and Shaw, scene is similar to that of the initial computer-generated, cartoon-like respectively – need to be killed? Why mismatches in the men’s stories. The format. Unlike in Courage Under Fire, could they have not been brainwashed latter occurs not because everyone which begins with a montage of real as well? Their deaths seemed to feel perceives events differently and there news footage (as if to establish that the natural because they needed to fulfill can be no uncomplicated “truth,” but Gulf War really did take place), The genre requirements. Though The because the men are consciously lying Manchurian Candidate makes sure Manchurian Candidate is not a war to conceal the “objective” truth. Serling that everything the viewer actually sees film, it is a conspiracy film. It would is presented throughout the film as of the war (besides a long sequence at not have been a very good conspiracy a failure, an image of the American the beginning of the film that shows without the discovery that the men soldier robbed of his heroism, but then the soldiers playing poker and listening had been killed by their own leaders. the film rehabilitates him. The sin to rap music at the front) turns to There is a circular logic to the deaths: for which he is punishing himself – be actually false: for Ben Marco, they are part of a plot to use the war through his drinking, his self-imposed his frightening discovery is that the in order to make Shaw into a hero, but exile from his family, his willingness Gulf War – at least, the Gulf War he the only sensible explanation for their to ruin his career in the army, the only remembers – did not take place. deaths is that they were really at war. thing he has ever wanted to do – is It is almost as though the story was proven to be eminently forgivable, both t would be easy (and perhaps, produced in order to justify the deaths by the viewer, who learns that Serling partially correct) to read the film as and work them into a comprehensible saved more men than he harmed, Isimply an allegory for the manner Hollywood narrative, so unfathomable and by the dead man’s parents, who in which the war was sold through is it that the men could have been killed
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 by the invisible Iraqi enemy. This experience – one in which the mythic Oedipal drama. The film makes this filmic representation of “friendly fire” face-to-face encounter with the enemy an inescapable conclusion. Shaw involves a much more complex chain is replaced by night-vision goggles bluntly describes their relationship of reasoning than the earlier Courage and fire-bombing – as a way for in dialogue, at one point blaming his Under Fire, which was produced more Americans to kill each other and prove mother for breaking up his relationship recently after the war and perhaps themselves, the Gulf War becomes a with the only woman he has ever cared reflected a desire to redeem or at least comprehensible experience. for. In a later scene, Eleanor is shown make sense of all the actual friendly
“Any political statement about the growing influence of corporate money on American politics is mowed over by the family drama: the war is narrativized into politics, which are
then narrativized into an Oedipal drama. ”
fire deaths which occurred. By 2004 “Fuck Politics”: The Erasure of the caressing Raymond’s bare chest and when The Manchurian Candidate Political kissing her hypnotized son on the came out, the wounds were not as lips. This utterly literal take on the fresh. t would be difficult to argue that Oedipal drama – and the figure of the In both cases the films deal with a film about a US presidential overbearing mother of the 1960s film the erasure of the enemy by redirecting Ielection erases politics, but The transformed into a senator (who could the enmity to an enemy within Manchurian Candidate’s politics are presumably could be a presidential – either to other people in the army notably non-partisan: the television candidate herself) – implies a kind or to corporate and political power news coverage that dominates the of desperation to frame the Gulf War brokers. Essentially, we can take this film is notable in its careful refusal as a familiar conspiracy theory. In as evidence that the Iraqis are Homo to name a political party or stance, both The Manchurian Candidate and sacer, a concept that Žižek borrows where the real CNN always includes Courage Under Fire the catastrophe of from Giorgio Agamben. Agamben an (R) or (D) after a politician’s name. war is scaled down to a catastrophe of uses the term – sacer meaning a mix The avoidance of party labels is only individual psychology: the catastrophe of the sacred and profane, referring to the tip of the iceberg: it soon becomes is that the war was not a war. This a member of a society who is banished clear that “politics” are just a backdrop allows the characters to avoid the and separate from the rules – in terms for other intrigues. It becomes clear impossibility of the sexual (or really, of “the radical transformation of that the official motivation for the any human) relation, the Lacanian politics into the realm of bare life” brainwashing scheme – a bid to further idea that true intersubjectivity remains (120). Žižek deploys it to discuss the the political influence of Manchurian impossible due to the barrier of way war is now presented, with the Global, a fictional corporation with language, an incomplete system of enemy treated as an entity separate a name retrofitted to the title of the signification. In Courage Under Fire, from humanity. If the enemy is film’s forbearer – is not the only Serling’s guilt allows him to avoid his outside the bounds of humanity, it is issue at play. The formidable Senator wife and family; in The Manchurian impossible to conceive of meeting him Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep) betrays Candidate Ben’s being haunted by his face-to-face on the battlefield, as in her co-conspirators to increase her hypnosis is a convenient way for him traditional warfare. In having the slain own power and that of her family, as to explain the emptiness of his current soldiers turn out to have been killed well as to keep her adult son close life and as for Shaw – he can just blame by other Americans – and at least in to her. Any political statement about his mother. For a war against Iraq and part by American corporate capitalism the growing influence of corporate protecting Kuwait, the Gulf War seems in The Manchurian Candidate – the money on American politics is to have very little to do with Iraqis or filmmakers create an enemy that mowed over by the family drama: with Kuwaitis. can be faced and comprehended. the war is narrativized into politics, Of course, The Manchurian In re-casting the disconnected war which are then narrativized into an Candidate is not a story that originates
2 Both films are also based on a novel by Richard Condon. However, the 2004 film also lists George Axelrod’s 1962 screenplay as a source and Tina Sinatra, whose father starred in the 1962 film. is a producer. Both of these would indicate to me that the 2004 remake is a clear attempt to capitalize on the success of the earlier film.
Hollywood and Liberalism 37 with the Gulf War – it is a remake of Iraqis as, he intimates, they would be When the group has been convinced John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film of right to do. to leave the room out of respect to the the same name.2 The remake updates For all these Marines, their only traumatized man, Swofford remains, the source of the brainwashing (and prior impression of war is through demanding to watch the homemade rewriting of battlefield events) from war movies. In the aforementioned pornography again, because, he tells the Communist threat to corporate Apocalypse Now scene, it becomes Troy: “I want to see what it’s like capitalism. In bringing the Gulf War clear that any action is good action. to watch somebody else fuck your into a familiar framework (instead of For the Marines in the film, war is no girlfriend.” The implication is that creating a somehow Gulf War-specific longer about courage or protecting Swofford cannot understand anything unless he sees it on a screen – and it furthers his obsession with the idea that his girlfriend is cheating on “Film references recur continuously in him. Here, one catastrophe replaces another. When all the men are having Jarhead: it is as though the characters a party after the cease-fire has been called, Swofford realizes that he has would not know what to do without never fired his gun, so he shoots it into the air. His comrades follow; the movies...” Staff Sergeant Sykes (Foxx) fires his machine gun one-handed, while smoking a cigar, perhaps thinking of story), Demme is pushing the viewer one’s country or discerning right Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983). War to see the Gulf War as interchangeable from wrong: it is merely about being is not about two countries fighting with earlier wars. In short, in allowing part of a story, of getting in on the each other for principled reasons, it is the Gulf War to be tied to other action. More than something to focus about getting to act like you are in the narratives, instead of treating it as a on to avoid the deadlock of social movies. new kind of war, the film disguises antagonism, the catastrophic becomes The glossing over of the political many of the anxieties that might arise the whole point. Film references in war films is hardly new: one hardly from the disappearance of the “face- recur continuously in Jarhead: it is expects real political engagement from to-face” encounter as the essentially as though the characters would not Hollywood. What does distinguish The “real” experience of war. know what to do without the movies, Manchurian Candidate and Jarhead Jarhead follows a Marine sniper and Mendes uses them as cinematic is that they acknowledge a political squadron through their training and shorthand. As they do, they ironically dimension and only then dismiss it deployment in the run-up to the Gulf re-enact scenes that were originally bluntly. They refuse to search for War. As the men are being trucked known for showing the brutality of answers or to offer up any historical or through the desert, one of them man, but these imitations are stripped political explanations for the perceived voices familiar objections to the war, of their original horror. The scene in “meaninglessness” of the war, noting that they are just protecting which the bored men pit scorpions engaging instead in reproducing old Kuwait because of its oil reserves and against each other is a version of the stories in new settings. In couching the pointing out that the United States opening scene of Sam Peckinpah’s story in terms of the men’s experiences trained Saddam Hussein’s army and The Wild Bunch (1969), but it is clearly of generic Cold War-era narratives, provided them with weapons when taken lightly by all the men. The early Jarhead is making interesting they were at war with Iran. “Fuck training sequence trades on ironic implications about how Hollywood politics,” Troy says, “We’re here. All music tracks (like playing “Don’t shapes even our most extreme the rest is bullshit.” All the men nod Worry, Be Happy” as recruits are experiences. However, it ultimately in agreement and this is the end of verbally and physically abused) and does not provide any resolution to the any acknowledgement by the men that the viewer’s pop cultural knowledge of anxiety that arises upon the realization they are in the desert for any reason the stereotypically cruel drill sergeant that the modern version of warfare can other than to “get some action.” When (like in Full Metal Jacket [Stanley never match up to the stories we try to the Marines arrive in “the desert,” as Kubrick, 1987]). The difference is that tell about it, or even to what the word the film vaguely describes it, they are in the Kubrick film, the drill sergeant’s “war” is supposed to mean. greeted by their commanding officer, cruelty had devastating consequences; who proceeds to give a crowd-pleasing in Jarhead, the man’s abuse means “Getting Action” speech that equates loud enthusiasm nothing at all – it is brushed aside with with sexual arousal. He shows the a snappy voiceover. In another scene, Perhaps the emphasis on traditional troops a picture of one of “Saddams’s the Marines, while on a break from narratives of war, which elevate the victims,” a small child injured through the front, gather to watch a tape of The experience of a face-to-face meeting chemical warfare. He does this only Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978) with the enemy, explains why Swofford to tell them that while their mission is that someone’s wife has sent. They and his colleagues have so much currently to protect the Saudi oilfields cheer until they realize that the film difficulty dealing with the “new until the politicians catch up with has been taped over with the man’s warfare” in Jarhead. The scene in events and allow them to go kill some wife having sex with her neighbour. which a bored and stir-crazy Swofford
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 threatens to kill fellow marine shirt was a blouse.” The organization Occasionally, the absurdity of the media’s Fergus over a petty argument is shot re-establishes the symbolic to the point self-representation as purveyor of reality and intimately, with medium close-ups of having its own language, striving immediacy broke through, in moments such as in shot-reverse shot formation. The to control every aspect of the recruit’s those when the CNN cameras crossed live to a group of reporters assembled somewhere in the scene emphasizes how close Swofford life, eventually even winning over Gulf, only to have them confess that they were is to Fergus, showing the gun he is Swofford, who spent his first few days also sitting around watching CNN in order to holding in Fergus’s face in the frame at the base taking laxatives and reading find out what was happening (2). in both set-ups. Contrast this with the Camus. The film ends with Swofford’s tower scene, in which Swofford and voice over explaining that no matter Baudrillard’s discussion of the Troy finally get the opportunity to what else a Marine does, part of him war’s “not taking place” – published kill an enemy, but are ultimately not is always at war; as he looks out a while the bombing was ongoing needed, as air support arrives in time. window – which is transformed into – emphasizes the extent to which the It emphasizes the men’s distance from a blurry shot of camouflaged figures Gulf War was seen as a product of their Iraqi target: the audience only trudging along with their guns. “We media bombast. ever sees the doomed man through the are still in the desert,” Swofford’s This is most clearly emphasized in crosshairs of Swofford and Troy’s rifle narration intones. What seems to haunt Three Kings, in which Major Gates’ sights. Swofford even more than his war (George Clooney) job is to handle a The latter scene emphasizes the experience is his non-war experience: reporter. The film closes with an ironic trauma of the “new warfare” for the emphasis in the film is on the long series of subtitles explaining what the men who fight it. The “system” time spent waiting for the war to start, happened to the characters at the end is still prepared for “old war,” in waiting for his skills to be needed, of the film, indicating that the three which snipers are important, so waiting for his rite of passage, for his men – who had broken a ceasefire Troy and Swofford feel cheated that face-to-face encounter. The messiness and gotten one of their own killed in they were essentially flown to the and pointlessness of Swofford’s an attempt to steal Kuwaiti gold from front to see people die and clean out experience in the Gulf – at one point ‘Saddam’ – were given honorable toilets. The film narrates clearly the he runs through incoming fire, some discharges thanks to reporter Adriana’s difference between the “real” terror of it from American planes, to bring coverage of their heroism in helping the of the scorched bodies the men find someone a dead battery – seems to be Iraqi refugees across the border to Iran. on the “Highway of Death” and the why Swofford feels stuck in the desert. Clooney’s character asks Adriana to Real truth that war can be executed Wartime experience will never match cover the story because he knows that technologically, through air support. up with the official narrative. the army would not discharge them if The positioning of this scene in the they are shown as heroes on CNN, for film is important. It suggests that the The “Media War” fear of bad press. The film’s cynicism real trouble with war is not the sheer about the press lends it an air of number of Iraqis killed, but that these ll four films being discussed authenticity, implying that the viewer strong American men are being primed here acknowledge the role is seeing what ‘really happened.’ up to fight the enemy – their training Aplayed by the press in creating However, the film itself is trading in tells them that “without their guns, the publicly consumed version of its own fantasmatic version of the war they are nothing” – and that ultimately the Gulf War: Courage Under Fire – and of Iraq – as will be discussed they will never be able to live up to and Three Kings (David O. Russell, later. these expectations. The face-to-face 1999) both feature reporters as key In Courage Under Fire, reporter encounter that Žižek mentions as characters; The Manchurian Candidate Tom Gardner is represented at first as being essential to the experience of is constantly underscored by a running a villain, harassing Serling about the warfare is denied by the presence of cable news broadcast, which appears events to the point of calling him at ‘air support.’ If the traditional soldier in various characters’ apartments and home and following him around, but in is becoming obsolete, how are we to even in the street; and Jarhead actually the end turns out to be a sympathetic conceive of any narrative of warfare? shows the squadron being told what figure. He is the one who tells Serling Jarhead dramatizes this problem, but they can and cannot say in speaking to that he is a hero; there could be no it does not offer an answer. For all its a reporter, emphasizing the role of the heroes without the press to tell us they cynicism in the training sequence, military in shaping public opinion by are heroes. The events at the front, Jarhead asks the viewer to sympathize controlling media access to stories. At however feature no news crews, which with the military man, who, like Lt. the beginning of Three Kings, Conrad – after the montage of CNN footage Col. Serling in Courage Under Fire, exclaims “The only action we’ve seen that opens the film – indicates that so identifies himself with his symbolic is on CNN” – the war is a media war the viewer is seeing the parts of the mandate that he is not able to conceive even to the people in the war. The war that they were not told about on of life outside his role. As Swofford’s measure to which, as far as anyone television. But does acknowledging voiceover explains, the Marines was concerned, news coverage was the the role of the media really prove demand this kind of institutional war, calls to mind the surreal real-life that the filmmakers are giving the association: “A flashlight was a situation described by Paul Patton in viewer the ‘inside story’ that the press moonbeam. A pen was an ink stick. his introduction to Baudrillard: did not want to tell them? Of course My mouth was a cum receptacle. A bed Baudrillard would say no, claiming was a rack. A wall was a bulkhead. A that the images generated by the press
Hollywood and Liberalism 39 are simulacra of a war, and that film technological horrors, they are simply gunsight as Troy says “That’s what images that trade in authenticity are erased from their own homeland. they look like, huh?” The way the film no more ‘real.’ Given the way in which Although the bulk of Jarhead is ‘supposed’ to end – according to a Courage Under Fire actually upholds takes place in the desert near the Iraqi narrative that prizes the face-to-face the “official” narrative, and the value of border, the viewer sees only three encounter with the enemy – is with having an official narrative, it becomes Troy and Swofford successfully killing clear that the acknowledgement of the man and learning what it truly media construction is nothing more means to be at war. But the stain of the than lip service. Iraqi enemy resists being brought into this narrative: the “target” resists his Iraq Without Iraqis: The Enemy convenient symbolization and cannot Disembodied be made a comprehensible part of the picture. As Baudrillard puts it: “The ven more than the erasure of Americans inflict a particular insult any Iraqi responsibility for by not making war on the other, but EUS deaths, Iraq war films are simply eliminating him” (40). reluctant to show Iraqis. In Courage encounters with Iraqi or other Middle This elimination is what Žižek Under Fire, the Iraqis are seen through Eastern people. In the first, scenario, discusses in terms of Homo sacer night-vision goggles and as shadowy the squadron encounters a group of in Welcome to the Desert of the figures. Baudrillard observes in men who have apparently had one of Real. In film, the stain, which resists discussing the historical Gulf War that their camels die and so are wandering symbolization, and the Homo sacer “[t]he isolation of the enemy by all the desert on foot. When Swofford can in this case be conceived as kinds of electronic interference creates goes to speak to them, the camera overlapping. Jarhead appears to indict a sort of barricade behind which he does not follow him, as it usually does. the dehumanization of the Iraqi enemy becomes invisible” (40). It is not Nor is there a voiceover allowing the – consider the disgust with which the surprising that technology (especially viewer privileged access to Swofford’s Marine who christens a corpse “Ahab the dull green of night-vision goggles) thoughts, as there sometimes is. the A-rab” is treated. However, it is plays a large role in most of these films, Instead, it stays with the anxious telling that even in the film, the Iraqi emphasizing the distant and almost squadron, building suspense; Swofford people (and the civilians who died as fantasmatic nature of the enemy. and the man he is talking to are shown, result of the war) are still visualized The constantly suggested presence is stain-like, in a hazy long shot. It is as as stains: this is not othering, it is analogous to Žižek’s “stain,” which though in going to talk to an Arab man elimination. Perhaps this is one of the is “not a signifier but rather an object face-to-face is analogous to entering ways that anxiety about redefinition of resisting symbolization, a surplus, a another world. Shrouded in mist, war is played out: rather than force the material leftover circulating among the absent of voiceover, the encounter with audience to accept the Iraqis as people subjects and staining its momentary the other cannot be symbolized, and is on equal footing with the American possessor” (2001, 8). The utter never further explained in the film. soldiers, the filmmakers treat them as suppression of the Iraqis in three of The next encounter, such as it is, outside the symbolic order. However, the four films suggest that the sense of is with the charred bodies the men they cannot be completely erased the invisible enemy that was created run across on the bombed “highway – in Jarhead, their absence is all too in the coverage of the war has carried of death.” Though we can see the present. This underlines what we can through, reducing the Iraqis (and Arabs bodies their features are blackened see as the true Real: the cold, distanced in general) to stains upon the desert by charring and further obscured by methods that ensure fewer casualties landscape. Žižek further describes the darkness. Also, the men are disturbed – at least on ‘our’ side. stain thusly: by their lifelikeness: it is not the fact that there are dead Iraqis that seems to Three Kings: Love Thy Iraqi? in what I see, in what is open in my view, there bother Swofford, it is the fact that they is always a point where “I see nothing,” a point were trying to run. These blackened t first glance, Three Kings which “makes no sense,” i.e. which functions as the picture’s stain – this is the point from which bodies that are not human (according appears to correct the absence the very picture returns the gaze, looks back at to the Homo sacer doctrine to which Aof the enemy that has been me (15). the men ascribe) are disturbing in their present in so many filmic versions of insistence that they are human. They the Gulf War. The film opens with Troy The sight of “the stain” is a traumatic are poorly lit and quickly passed over (Mark Wahlberg) shooting a visible experience, just as is any encounter by the camera, as if looking at their Iraqi in the neck. His friend Conrad with Iraqi humanity in three of our four charred and all too human flesh is (Spike Jonze) exclaims “I didn’t think films. Because of the erasure of the impossible. I’d actually get to see anyone shot in Iraqi people, the war becomes almost Even when Troy and Swofford do this war.” The scene continues as he meaningless, as if the characters are at get close enough to see their enemy, and several army colleagues go out into war for the sake of war. Because there it is still mediated by technology: the desert on a mission to steal gold is no way to make sense of the Iraqis Swofford (and the viewer) sees the that Saddam Hussein supposedly stole without the realization of the war’s man through the crosshairs of his from Kuwait, after pulling a map out
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 of a prisoner’s rectum. Troy uses racial care whether he cuts Sunni or Shiite was deposed following an American slurs like “towel head” and “camel hair, he just wants to run his business. invasion and was recently executed, jockey” to refer to the Iraqi enemy – he It is no doubt made easier for Troy the Gulf War – perhaps the only war clearly has been led to see the Iraqis Barlow and his friends to embrace that can truly be seen as a “war without as Homo sacer. When the group drives these Iraqis as they appear to only want war,” in the Žižekian sense of “war into the Iraqi town where the bunker the capitalist American dream. They without risk” – still has a great deal full of gold is supposed to be, they are are in Iraq without being Iraqi: not only to tell us. These films all have their accosted by the locals who think they are they cheerful small businessmen, own ways of resolving the tensions have come to save them from Saddam, they are not even slightly sectarian, surrounding the unwarlike nature of but they are scared of the Iraqis. At and they seem to actually like the the Gulf War. It is unsurprising that one point, Troy places a gun to the American army. It seems awfully easy the common problem in all the films head of a woman who comes to him to love one’s Iraqi neighbour, as Žižek was the redefinition of the enemy, so begging for milk for her baby, as if he would put it, when he turns out to be absent were the Iraqi people from the is scared that she might come closer. simply an American in funny clothes. ‘official story’ that the filmmakers Then, he is captured and tortured by Imagine a film in which George could not conceive of symbolizing a member of Saddam’s army (a young Clooney helped a vocally sectarian them at all. Three Kings, the only film father who joined the army for money, Muslim who advocated jihad and was to give an Iraqi a speaking part, makes just as Troy himself did). Shortly virulently anti-American: it is doubtful a generous gesture, but ultimately after Troy’s release he – his humanity that it would earn the same critical erases any difference between Iraqis and commitment to beating Saddam acclaim. This is not to say that there and Americans, effectively erasing presumably awakened – approaches an are not Iraqis like Amir and his friends, their Iraqiness. And without the mythic Iraqi freedom fighter with a gun, but but rather that Troy Barlow and friends “face-to-face” encounter that allows then, upon realizing that he had seen were not really forced to confront any the soldier to prove himself, war the man’s wife shot earlier, gives him Iraqis who are appreciably different. becomes an empty experience. Gulf a bear hug and asks what he can do to Three Kings, with its grainy film stock, War cinema all seems to transparently help him. The switch from gun to hug cynicism about the role of the media in attempt to give the war meaning for marks a direct reversal of the earlier the war, and shots that actually show Americans. And the people who lived scene: Troy has learned to love his Iraqi bullets penetrating internal organs, in the war zone? They are lucky to be neighbour. is most assuredly purporting to show extras. Those two scenes sum up the “what really happened.” But instead journey of the soldiers in the film. The the fantasmatic nature of the film’s Works Cited four men start out selfishly, planning to story of American-Iraqi friendship rob Saddam’s bunkers “without firing a ultimately underscores the final Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: shot” – much like the “bloodless war” impossibility of an American truly Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. they have just finished not fighting embracing an Iraqi. Žižek’s deadlock Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: – out only to get what they can from the comes into play here: the film creates a Stanford UP, 1998. war for themselves. By the film’s end, fantasmatic relationship between Iraqi Baudrillard, Jean. The Gulf War they have come to understand the Iraqi and American by erasing the difference Did Not Take Place. Trans. Paul Patton. resistance. The film also addresses between them. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1995. political specificity more or less head- Films dealing with the Gulf War Gabbard, Krin. “Saving Private on, with Gates ruefully explaining that may seem quaint in a decade, as the Ryan Too Late.” Lewis 131-138. the Iraqi villagers are all expecting the current conflict between Iraq and the Lewis, Jon, ed. The End of Cinema Americans to come help them rise up U.S.-led coalition rages on. However, As We Know It: American film in the against Saddam, despite the fact that many of the ideas that Žižek proposes Nineties. New York: New York UP, Bush’s call for them to rise up was, in about the new state of warfare and its 2001. his eyes, an abdication of responsibility. psychological meaning are revelatory Tomasulo, Frank P. “Empire of the To prove their change of heart, they in terms of the films that have dealt Gun: Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private give up the gold to help a group of with the conflict. Žižek’s use of Ryan and American Chauvinism.” them cross the border into Iran. Russell Agamben’s Homo sacer in terms of Lewis 115-130. was obviously trying to make a film United States-Arab relations – and the Weschler, Lawrence. “Valkyries that humanized Iraqis and protest the importance of loving one’s neighbour, Over Iraq: The trouble with war United States’ unwillingness to risk even though they are truly other – is movies.” Harper’s Magazine, Nov. casualties to help the Iraqi people instructive in the way “the enemy” 2005: 65-77. overthrow Saddam. has been conceived in the post-Cold Žižek, Slavoj. The Art of the However, it must be asked: are War world. Žižek’s insistence that “in Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s the Iraqi resistance fighters really fact, that is the difficult test for Israelis Lost Highway. Seattle: University of believable as Iraqis? When Archie and today: ‘Love thy neighbour!’ means Washington, 2000. Chief are walking with the group of ‘Love thy Palestinian’ (who is the ---. Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques refugees, Amir, the man who has just neighbour par excellence) or it means Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New seen his wife murdered by Saddam’s nothing at all” (2002, 116) can be just York: Routledge, 2001. soldiers, explains that all his friend as easily applied to Americans dealing ----. Welcome to the Desert of the wants to be is a barber. He does not with the Arab other. Though “Saddam” Real. London: Verso, 2002.
Hollywood and Liberalism 41 The Family Myth in Hollywood
Slavoj Zizek
ichael Crichton is arguably the successor of Arthur novelist of fear – fear of the past (Jurassic Park, Eaters Hailey, the first great author of “capitalist realism” of the Dead), of the nanotechnological future (Prey), of M(whose bestsellers back in the 1960s – Hotel, Japan’s business (The Rising Sun), of sexual harassment Airport, Cars… – always focused on a particular site of (Disclosure), of robotic technology (Westworld), of medical production or complex organization, mixing melodramatic industry (Coma), of alien intrusion (Andromeda Strain), of plot with lengthy descriptions of how the site functions, in ecological catastrophy (State of Fear). State of Fear, his an unexpected replica of the Stalinist classics of the late last book, brings an unexpected final twist to this series 1920s and 1930s like Gladkov’s Cement).1 Crichton gave to of shadowy forces which lurk among us, poised to wreak the genre a postmodern techno-thriller twist, in accordance havoc: America’s fiercest enemies are none others than with today’s predominant politics of fear: he is the ultimate environmentalists themselves.2
1 To this series, one should add Leon Uris’s Exodus as an exercise in “Zionist realism.” 2 He already resorted to a similar reversal in Disclosure, the sexual harassment novel, in which a woman harasses a man.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 s many a critic has noted, Crichton’s books aren’t which seem to envelop a central void – its status is purely really novels, they are more a kind of unfinished fantasmatic. This blind indestructible insistence of the libido Adrafts, prospectuses for screenplays; however, it is is what Freud called “death drive,” and one should bear this very feature which makes his work interesting for an in mind that “death drive” is, paradoxically, the Freudian analysis of today’s ideology: the very lack of quality, the name for its very opposite, for the way immortality appears totally ‘transparent’ mode of writing, allows the underlying within psychoanalysis: for an uncanny excess of life, for an ideological fantasies to be staged at their embarrassingly- ‘undead’ urge which persists beyond the (biological) cycle of desublimated purest, in a naked form, as it were. Exemplary life and death, of generation and corruption. Freud equates is here Prey, in which a nanotechnological experiment in a the death drive with the so-called “compulsion-to-repeat,” laboratory in the Nevada desert has gone horribly wrong; an uncanny urge to repeat painful past experiences which a cloud of nano-particles – millions of microrobots – has seems to outgrow the natural limitations of the organism escaped. The cloud – visible to observers as a black swarm affected by it and to insist even beyond the organism’s death. – is self-sustaining, self-reproducing, intelligent, and it As such, lamella is “what is subtracted from the living being learns from experience, evolving hour by hour. Every effort by virtue of the fact that it is subject to the cycle of sexed to destroy it has failed.3 It has been programmed to be a reproduction”: it precedes sexual difference, it multiplies predator; humans are its prey. Only a handful of scientists and reproduces itself by way of asexual self-division.4 In the trapped in the laboratory stand between it and the release novel’s climactic scene, Jack holds in his arms Julia who, of this mechanical plague on a defenceless world… As is unbeknownst to him, is already infected by the swarm and always the case in such stories, this ‘big plot’ (the catastrophe lives in symbiosis with the nano-particles, receiving from that threatens to ruin humanity itself) is combined with the them an over-human life-power. ‘small plot,’ a set of relations and tensions among the group of scientists, with the troubled role-reversal married couple “I held her hard. The skin of her face began to shiver, vibrating rapidly. at its center. Jack, the novel’s narrator, was the manager And then her features seemed to grow, to swell as she screamed. I thought her eyes looked frightened. The swelling continued, and began to break up of a cutting-edge computer program division in a media into rivulets, and streams. technology company before he was made a scapegoat for And then in a sudden rush Julia literally disintegrated before my eyes. someone else’s corruption and fired; now he’s a house- The skin of her swollen face and body blew away from her in streams of husband while his wife, Julia, is the workaholic vice- particles, like sand blown off a sand dune. The particles curved away in the president of Xymos, the nanotechnology company which arc of the magnetic field toward the sides of the room. I felt her body growing lighter and lighter in my arms. Still the owns the Nevada desert laboratory where the catastrophy particles continued to flow away, with a kind of whooshing sound, to all occurs – erotic, manipulative, and cold, she is a new version corners of the room. And when it was finished, what was left behind – what of the corporate vixen from Disclosure. At the novel’s start, I still held in my arms – was a pale and cadaverous form. Julia’s eyes Jack has to cope with their three children, discusses Pampers were sunk deep in her cheeks. Her mouth was thin and cracked, her skin versus Huggies with another father in the supermarket, and translucent. Her hair was colorless, brittle. Her collarbones protruded from her bony neck. She looked like she was dying of cancer. Her mouth worked. tries to handle his suspicions that his wife is having an affair. I heard faint words, hardly more than breathing. I leaned in, turned my ear Far from providing a mere human-interest sub-plot, to her mouth to hear. this family plot is what the novel really is about: it is the ‘Jack,’ she whispered, ‘It’s eating me.’” (468-69). prey of nano-particles which should be conceived as a materialization of the family tensions. The first thing that This separation is then undone, the particles return to Julia cannot but strike the eye of anyone who knows Lacan is how and revitalize her: this prey (swarm) resembles what Lacan, in his Seminar XI, called “lamella”: the prey appears indestructible, in its “The particles on the walls were drifting free once more. Now they infinite plasticity; it always re-assembles itself, able morph seemed to telescope back, returning to her face and body. /…/ And suddenly, in a whoosh, all the particles returned, and Julia was full and itself into a multitude of shapes; in it, pure evil animality beautiful and strong as before, and she pushed me away from her with a overlaps with machinic blind insistence. Lamella is an contemptuous look…” (471). entity of pure surface, without the density of a substance, an infinitely plastic object that can not only incessantly change In the final confrontation, we then get both Julias side by its form, but can even transpose itself from one to another side, the glimmering Julia composed of the swarm and the medium: imagine a “something” that is first heard as a exhausted real Julia: shrilling sound, and then pops up as a monstrously distorted body. A lamella is indivisible, indestructible, and immortal “Julia came swirling up through the air toward me, spiralling like – more precisely, undead in the sense this term has in a corkscrew – and grabbed the ladder alongside me. Except she wasn’t horror fiction: not the sublime spiritual immortality, but the Julia, she was the swarm, and for a moment the swarm was disorganized enough that I could see right through her in places; I could see the swirling obscene immortality of the “living dead” which, after every particles that composed her. I looked dawn and saw the real Julia, deathly annihilation, re-compose themselves and clumsily go on. As pale, standing and looking up at me, her face a skull. By now the swarm Lacan puts it, lamella does not exist, it insists: it is unreal, alongside me become solid – appearing, as I had seen it become solid an entity of pure semblance, a multiplicity of appearances before. It looked like Julia”(476).
3 In a rude Marxist reading, one is tempted to see in this fear of the prey of nano-particles self-organizing itself out of control of its human creators the displacement of the fear of the worker (or other oppressed group) class-consciousness. 4 No wonder that the first climax of the novel is when a group of battling scientists progress into a hidden cave in the desert, the site of Evil where the swarm regenerates itself, and destroy it – similarly to Eaters of the Dead, in which the group of Vikings warriors has to penetrate the cave in which the matriarchal chief of the Neanderthal tribe of cannibals dwells, and kill her.
Hollywood and Liberalism 43 Here, we are not talking science, not even problematic science, but one of the fundamental fantasy-scenarios, or, more precisely, the scenario of the very disintegration of the link between fantasy and reality, so that we get the two of them, fantasy and reality, the Julia-swarm and the ‘real’ Julia, side by side, as in the wonderful scene from the beginning of Terry Gillian’s Brazil, where food is served in an expensive restaurant in such a way that we get on a plate itself a small patty-like cake which looks (and probably tastes) like shit, while above the plate, a colour photo is hanging which shows us what we are “really eating,” a nicely arranged juicy steak… This, then, is how one should read Prey: all the (pseudo) scientific speculations about nano-technology are here as a pretext to tell the story of a husband reduced to a house- job, frustrated by his ambitious corporate vixen of a wife. No wonder that, at the novel’s end, a ‘normal’ couple is re- created: at Jack’s side is Mae, the passive but understanding Chinese colleague scientist, silent and faithful, lacking Julia’s aggressiveness and ambition. And Prey is, as such, typical of the Hollywood matrix of the production of a couple, in which everything, from the fate of the Knights of the Round Table through October Revolution up to asteroids hitting the Earth, is transposed into an Oedipal narrative. (A Deleuzian would not miss the chance to point out how the main theoretical support of such familiarization is psychoanalysis, which makes it the key ideological machine). For this reason, it is of some interest to focus on Hollywood products which, unexpectedly, undermine this matrix – amongst them are two recent big commercial movies.
n March 2005, no less than Vatican itself made a highly This is why thrillers like Da Vinci Code are one of publicized statement, condemning in strongest terms the key indicators of today’s ideological shifts: the hero IDan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a book based on lies is in search of an old manuscript which would reveal and spreading false teachings (that Jesus was married to some shattering secret threatening to undermine the very Mary Magdalene and that they had descendants – the true foundations of (institutionalized) Christianity; the ‘criminal’ identity of Grail is Mary’s vagina!), especially regretting edge is provided by the desperate and ruthless attempts of the fact that the book is so popular among the younger the Church (or some hard-line faction within it) to suppress generation in search for spiritual guidance. The ridicule of this document. This secret focuses on the ‘repressed’ this Vatican intervention, sustained by a barely concealed feminine dimension of the divine: Christ was married to longing for the good old times when the infamous Index of Mary Magdalene, the Grail is actually the female body…is prohibited books was still operative, should not blind us for this revelation really such a surprise? Is the idea that Jesus the fact that, while the form is wrong (one almost suspects had sex with Mary Magdalene not rather a kind of obscene a conspiracy between Vatican and the publisher to give a secret of Christianity known to all, a Christian secret de new boost to the sales of the book), the content is basically polichinelle? The true surprise would have been to go a step right: The Da Vinci Code effectively proposes a New Age further and clam that Mary was really a transvestite, so that re-interpretation of Christianity in the terms of the balance Jesus’ lover was a young beautiful boy! of the masculine and feminine Principles, i.e., the basic The interest of the novel (and, against the suspiciously idea of the novel is the re-inscription of Christianity into fast dismissal of the film, one should say that this holds even the pagan sexualized ontology: the feminine principle is more for the film) resides in a feature which, surprisingly, sacred, perfection resides in the harmonious coupling of the echoes The X-Files where (as Darian Leader noted) the male and female principles…The paradox to be assumed is fact that so many things happen “out there” where the that, in this case, every feminist should support the Church: truth is supposed to dwell (aliens invading Earth) fills in it is ONLY through the ‘monotheistic’ suspension of the the void, i.e., the much closer truth that nothing (no sexual feminine signifier, of the polarity of the masculine and relation) is going on between the couple of two agents, feminine opposites, that the space emerges for what we Mulder and Scully. In Code, the sexual life of Christ and broadly refer to as ‘feminism’ proper, for the rise of feminine Mary Magdalene is the excess which inverts (covers up) the subjectivity. The femininity asserted in the affirmation of fact that the sexual life of Sophie, the heroine, Christ’s last the cosmic “feminine principle” is, on the contrary, always descendant, is non-existent: SHE is like contemporary Mary, a subordinated (passive, receptive) pole, opposed to active virginal, pure, asexualized, there is no hint of sex between “masculine principle.” her and Robert Langdon.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Her trauma is that she witnessed the primordial some surprises. The Village takes place in a Pennsylvania fantasmatic scene of the parental copulation, this excess of village cut off from the rest of the world and surrounded by jouissance which totally “neutralized” her sexually: it is as woods full of dangerous monsters known to the villagers as if, in a kind of temporal loop, she was there at the act of her ‘Those We Do Not Speak Of.’ Most villagers are content to
“In this sense, The Da Vinci Code belongs into the series we are analyzing: it is not really a film about religion, about the ‘repressed’ secret of Christianity, but a film about a frigid and traumatized young woman who is redeemed, freed of her trauma, provided with a mythic frame that enables her to fully accept her asexuality.”
own conception, so that, for her, EVERY sex is incestuous live with a bargain they made with the creatures: they don’t and thus prohibited. Here enters Robert who, far from being enter the forest, the creatures don’t enter the town. Conflict her love-partner, acts as her “wild analyst” whose task is to arises when the young Lucius Hunt wishes to leave the construct a narrative frame, a myth, which would enable her village in search of new medicines, and the pact is broken. to break out of this fantasmatic captivation, NOT by way of Lucius and Ivy Walker, the village leader’s blind daughter, regaining ‘normal’ heterosexuality, but by way of accepting decide to get married, which makes the village idiot really her asexuality and “normalizing” it as part of the new mythic jealous; he stabs Lucius and nearly kills him, leaving him at narrative. In this sense, The Da Vinci Code belongs into the the mercy of an infection that requires medicines from the series we are analyzing: it is not really a film about religion, outside world. Ivy’s father then tells her about the town’s about the “repressed” secret of Christianity, but a film about secret: there are no monsters, and the year isn’t really 1897. a frigid and traumatized young woman who is redeemed, The town elders were part of a 20th-century crime victims’ freed of her trauma, provided with a mythic frame that support group which decided to withdraw from it completely; enables her to fully accept her asexuality. Walker’s father had been a millionaire businessman, so The mythic character of this solution resorts clearly they bought a bunch of land, called it a ‘wildlife preserve,’ if we contrast Robert as its proponent to Sir Leigh, the surrounded it with a big fence and lots of guards, bribed counterpoint to Opus Dei in the film (and novel): he wants government officials to reroute airplanes away from the to disclose the secret of Mary and thus save humanity from community, and moved inside, concocting the story about the oppression of official Christianity. The film rejects ‘Those We Do Not Speak Of’ to keep anyone from leaving. this radical move and opts for a fictional compromise- With her father’s blessing, Ivy slips outside, meets a friendly solution: what is important are not facts (the DNA facts security guard who gives her some medicine, and returns that would prove the genealogical link between her and to save her betrothed’s life. So, at the film’s end, the village Mary and Christ), but what she (Sophie) believes – the elders decide to go on with their secluded lives: the village movie opts for symbolic fiction against genealogical facts. idiot’s death can be presented to the non-initiated as a proof The myth of being Christ’s descendant creates for Sophie that the creatures exist, confirming the founding myth of the a new symbolic identity: at the end, she emerges as the community. leader of a community. It is at this level of what goes on in Sacrificial logic is thus reasserted as the condition of a terrestrial life that Da Vinci Code remains Christian: in the community, as its secret bond – no wonder that most of the person of Sophie, it enacts the passage from sexual love critics dismissed the film as the worst case of ideological to desexualized agape as political love, love that serves as cocooning: “It’s easy to understand why he’s attracted to the bond of a collective. The film thus rejects the standard setting a movie in a period where people proclaimed their Hollywood formula: the couple is not created, Sophie finds emotions in full and heartfelt sentences, or why he enjoys her way outside sexual relationship. building a village that’s impenetrable to the outside world. He’s not making movies. He’s making cocoons.”5 The desire he other example is Night M. Shyamalan’s The underlying the film is thus the desire to recreate a closed Village. Those who all too easily dismiss Shyamalan’s universe of authenticity in which innocence is protected Tfilms as the lowest of the New Age kitsch are in for from the corrosive force of modernity: “It’s all about how to
5 “Village Idiot. The Case Against M. Night Shyamalan,” by Michael Agger, http://slate.msn.com/id/2104567.
Hollywood and Liberalism 45 protect your innocence from getting hurt by the ‘creatures’ in in the best ‘totalitarian’ manner staged by the inner circle your life; the desire to protect your children from going into (‘Elders’) of the community itself, in order to prevent the the unknown. If these ‘creatures’ have hurt you, you don’t non-initiated youngsters to leave the village and risk the want them to hurt your children and the younger generation passage through the forest to the decadent ‘towns.’ The ‘evil’ may be willing to risk that.”6 itself has to be redoubled: the ‘real’ evil of late-capitalist “And what if this is true in a much more radical way than it may appear? What if the true Evil of our societies is not the capitalist dynamics as such, but the attempts to extricate ourselves from it (while profiting from it), to carve out self- enclosed communal spaces, from ‘gated communities’ to exclusive racial or religious groups?”
Upon a closer look, however, the film reveals itself to be social disintegration has to be transposed into the archaic much more ambiguous. When reviewers noticed that “the magic-mythic evil of ‘creatures.’ The ‘Evil’ IS a part of the movie is in H.P. Lovecraft territory: severe, wintry New ‘inner circle’ itself, IMAGINED by its members. Are we England palette; a suggestion of inbreeding; hushed mentions here not back at Chesterton’s Thursday, in which the highest of ‘The Old Ones,’ ‘Those We Do Not Speak Of’,”7 they as a police authority IS the same person as the super-criminal, rule forgot to mention the political context: let us not forget staging a battle with himself? In a proto-Hegelian way, the that the 19th century self-subsistent community also refers to external threat the community is fighting is its own inherent the many utopian-socialist communities that thrived in the essence…9 late 19th century US. This does not mean that the Lovecraft reference to supernatural horror is just a mask, a false lure. nd what if this is true in a much more radical way We have two universes: the modern open ‘risk society’ than it may appear? What if the true Evil of our versus the safety of the old secluded universe of Meaning Asocieties is not the capitalist dynamics as such, but – but the price of Meaning is a finite closed space guarded the attempts to extricate ourselves from it (while profiting by unnamable Monsters. Evil is not simply excluded in this from it), to carve out self-enclosed communal spaces, from closed utopian space – it is transformed into a mythic threat ‘gated communities’ to exclusive racial or religious groups? with which the community establishes a temporary truce That is to say, is the point of The Village not precisely to and against which it has to maintain a permanent state of demonstrate that, today, a return to an authentic community emergency. in which speech still directly expresses true emotions, etc. The “Deleted Scenes” special feature on the DVD – the village of the socialist utopia – is a fake which can only release all too often makes the viewer only realize that be staged as a spectacle for the very rich? The exemplary the director was right to delete these scenes – however, figure of Evil are today not ordinary consumers who pollute in the DVD edition of The Village, there is an exception environment and live in a violent world of disintegrating to this rule. One of the deleted scenes is that of a “Drill”: social links, but those (top managers, etc.) who, while fully Walker rings the bell, giving to the community the signal engaged in creating conditions for such universal devastation to practice the fast retreat into underground shelters in the and pollution, exempt themselves from the results of their case of the creatures’ attack – as if authentic community is own activity, living in gated communities, eating organic only possible in the conditions of a permanent threat, in a food and taking holidays in wildlife preserves. continuous state of emergency.8 This threat is, as we learn,
6 Quoted from http://glidemagazine.com/articles120.html 7 David Edelstein, on http://slate.msn.com/id/2104512. 8 One of the more stupid reproaches to the film (not unlike the same reproach to Hitchcock’s Vertigo) is that it spoils the suspense by disclosing the secret already two thirds into the film – this very knowledge makes the last third all the more interesting. That is to say, the film’s last third – more precisely, Ivy’s painfully slow progress through the forest – confronts us with a clear enigma (or, as some would have put it, narrative inconsistency): why is Ivy afraid of the Creatures, why are the Creatures still presented as a mythic threat, although she already knows that Creatures don’t exist, that they are a staged fake? In another deleted scene, Ivy, after hearing the ominous (and, as we know, artificially generated) sounds that announce the proximity of the Creatures, cries with desperate intensity: “It is for love that I am here. So I beg you to let me cross!” – why does she do it if she knows there are no Creatures? She knows very well, but… there is more reality in the haunting irreal specters than in direct reality itself. 9 Here, Nicholas Meyer is also right in his Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: within the diegetic space of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty, the arch-criminal – “Napoleon of crime” – and Holmes’ ultimate opponent, is clearly a fantasy of Holmes himself, his double, his Dark Half: in the opening pages of Meyer’s novel, Watson is visited by Moriarty, a humble mathematics professor, who complains to Watson that Holmes is obsessed with the idée fixe that he is the master criminal; to cure Holmes, Watson lures him to Vienna, to Freud’s house.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Medea’s Family Reunion: The Lacanian Act & Aphanisis as a Challenge to Liberal Humanism
Christine Evans
Is There a Žižekian Act?: From “Nothing is Possible tight close-up; she shouts to Jason, “Your words are wasted! Anymore!” to Contingency and Subjectivity Nothing is possible anymore!”, whereupon the film abruptly ends with a “Fin” intertitle. It is essential to mention that, t the conclusion of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film while Medea’s penultimate admonishment of Jason originates Medea, Medea – having murdered her children to in Euripides’ play, the final words in the film (“Nothing is Apunish Jason, her husband, for his desertion – stands possible anymore!”) are unique to Pasolini’s adaptation. The at the border of Corinth before the distraught Jason, who statement not only renegotiates the myth of Medea, but – begs Medea to let him bury his children. Behind her, Medea’s more importantly – introduces a vital interpretive dimension house is in flames, and dust and smoke billow around her, which derails the determinacy of Medea’s infanticide. occasionally obscuring her from sight. As Jason’s pleas are Anyone familiar with Euripides’ staged version of the drowned out by clashing cymbals and discordant horns on myth is aware that it concludes with Medea, bearing the the soundtrack, Pasolini frames Medea’s scowling face in a bodies of her two children, being spirited away on a chariot
Hollywood and Liberalism 47 sent by her grandfather Hyperion, the sun-god. Contrasting of symbolization: it is, precisely, ‘nothing’ – pure void. this conclusion to the traumatic terminus of Pasolini’s As previously mentioned, this concluding statement in ending, it initially appears that Euripides’ Medea certainly Pasolini’s film impacts our reading of its cause (Medea’s comes away with the better deal: rather than remaining murder of her children) which – ‘post cry’ – acquires a irredeemably earth-bound and, as such, fettered to her traumatic presence in its erasure of all possibility. The earthly lawful obligations (in this case, punishment and pain implication of the statement “Nothing is possible anymore” for the murder of her children), the mythical Medea escapes – particularly the negative adverb ‘anymore’ – is clearly Corinth and leaves Jason to his misery as originally intended. causal and, as such, one can interpret two varying degrees It therefore initially appears that these two versions set out of traumatic inevitability: ‘nothing is possible anymore to approach Medea’s ‘fated’ punishment and its reliance on because I have killed my children, who were precious to me, systems of ideological support in entirely different ways: and their absence will make life unbearable’, or ‘nothing is
“In other words, what is witnessed in the concluding sequence of Pasolini’s film is a full-scale dramatization of the Lacanian Act.”
the difference is between the divine respite that allows possible anymore because I have effectively lost everything, one to escape or reject the field of ideological meaning all my symbolic support; I have rejected my family and my (Euripides), and the secularized reality of lawful punishment, ancestral ties to Colchis, been estranged from my husband, of being wholly inscribed in symbolic identification and its exiled from Corinth, and murdered my children. In short, ideologico-imaginary support (Pasolini). because I have killed my children, I am finally able to see However, it is precisely this temptation to read Euripides’ that I cannot take refuge from this act in other worthwhile redeemed and divine Medea against Pasolini’s nihilistically aspects of my life, since the murder has dissolved their secular heroine that should be avoided, primarily because symbolic consistency and efficacy.’ The crucial (and no Pasolini’s conclusion is itself hardly lacking a ‘divine’ doubt contentious) distinction to be drawn here is between dimension. The statement, “Nothing is possible anymore” the relative worth of ‘everything’ qua the murder; it is not should here be interpreted literally, not only because the that Medea’s life and symbolic ties (history, ancestry, erotic film text essentially conforms to the command and ends and familial love) were always irretrievably absent and – thereby negating any further ‘possibilities’ – but because ‘impossible’ and that infanticide was merely the condition the statement complicates the logical causality of earthly that illuminated their relative meaninglessness, but rather expectation (namely the spectator’s premonition that that the murder was directly responsible for the symbolic Pasolini’s earthly Medea will be punished for her deeds dissolution of Medea’s life. The murder has transformed the and will suffer for her transgressions). Unlike her mythical very symbolic contours in which it occurred, thereby ‘de- counterpart, the filmic Medea does not escape Corinth in ontologizing’ everything that preceded it, casting Medea a chariot, but rather appears beset by a variety of all-too into the “void of self-relating negativity” (Žižek 2001, 158), human problems: two dead children, a confrontation with her and retroactively reinscribing life, love, family, and history husband (who swears revenge), a burning house, the wrath as meaningless and impossible. In other words, what is of Corinth’s inhabitants, banishment or death. However, this witnessed in the concluding sequence of Pasolini’s film is a earthly dimension of crime and punishment (Jason’s revenge, full-scale dramatization of the Lacanian Act. Medea’s persecution and surrender to the supremacy of the Law) is precluded by Medea’s prophetic assertion: “nothing hen one speaks of an Act in psychoanalysis, is possible anymore” means precisely that – Medea will one is not merely denoting physical animation, neither ascend into the heavens on her grandfather’s chariot Wperformed behaviour, or even a particular variety nor be dealt her earthly comeuppance since both options of activity and its unconscious psychic progenitors, but rather are equally impossible, and imagining such extra-diegetic indexing a complex and often unstable term which is more epilogues under either divine or earthly governance is one of efficiently accessed via the route of what it is not than by any the many potentialities vitiated by the film’s final utterance. attempt at empirical definition. However, the Act’s recent What remains is not possibility as a positive attribute or renaissance in discourses of political theory and debates gesture in empirical reality, but total abyssal cessation. In regarding philosophy’s place in global politics, merits a Pasolini’s adaptation, Medea does not escape the Law or certain reevaluation of the term’s usage and implications. suspend ideology, but rather casts them into the void along Distantly related to, but not to be confused with, the Freudian with everything else rejected by her statement’s radical concept of ‘acting out’ in which the subject ‘loses himself’ finitude: reconciliation, remorse, family, and subjectivity. In in his unconscious fantasies and effectively “relives [them] short, what occurs ‘after’ Medea’s proclamation is not merely in the present with a sensation of immediacy which is in opposition to, but incongruously outside the Law, not heightened by his refusal to recognize their source and against ideology but beyond it, and not barring but in excess their repetitive character” (Laplanche and Pontalis 4), the
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Act is primarily associated with the and a variety of philosophical transform the symbolic context in theories of French psychoanalyst sensibilities – particularly the Marxist, which it appears. There exists no Jacques Lacan, and particularly with Hegelian, and Kantian overtones in single text devoted to an investigation his work on ethics. In this specifically his work – have engendered a new of the Act across Žižek’s body of Lacanian context, the Act is intended politico-ideological awareness of the work, although his most extensive to displace the notion of the Sovereign Good (espoused in Aristotelian morality), which assumes that all “In this respect, the Act is not desire is essentially the desire to ‘do good’ but cannot account for any desire which does not trace back to constitutive of a rebellious and this apparently formative motivation. In countering this apperception of the reactionary ‘breaking of the rules’... Sovereign Good with something other than a ‘quality’ that is diametrically the Act for Lacan involves an outright opposed to goodness (i.e., Evil), Lacan conceives of the Act in a space rejection of the very symbolic contours extrinsic to quality or disposition and, as such, designates the Act as which comprise this goodness.” a performance in which the subject “act[s] in conformity with the desire Act which occupies a more centralized dalliances with the topic appear in that is in [him]” (Lacan 1986, 314) and multifarious position in Žižek’s The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay but does not remain mindful of the oeuvre than it does in Lacan’s theory. on Schelling and Related Matters symbolically-erected boundaries Indeed, a number of scholars who (1996), The Ticklish Subject: The which encompass goodness. are affiliated with the emerging field Absent Centre of Political Ontology of ‘Žižek studies’ – including Sarah (1999), and Contingency, Hegemony, n this respect, the Act is not Kay (2003), Ian Parker (2004), and Universality: Contemporary Dialogues constitutive of a rebellious and particularly Rex Butler (2005) – posit on the Left (2000).1 However, despite reactionary ‘breaking of the rules’ that the Act is a seminal and defining the Act’s more consolidated position I in these texts, the reader should be which positions itself against the good term in Žižek’s work, a prominent and attempts to destroy it; rather, the component in his contribution to cautioned against relying on any single Act for Lacan involves an outright original philosophical thought, book or essay for an explication of rejection of the very symbolic contours and therefore uniquely ‘Žižekian.’ the Act since Žižek’s formulations which comprise this goodness. This Accordingly, the various interrogations are hardly stable. It is this very distinction between iconoclastic and applications of the Act which ‘instability’ which this paper seeks to rebellion against the symbolic and appear throughout this paper function explore in the context of its essential its total subversion is essential: the predominantly as responses to this methodological permutations. Indeed, Act as such is not positioned against distinctly Žižekian variant of the reading across Žižek’s texts, one will goodness and the symbolic order, but Act – a variant which, I contend, is encounter a myriad of ‘definitive rather beyond them, ‘outside’ of them. characterized by problematic, although explanations’ and countless ‘examples When an Act is performed, these occasionally requisite, inconsistencies; par excellence’ of the Act which symbolic coordinates are shaken and of particular interest to me in this – suffice it to say – are rarely in destabilized. paper are the specific vicissitudes agreement with one another. Narrative- Though there is no school of the Žižekian Act as it relates to specific and often explicitly violent of thought in psychoanalysis ideology and the global approach to scenarios from film and literature are exclusively devoted to examinations politics. presented alongside illustrations of of its permutations, the Act has more Žižek’s preferred method of positive politico-historical reform, recently been revivified in the work approaching the Act in theory is via but all such exemplary agents are of Lacanian-Marxist philosopher the route of example and identification eventually abandoned for a properly Slavoj Žižek, proliferating in (not unlike the analogy between philosophical dimension which stresses examples from film and literature and Pasolini’s Medea and the Act which the ‘impossible’ irreduceability often serving as a challenge to the I have presented above). His books, of the Act. The significance of the liberal humanist tendency towards essays, and lectures are littered with examples themselves often remain absorbing, pacifying, or damning passing references to the Act which, uninterrogated. particularly ‘inexpicable’ outbursts of given Žižek’s penchant for excitable Furthermore, while each of trauma or violence. While indebted analysis, are often prematurely Žižek’s respective invocations of the to Lacan’s original formulations of abandoned to accommodate other, ‘exemplary’ Act serve to individually the psychoanalytic ethic, Žižek’s increasingly complex perversions clarify and contextualize his combined critique of postmodernism generated by the Act’s tendency to surrounding theoretical projects, the
1 This text is a conversational series of essays between Žižek, Judith Butler, and Ernesto Laclau.
Hollywood and Liberalism 49 examples appear rather incongruous contentious undertaking. For while The Stella Parallax: Still Noble and when divorced from the specific the Act involves the “radical gesture Senseless conditions they support: St. Paul and of subverting the very structuring the Stalinist bureaucracy, murderous principle of [a given] field” (2000a, e can locate a particularly parents (Keyser Soze of The Usual 121), Žižek’s decision to engage the poignant variant of such Suspects [Brian Singer, 1995], Andrea Act beyond abstraction, to identify its Wself-relating negativity Yates), former President Clinton’s manifestations in ordinary empirical or concession to nonexistence in the proposed Medicare reforms, bipolar reality, requires a unique form of famous conclusion to King Vidor’s pedophiles (Mary-Kay Letourneau), justification which accounts for the 1937 film, Stella Dallas. Stella, the and the terrorist attacks of September acting subject’s state of mind. film’s protagonist, knows that her beloved daughter Lollie will benefit greatly from the wealth and prosperity “...when faced with an accusation of offered by her fiancé’s family; however, Stella also realizes that she must
some misdeed – infidelity, for example remove herself from Lollie’s life, inciting Lollie to abandon her so that – one simply responds, ‘Yes, that’s Lollie can live happily and without the guilt of knowing that she abandoned exactly what I was doing!’” a ‘good’ mother. Orchestrating a meeting with Lollie and her fiance, Stella feigns vulgarity – pretending 11th are all, according to Žižek, According to Žižek, all acting to be drunk and carrying on an exemplary Acts or actors/agents. subjects share a need to “renounce the illicit affair – and Lollie, upset and Although one would certainly transgressive fantasmatic supplement disappointed, abandons her mother demure from crudely requesting a that attaches [them] to… the grip of and marries her fiance in a lavish universalized and reductive definition existing social reality” (2000b, 149): ceremony. Most interpretations of of the Act or a single ‘example par much like an accused criminal who the film’s conclusion emphasize the excellence’, the lack of consistency realigns the symbolic coordinates of noble selflessness of Stellas ‘beautiful among Žižek’s aphoristic engagements a reproach by refusing to concede sacrifice but question the necessity can nonetheless prove frustrating, to its conditions (when faced with of her forfeiture.3 Conversely, in especially in regards to the mutable an accusation of some misdeed Žižek’s reading of the film, Stella’s psychic position of the subject in and – infidelity, for example – one simply sacrifice is so extraordinary because preceding the Act. If it is possible to responds, “Yes, that’s exactly what it is one which “every good parent” distinguish between an authentic and I was doing!”). Yet the Act extends should make out of love for his child an inauthentic Act, can we similarly beyond semantic petulance, and (Rasmussin par. 42). However, the differentiate a legitimately ‘acting such refusals or repudiations on the purpose of such a sacrifice is far from subject’ from one who fails to fulfill subject’s part are often (self) injurious, narcissistic self-commemoration, this criteria? What occurs after an Act striking at the very core of his being. meaning that Stella’s Act is not is clear enough – the Act generates Indeed, Žižek asserts that the radical motivated by the assumption that Lollie its own historical possibility after the difference of the Act, in its rejection will eventually realize her mistake fact, such that we are only able (from of the field of possibility in favour of and marvel at Stella’s selflessness and our present standpoint) to conceive its the ‘crazy’ choice, can be partially nobility. Rather, Stella’s awareness that effects against the background of this attributed to the subject’s decision to her daughter’s happiness is contingent Act that ‘changed everything’, in much “strik[e] at himself, at what is most on her (Stella’s) absence compels a the same way that Medea’s infanticide precious to himself” (2000a, 122). In total erasure from her daughter’s life, in Pasolini’s film retroactively other words: this is not an exercise in deliberately engineered to never attain dissolves the symbolic consistency praxis2, where the subject reaffirms his the dignity of a sacrificial gesture, of her life and renders everything humanity and upholds the fundamental even in remembrance. In this respect, ‘impossible.’ Yet addressing the subject fantasy through some positive action, Stella’s decision to ‘strike at that which himself who endeavours to Act, who but rather a recognition of one’s own is most precious to her’ (her loving makes this impossible, ‘crazy’ choice nothingness – a traversing of the relationship with her daughter) does in the face of forced choice, or is fantasy – wherein the subject “accepts not guarantee her place in history so irresistibly compelled to commit this the void of his nonexistence” (1999a, much as her omission from it, much in Act for whatever reason, is a far more 281). the same way that the Act itself – due
2 Lacan defines praxis as a “concerted human action, whatever it may be, which places us in a position to treat the real by the symbolic” (Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1981. pp. 6). 3 In an article comparing Vidor’s 1937 version to John Erman’s 1990 remake Stella, Janet Maslin’s analysis of Stella’s enduring archetypal charm argues that the character’s “popularity as a soapsuds heroine is in no way compromised by the fact that she happens not to make any sense” (par. 3). Suspicious that Stella’s sacrificial motiviations are contrary to her awareness of her own vulgarity, Maslin questions if “it is really necessary, in any version of this story, for Stella to step out of her daughter’s life for the sake of the young woman’s happiness? She could accomplish the very same thing by electing not to dress herself like a float at the Rose Bowl parade” (par. 4). (Maslin, Janet. “Shed a Tear for Stella, Still Noble but Senseless.” The New York Times. Sunday February 11, 1990. http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=2&title1=STELLA%20DALLA S%20(MOVIE)&title2=&reviewer=Janet%20Maslin&pdate=&v_id=&oref=slogin&oref=login).
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 to its monumental impact on historical an unpleasant and often painfully Laclau questions, “Is it a ground of the contingency – must necessarily remain fruitless ordeal of self-obliteration: social? Is it an imaginary construction in a perpetual ‘beyond,’ absent from concession to one’s own nothingness totalizing a plurality of discrete and unacknowledged by the historical or self-relating negativity, and a struggles” (ibid)? This response record.4 radical restructuring of the realm of addresses Žižek’s contention that the It is via the route of Stella’s possibility that one’s present/acting self Act cannot be conceived as something concession to nonexistence, of her cannot survive or sustain. Noteworthy which ‘strikes out’ as a reactionary conscious omission from history, of agents of the Act demean themselves or curative response to an identifiable her certainty that the Act will never and others so brutally, furthering injustice. Such an approach to the Act triumphantly ‘belong’ to her, that we the social regression from “Bad to would necessarily inspire a pragmatic are now in a position to confront the filmic Medea’s final assertion that “nothing is possible anymore.” This position’s relationship to Stella Dallas “One question pertaining to the Act is hardly incidental, since Žižek’s stipulation that Stella’s sacrifice which is often implied (but generally (an Act) should be carried out by every parent implicitly appends an elided) by its critics is why anyone injunction to the Act itself: just as one should only have children when would ever want to commit one” one is prepared to sacrifice his own reputation for the child’s happiness evaluation in the reader and anchor the and – more drastically – devise the Worse” (Žižek 1999a, 377) so utterly Act to some historicist impasse – i.e., child’s rejection of its own parent, (your husband has abandoned you? infanticide as a retaliation against one should similarly only commit an Kill your children!), that one wonders a husband’s abandonment is surely Act insofar as one is willing to say, how an Act could ever suspend its ‘overreacting.’ What good would it “Nothing is possible anymore.” This is destructive impulses long enough do? Such evaluative ascriptions are precisely Žižek’s point when he asserts to properly ‘address’ its ideological inconsequential for both Lacan and that Medea’s radicality is unique in its effects – ‘ideological’ here denoting Žižek, since the Act for them does ability to “out-violence Power itself” less how the Act comes to change the not appear as a solution to a partial or “out-universalize universal Power world so much as our shared ability problem “within a given field”, but itself” (2001, 158 fn. 24), but this total to acknowledge this change. This is rather subverts “the very structuring negation and upending of Aristotelian precisely the intimation of political principle of the field” (Žižek 2000a, morality/the order of powers is likewise theorist Ernesto Laclau when he 121); the Act is therefore perpetually the background of every authentic Act: critiques Slavoj Žižek’s position on the out of joint with any curative or it is precisely the a-heroic dimension Act and its total structural involution consequential impulses, and especially which evacuates any psychic logic as a failure of global politics.5 What is with humanist aspirations to ‘solve the subject may ascribe to ‘her’ Act, at stake in performing a (specifically problems.’ Recall here Lacan’s effectively vitiating its identity as Lacanian) Act is, for Laclau, the distinction in Seminar VII: The ‘hers’ and relegating it to an invisible entire dimension of liberal humanism. Ethics of Psychoanalysis between position of universality in history. In According to Laclau, Žižek’s decision goodness (a symbolic condition) and short, the contra-humanist ‘risk’ which to oppose “partial solutions within a the ethical Act’s radical rejection of the acting subject, like Medea, must horizon to changes in the horizon as the symbolically-mandated margins of always be prepared to take – which he such” (198) reveals the abyssal futility such goodness (218-240). or she in fact must actively undertake of the Act; for Laclau, partial solutions The problem with any philosophical prior to committing the Act – is an are the individual conditions of a approach seeking a concrete humanism exclusion from his or her own radical situation which render it worthwhile, is that it will, like Laclau, object to the freedom. while the horizon itself is purely Act as insular, ‘anti-ideological’, and structural and intangible. In ignoring ‘apolitical’ – at least within that faction That Self-Inflicted Shot to the Foot: the constitutive elements of a given of global politics where ethics are Partial Solutions horizon, one is undertaking a hopeless conceived against the horizon of the enterprise: there can be no concrete Good. For Laclau, the entire sphere of ne question pertaining to the achievement/outcome of the Act, no the Act and its relation to forced choice Act which is often implied authentic ideological potentiality in – “a choice that is motivated by no O(but generally elided) by its its performance, unless we can finally good” (Lacan 1986, 240) – is nothing critics is why anyone would ever want agree “about what a horizon is and if not defeatist, willfully ignorant of to commit one. It certainly seems about the logic of its constitution.” its potential for positive historical
4 To do otherwise - that is, to fully acknowledge and celebrate the causal chain of Acts - would ensnare us in a fatalistic deadlock, or in a paradoxical ‘service of Acts’ which would necessitate our reaching ever further back into history to locate the generative Act which was somehow more authentic than the others. As such, while the Act may indeed ‘change everything’, it is a change that can rarely be acknowledged. The failure to write the originary gesture out of history is narratively exemplified in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998), in which the life or death of Lola’s boyfriend is determined by how quickly she runs down the stairs immediately after receiving his phonecall.
Hollywood and Liberalism 51 change, and “a prescription for any consensus on the Act’s ideological responsibility which Žižek abridges political quietism and sterility” (293). ground. Recall that, for Lacan as well as “I cannot do otherwise, yet I am The psychoanalytic claim that the as for Žižek, the subject is always (and none the less fully free in doing it” Act restructures the very contours of can only be) defined in relation to the (1999a,376). The subject’s constitution ideology, possibility, and involvement symbolic order, and is a ‘subject’ only in the order of Otherness cannot be (and can therefore never be ‘against’ “by virtue of his subjection to the field overlooked, and although the Act may them in the structural sense) is of the Other” (Lacan 1988, 188); in certainly subvert the constellations irrelevant to Laclau, since our inability other words, until the subject appears of symbolization, this says little of to bridge the gap between (ethical) in a symbolic context which precedes the acting subject’s relationship to the order his performance casts asunder. The following pages will elucidate the subject’s varying positions of ‘activity’ “when we speak of the acting subject in regards to the Other’s location in the symbolic, Real, and imaginary realms. we include by necessity the subject’s An example which accounts for the restructuring of the symbolic order founding disappearance into the through the subject’s dual submission to and freedom in the Act, appears in symbolic fiction” the conclusion to Frank Capra’s 1944 film, Arsenic and Old Lace. Upon theory and (humanist) practice denotes him and integrates himself into discovering on his wedding day that a ‘fated’ and dangerous indifference that order of Otherness, he remains his beloved elderly aunts Abby and which is apolitical in itself. In this essentially unenunciated. Martha have murdered thirteen lonely respect, the ‘radicality’ of rejecting the Yet for Laclau, the Act’s violent bachelors and buried their bodies in pre-inscribed choices of the symbolic intrusion into the subject’s ‘partiality’ the cellar, Mortimer Brewster spends universe and refiguring the principles – his need to address and rectify a hectic night neglecting his new bride of a given horizon is far from inherent a given set of partial problems and attempting to conceal his aunts’ in or native to the Act, since there – is ultimately futile and politically homicidal secrets from the various exists no consensus of what comprises counterproductive; the subject must visitors to the house. Despite their this horizon. be protected from the Act’s totalizing bubbly personalities, Aunts Abby and tendency to derail “the social and Martha are both clearly insane, and The Subject of the Other and the Act cultural pluralism existing in a given steadfast in their shared belief that That Changes the World society” (Laclau, 293). However, the their victims were miserable men with very notion of safeguarding the subject “nothing left to live for.” After a series hat ultimately ‘counts’ in against his own negativity is absurd of delightful Capra-esque capers and this formulation of the Act’s from a psychoanalytic perspective, misunderstandings, the director of the W‘subjective accessibility,’ since for Lacan it is only in the local insane asylum arrives with the and what Laclau neglects as decisive moment of self-relating negativity police lieutenant to commit Mortimer’s in the Žižekian Act (and its Lacanian that the subject loosens himself from cousin Teddy for reasons unrelated progenitor), is whether or not one is primordial solipsism and takes up a to the murders, whereupon the aunts prepared to take as its foundation lived position in relation to his Real- unexpectedly protest: “Commit us the subject of psychoanalysis. And Symbolic-Imaginary Other, “the too!” Mortimer, realizing that his although this is not at all Laclau’s principle of his own disappearance” aunts can escape incarceration for intention when he demands a unified (Durand, 863). As such, when we their murders in the insane asylum, is horizon of radicality against which speak of the acting subject we include delighted by their surprising demand to evaluate all Acts, the subject by necessity the subject’s founding and agrees that his aunts belong in the himself should be the very horizon disappearance into the symbolic asylum. The papers are signed, and which Laclau seeks. The fact that fiction6, his ‘subjection’ to the field of by the time Aunts Abby and Martha this disagreement between Laclau/ Otherness; the acting subject’s gesture begin to cheerfully relay the details Boostels and Žižek transpires in the never denotes absolute freedom or of their murders to the director and arena of global politics and not in the total hegemonic enchainment, but a the lieutenant, their confessions are minutiae of the subject who, in a single double-scansion of inevitability (I overlooked as the wild imaginings of motion, effects and disappears from must act, regardless of the terrible two insane women; the film concludes that very politic, prematurely vitiates consequences) and intentionality/ with the self-committed aunts and
5 Although Laclau is critical of much of Žižek’s work, for our purposes his objections will be limited to three of his essays: “Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics” (44-89), “Structure, History, and the Political” (182-212), and “Constructing Universality” (281-307) in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, 2000a. 6 Žižek summarizes this moment as the one in which the subject rejects any infantile claims to uniqueness and irreducibility, and in which “I renounce the treasure within myself and fully admit my dependence on the externality of symbolic apparatuses - that is to say, fully assume the fact that my very self-experience of a subject who was already there prior to the external process of interpellation is a retrospective misrecognition brought about by the process of interpellation” (2000a, 134 fn. 48). CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Teddy happily departing for the asylum disturbance into its very constitution, escape persecution, the lieutenant while the bodies of their victims and offers the transgression to the and the asylum director have restored remain undiscovered in the cellar. subject as a forced choice. In Arsenic order but remain blissfully unaware This conclusion (which, despite and Old Lace, where the truth revealed of its misguided path): in other words, its moral bankruptcy, is clearly coded by the Brewster sisters is mistaken the Act has cut through symbolic as a ‘happy ending’) can be read via for delusional insanity, murder is determinism, but the Big Other the route of two ascending ‘levels’ of Lacanian interpretation qua the Act. In the first level we have the symbolic order, the domain of the Law and the Big Other7 ‘going about its business’ as it does – the police lieutenant and the director of the asylum arrive at the Brewster home in an attempt to restore the peace. What eventually transpires, however, is far from conventional justice: order is indeed restored (the Brewster sisters cannot add to their collection of dead bachelors), but the considerable detour through which this order passes initially appears to simply an inherent transgression which remarkably seems to remain unscathed. demean its efficacy. Essentially, the supports propriety, or the long detour This appearance denotes the second Brewster sisters are committed because one takes to eventually arrive at a level of Lacanian interpretation they are perceived as two doddery old happy, orderly outcome. apropos of the Act. women, but the fact that their penchant The crucial point not to be missed for serial killing remains unaddressed in this restrictive symbolic strategy n my diagram above, the Act is by the Public Symbolic Law does not is that one can effectively break depicted as intersecting the two detract from the film’s happy ending. away from it, but only insofar as one ascending levels of the inherent Why is this? In ‘doing the right thing I is prepared to commit an Act. As transgression and the ‘positive’ for the wrong reasons’, the symbolic was previously discussed, this Act outcome which, when undisturbed, order here evinces that such happy rejects the forced choices or available bear witness to the efficiency of endings are always contingent on the transgressions offered as symbolic symbolic fictions (i.e., despite smooth regulation of its own self- fictions and, more radically, derails any number of transgressions, the deception; what the Public Symbolic the very concept of choice by opting system’s initiation/regulation of Law absolutely cannot sustain is the for free action in all its insanity. In these infractions ensures a codified very ‘whole truth and nothing but the the context of this example, it is the outcome). Yet the Act’s radical truth’ which it demands of its subjects Brewster sisters’ decision to commit intervention does not preclude the (to confront it directly would be too themselves to an asylum for reasons likelihood of a ‘happy ending’, even disruptive), so it circumvents the truth unrelated to their psychosis8 that in its retroactive reconfiguration of and, in taking this detour, eventually appears as an authentic Act. The Big this very condition of possibility. arrives at some equally valid truth- Other, here poorly disguised as a Furthermore, the appearance of the event. This is a variable outcome literal agent of the Law (lieutenant and positive outcome as a triumph of the what Žižek has termed “the inherent asylum director), effectively presents symbolic order certainly seems to transgression,” wherein the system of Aunts Abby and Martha with the suggest that the Act has effected little symbolic domination generates its own option to either confess their crimes more than a minor, inconsequential obscene supplements and perverse by- and suffer the appropriate punishment disturbance – after all, order has been products as a means of maintaining its or to remain silent and continue on as restored, the Brewster sisters are safely stability and supremacy (2000c, 6, 7). before. Unexpectedly, the Brewster locked away, and the Law’s success in As such, when the subject positions sisters demand incarceration without self-deception is not undermined by its himself against the symbolic order punishment, a choice which the Law means of arriving at the ‘wrong truth.’ and attempts to destabilize it by does not proffer, but which also does However, the reader must be cautioned transgressing its boundaries, the Big not appear to disturb the smooth against approaching the Act as such Other has more than anticipated this operation of the symbolic order (the a disturbance, even and especially attack – it has, in fact, preinscribed the film ends ‘happily,’ the Brewster sisters if the symbolic order appears to
7 A term designating the structurally essential symbolic field, the means by which this field is regulated, and for ‘whom’ we perform. Introducted by Lacan in 1955, the Big Other is simultaneously inscribed in the order of the symbolic and “is the symbolic insofar as it is particularised for each subject. The Other is thus both subject, in his radical alterity and unassimilable uniqueness, and also the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject” (Dylan Evans. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge, 2003. 133). 8 Their primary reason for demanding to go to the asylum is to accompany their nephew Teddy, but later while signing their own commitment papers they comment that the asylum will be a nice change of pace, that they are dissatisfied with their current neighbourhood since it has “changed so much”, and that it will be a welcome change to not be responsible for the upkeep of a house. Hollywood and Liberalism 53 ‘regain’ its consistency and return to precisely, to append to the (official) its subsequent restructuring of the ‘business as usual’ following the Act’s Whole the uneasy supplement which symbolic field; simply by virtue of its performance. What is at stake here is a denounces its falsity” (2005, 168). occurrence, the confession has lost any total structural involution which pivots And is this not also a fundamental imaginary or phantasmatic support or turns on the Act, in the sense that impasse in Ernesto Laclau’s contention and cannot now or ever be read to have the symbolic order does not simply that self-relating negativity or transpired otherwise. Similarly, by give ground to sanctioning a rebellious ‘desubjectivization’ is synonymous the time we are able to conceive of the display, but is thoroughly duped into with dehumanization – something Act in its original historical context a sense of supremacy. The Act does which we, as concerned global citizens, and question its ‘undecideability’ not designate the dissolution of the must oppose at every level? Indeed, it and potentiality, we are effectively symbolic dominion in the conventional is not the subject who must be shielded caught in the bind of always-already sense, where some assertion of anti- from the totalizing degradation of the conceiving this potentiality against authoritarian autonomy or Leftist- Act (its erasure of his gesture and his the background of the Act – that is, we utopic insurgency would appear as a person from the historical record), but think differently qua the Act. ‘shock to the system’ – and nor does rather the order which is constitutive the symbolic order work tirelessly of the subject that requires protection The Thing That Acts: Monstrosity to neutralize the harmful effects of and Aphanisis in the Act the Act or integrate its unsettling subversion into the system the way ne particular liberal-humanist that political spin-doctors gentrify criticism which is often and clarify the excessive anti-PC Olevied at Žižek’s conception blunders of politicians. Rather, despite of the Act (and one with which I the fact that the Act is a successful am in marginal agreement), points performance in every respect, despite towards Žižek’s tendency to abandon our inability to approach the symbolic his exemplary acting agents (Keyser order from the same perspective Soze, Mary Kay Letourneau, and so after the Act has repositioned its on) in favour of removed philosophical coordinates, the system of symbolic treatises, thus appearing to exclude domination must remain ignorant of the ‘all too human’ achievements of the Act’s effects. master criminals, scorned child-killing We can therefore see how the women, and libidinal schoolteachers. operation works both ways, since This methodological flaw can be the Act occurs beyond the arena partially attributed to high theory’s of forced symbolic choices and the ‘natural’ reliance on lofty absolutes Public Symbolic Law cannot retaliate and coincident resistance to exception, against and normalize an Act with from the knowledge that the subject but it is more problematically imputed the preinscribed efficiency afforded can – and occasionally does – return to Žižek’s often unclear position the inherent transgression. Simply this gesture of constitution. on the acting subject’s relationship stated, what the Act achieves is In Arsenic and Old Lace, the very to the Other. In certain accounts not a momentary suspension of the insanity of Aunts Abby and Martha (Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: hegemonic order to initiate some serves as an adequate metaphor for Contemporary Dialogues on the Left), temporary, imminently threatened the Act’s relationship to the order of Žižek’s arguments suggest that the change, but rather a subversion of the power it rewrites: by the time the world acting subject himself – and not merely symbolic order which is so irreversible is prepared to accept the Brewster the Act he commits – is an exceptional that the order itself remains unaware sisters as insane, the truth behind revolutionary figure who effectively and unable to predict/preinscribe the their insanity (the murders) remains ‘escapes’ or even triumphs over the reformation – it is limited instead to unacknowledged and absent from the system of symbolic domination, and historically absorbing the Act’s effects record – what we witness instead is “finds himself… by cutting himself as a matter of course (Figure 1). In a semblance of truth which arrives loose from the precious object through this sense, when the Brewster sisters at a similar symbolic destination via whose possession the enemy kept demand to be committed to the asylum a circuitous route, such that some him in check” (2000a, 122)9. In other with Teddy, they ‘change everything’ measure of order or truth is achieved, writings (The Ticklish Subject: The and effectively turn the symbolic order but only by means of a bungled Absent Centre of Political Ontology), on its head, but the film ends happily parapraxis. Consequently, the Brewster Žižek’s position is similar to the one because the Big Other is protected sisters’ confession of the murders – the outlined in the previous section, as he from the damning awareness that it has ‘real order of things’ – is already too asserts that the Big Other “retreats” been upended. As Žižek contends, “the late since the Big Other has accepted in the face of the Act but does not point is not to tell the whole Truth but, their self-diagnosed insanity and disappear entirely (1999a, 369). And
9 The ‘object’ to which Žižek refers in this context is the precious object which the subject sacrifices in opting for free action (Stella Dallas’ reputation and loving relationship with her daughter, Medea’s children, and so on).
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 finally – and most perplexingly – Žižek materialize in every interaction but against the Other – the basis is not occasionally contends that the Act is are always in counterpoint to one in relativity, as it is in his everyday nothing but a violent suspension of the another, each essentially pacifying interactions – but rather in an absolute, status quo in which the Other ‘speaks the other’s effects to ensure against fully-assumed monstrosity in which, through’ the acting subject, essentially an unbearable excess of relativity. For “for a brief, passing moment… [he] dramatizing the Derridian concept of example, one’s relationship with a directly is the Thing” (163). While “the Other’s decision in me” (Derrida, lover simultaneously accounts for the the symbolic (Big) Other eventually 87). It is, however, in the context of this imaginary support of the relationship – and, as previously discussed, tardily particular (post) structuralist position itself, for symbolic signification – ‘responds’ to this Act precisely by that Žižek presents what is likely his (the very titles which designate the misrecognizing it, this secondary
most cogent explication of the acting parameters of one’s identity, such dimension exists only as divisible subject’s interrelation with Otherness. as ‘lover’, ‘couple’, ‘snookums’, by the subject’s direct identification I have included a diagrammatical and so on), and for a monstrous, with the Thing (Figure 3). This representation of my conception of unfathomable, and traumatic Real total, traumatic identification with this interaction to which I will refer Otherness that must be gentrified the Thing therefore exempts the throughout. by the “impersonal symbolic order” subject from symbolic regulations (165) so as to retain some minimum and allows him to Act ‘as if’ from n the subject’s standard or day- of distance or cognate humanity. nowhere, “without reflection [or]… to-day interactions with an Other The interrelatedness of the three deliberation” (162). The Act as such is I(Figure 2) which simultaneously dimensions simply illustrates the not at all “pathologically motivated” exists within him (as a precondition of fact that, beneath the lover as social (Žižek 1992, 36), since its agent’s his subjectivity) and radically external symptom, there always exists an reconstitution in absolute monstrosity to him10, the Other itself is positioned “unfathomable abyss of radical (the Other-Thing) temporarily on three interdependent levels: the Otherness, of a monstrous Thing precludes symbolic identification and symbolic Big Other (OS), which that cannot be ‘gentrified’” (164-165) imaginary/phantasmatic support11, was previously discussed as a social – but also that, beyond the lover’s and effectively ‘opens the space’ for a substance, the domain of the Public impenetrable actuality as Thing, there total “empty set” (ibid) – a Real event Symbolic Law; the imaginary Other exists a “‘normal fellow human’” (ibid. “which occurs ex nihilo” (Žižek 1999a, (OI), which manifests itself in other ) who is illuminated by the symbolic 374). Not only does this formulation people with whom the subject interacts order. account for the Big Other’s ignorance – the people “‘like [him]’, [his] fellow However, in the performance of its own subversion in the Act (its human beings with whom [he is] of an Act, this regulatory tripartite unawareness can be attributed to a engaged in the mirror-like relationships semblance of the subject qua Other structural disconnect given that the of competition, mutual recognition, and dissolves, leaving only the radical subject as Other-Thing excludes the so on” (2002, 163); and the Real Other dimension of the ‘Other of the Real symbolic register from ‘involvement’), or Other as Thing (OR), the “‘inhuman Thing’ (Figure 3). The difference but it likewise justifies the Act’s partner’, the Other with whom no which makes this encounter so ‘identity’ as anti-ideological. It is symmetrical dialogue, mediated extraordinary and “unprecedented”, not that the Act – as Ernesto Laclau by the symbolic order, is possible” Žižek asserts, is that in the insane free would have us believe – appears in (ibid). All of these various facets of choice of the Act, the subject does response to ideology, deliberately Otherness, distinct as they may be, not merely position or define himself and terroristically ‘dehumanizing’
10 The mathematical construction of the diagram uses brackets to represent the field of Otherness as both a ‘given set’ and one against which the subject must be ‘counted’ or multiplied. 11 As illustrated by Figure 3, these conditions are only made available successively, essentially as ‘divisible by the Real.’ Hollywood and Liberalism 55 or ‘apoliticizing’ everything in its Žižek hints at the presence of this Lacan as the necessary “fading” of the wake, but rather that ideology always apparently “irreducible” gap when subject, his “manifest[ation] of himself implies an Other that is ‘caught up’ he claims that the Act’s primary, in this movement of disappearance” in the imaginary and symbolic fields. traumatic impasse is located in our (1981, 208), one can certainly trace Conversely, the Other as Thing is shared inability to actively conceive it: self-erasure’s relatedness to the aligned with the absolute void of the Act, but the aphoristic potential of Act, its resistance to imaginary support this ‘definition’ (and here it should be noted that Lacan often provides several – sometimes opposing – definitions of his psychoanalytic “How can one commit an Act? By fully terminology) has resulted in the critical appropriation of aphanisis as a ‘condition’ – or, more specifically, assuming a position as the Other-Thing. an event or happening – which is synonymous with amnesia, mass How can one fully assume a position annihilation (genocide, massacres), suicide, and rebirth. As such, the as the Other-Thing? By committing an moment of aphanisis in contemporary literature and film analysis can Act.” equally designate a conditional absence or vanishing (Beckman, 192), a specifically textual “pleasurable and symbolic gentrification, and its what is so difficult to accept is not the fact that anxiety” (where withheld narrative status as the point at which “every the true act in which noumenal and phenomenal information grants unexpected agency ‘foundation’ of acts in ‘words’, in dimensions coincide is forever out of our reach; to the reader himself) (Sajé, 167), the true trauma lies in the opposite awareness ideology, fails: this ‘foundation’ simply that there are acts, that they do occur, and that or the “self-erasure of the subject falls short of the abyss announced in it” we have to come to terms with them (1999a, when she approaches her fantasy too (Žižek 1992, 35). 375). closely (Žižek 1997, 175) – as well as a myriad of other symptoms and lthough this explanatory The implication of the subject’s effects which concurrently signify passage in Did Somebody aptitude to act is a significant disappearance and subjectivization. ASay Totalitarianism?: Five component of the aforementioned third Suffice it to say that the inconsistencies Interventions on the (Mis)use of a agency of subjectivization. And while in definition surrounding aphanisis Notion certainly clarifies Žižek’s Žižek’s statement is certainly true in have yielded its dissemination across a position on the specific Other-identity the context of the Act’s perpetually range of scholarly fields, from clinical to whom the subject is ‘subjected’ in surprising/unexpected appearance ‘as psychoanalysis and psychotherapy the Act (i.e., neither the Big Other of if from nowhere’, the above citation to narrative studies. Simultaneously symbolic domination/state-imposed also represents a rare Žižekian existing as symptom, outcome, and control nor the linguistically- suspension of the strico senso Act structuring semblance, a psychic event construed Other of structuralism), – the Act as absolutely phenomenal at and a narrative conceit, aphanisis Žižek’s reasoning nonetheless the expense of its noumenal auxiliary belies and indeed often vitiates the appears somewhat circuitous upon components – in favour of addressing delimited specificity of its definition further inspection. How can one the more elusive dimension of the as a symbolizing process through commit an Act? By fully assuming subject’s potential as an agent of the which the subject’s desire must pass a position as the Other-Thing. How Act: the term which I should like to in order to be sustained or solidified can one fully assume a position as invoke to indicate such potentiality in in the signifier. Indeed, the subject’s the Other-Thing? By committing an the subject is aphanisis. only ‘hope’ of “[setting himself] Act. It is my contention that such The term aphanisis has an up as a subject, as something other obliqueness institutes a premature extensive and somewhat controversial than the product, the effect, of the short-circuit between the Act and its history in the psychoanalytic canon. signifying division” (Harari, 247) is to ideological ground, since something Introduced by Ernest Jones in 1928 essentially fade in the overwhelming is evidently ‘lost’ in the imaginary as a variation on Freud’s concept of presence of demand and in the face space between the two diffuse primary anxiety, the term in the 1950s of the object (Lacan 1981, 221). repetitions of a tautology. In this developed a clinical association with Ironically, then, what truly ‘counts’ in sense, what is required to ‘fill the schizophrenia, and was refined by this process is the subject’s approach gap’ is a third agency which falls Jacques Lacan in his seminars (1956-57 to, approximation of, or even his between the Other-Thing and the Act’s and 1964) to designate a psychic aporia dangerous self-awareness of, his own occurrence, between impossibility which forces the subject to assume fading. and politicization, and which recovers an absent position or undergo erasure While Žižek certainly makes this missing dimension by addressing while simultaneously and vitally frequent mention of aphanisis in the subject at the level of his original ‘subjectifying’ him and shaping his a variety of conceptually discrete (primordial) subjectivization. relationship to desire. Also defined by contexts (rape, death, the Stockholm
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Syndrome), his discussion of aphanisis irreversible obliteration/erasure. Were This anti-ideological hypothesis apropos of the Act is comparatively the subject to experience aphanisis is addressed in Todd Haynes’ minimal. For Žižek, aphanisis before his undertaking of the Act 1995 film Safe, which details the designates the moment that the subject and not after it (as Žižek suggests), gradual deterioration of a blank and approaches too closely that which is would he not essentially bypass the psychologically inaccessible San essentially resistant to symbolization entire symbolic dimension of the Fernando Valley housewife, Carol, to in him – the phantasmatic kernel of inherent transgression and truly ‘act’ a mysterious illness. Finding herself his being – whereupon he loses his – in an unprecedented and truly anti- increasingly unable to tolerate toxins
“aphanisis designates the moment that the subject approaches too closely that which is essentially resistant to symbolization in him – the phantasmatic kernel of his being – whereupon he loses his symbolic consistency, ‘it disintigrates”
symbolic consistency, “it disintegrates” ideological fashion – from an empty and pollutants, Carol succumbs to (1999b, 97). This conception differs place? what is eventually (and tenuously) substantially from the Act, in which The familiar paradox involved in identified as an ‘environmental the subject makes no initial ‘claim’ to claiming an anti-ideological stance illness.’ When her condition makes the symbolic order, let alone a need for is that such an assertion is itself life in the city unbearable (seizures, its regulating/normalizing effects, and ‘ideological’ to its very core, such that nosebleeds, allergic reactions to her Žižek clarifies this distinction between any attempt at asserting free action favourite foods, inability to breathe), the Act and aphanisis by perceiving prematurely ‘overloads’ the empty set Carol locates a healing centre which the latter only as a possible outcome of the Act with symbolic qualifiers. accommodates people with her of the former. In this sense, when the According to the position that condition, and leaves her husband and subject approaches his Act too closely, ideology is inescapably ‘everywhere’, stepson for the Wrenwood Centre. he has no choice but to ‘fade’ in its one can only assume a legitimately This compound-like retreat inspires overwhelming, irreducible presence, anti-ideological stance in a state of suspicion (one initially assumes abandoning his own symbolic ignorance, and this position confirms that the staff of Wrenwood and its consistency and essentially integrating the relationship between an Act and charismatic director Peter Dunning or ‘losing himself’ in the Act, the agent’s ‘forewarned’ knowledge of will be exposed as manipulative becoming its cause. Žižek states that, it: namely, the agent’s awareness of his swindlers) and a certain relief in potential for radicality will effectively the spectator – now that Carol is The standard subject’s reaction to the act is that preclude the successful performance of amongst fellow sufferers and experts of aphanisis, of his/her self-obliteration, not of the Act. To invoke Žižek’s example: on ‘environmental illnesses’, perhaps heroically assuming it: when the awareness of an accurate diagnosis will finally be the full consequences of ‘what I have just done’ Oedipus didn’t know what he was doing (killing hits me, I want to disappear (1997, 223). made? Haynes’ narrative strategy, his own father), yet he did it. Hamlet knew what however, is patently uninterested in the he had to do, which is why he procrastinated and medical aspect of Carol’s illness – we However, is it not also possible was unable to accomplish the act (1999a, 386). to imagine aphanisis as a certain are never explicitly informed as to why condition of possibility in the Act’s she became ill, and nor do we know authenticity, a mediator between what actually constitutes her illness (theoretical) impossibility and (actual) Yet is it at all possible to test this – and instead focuses on the social politicization? Considering that the ideological hypothesis against an dimension of the compound. true measure of an Act does not aim Act and, more specifically, against Initially, it appears that there is no at some “momentary enthusiastic an instance of aphanisis? If a subject particular directorial agenda pertaining outburst” (1999a, 135) but at a total has already effectively ‘disappeared’, to Wrenwood, and the absence of any historical obliteration, the subject’s is he privy to the same dangerous ‘position’ on Haynes’ part institutes ability to “accept and endorse his own knowledge/awareness, or does his self- a deeply unsettling feeling that itself ‘second death’, to ‘erase himself totally erasure allow him to assume the space occasionally ‘fills in’ the empty from the picture’” (379), it therefore of free action precisely because he does set that is the compound: what the follows that aphanisis is itself such an not know? spectator assumes is a sinister feature
Hollywood and Liberalism 57 of Wrenwood, an empirically-present patient finally confronts himself and psychologically impenetrable self- or positive condition subversively his illness in a state of total Zen-like destruction of a Viennese family. We articulated by Haynes, is actually an emptiness), they ensure in advance are subjected to their monotonous daily absence of any articulation at all. The that this will never occur. And this routines in a claustrophobic aesthetic patients and staff are not malicious is also the horizon against which we of tightly-framed medium shots which or ill-intentioned people, but are should read Haynes’ direction, or that often record the repetitive activities of simply a community and, as such, open presentation of his viewpoint as a hands but crop heads and faces from intimate all the perverse component neutral gaze which refuses to evaluate/ the frame; we become familiar with a qualities entailed by such a designation reduce Carol or the inhabitants of variety of soulless bourgeois features (amalgamated identity, distressingly Wrenwood: the very assumption of of their house, such as their generic
“The result is not the subject’s aphanized fading in the face of his illness...but rather an excess of symbolization, a total bombardment of the subject with the very symbolic coordinates he is attempting to escape.”
intense faith in their belonging, this anti-ideological stance already art prints, enormous and glacial fish inspirational singalongs, and so on). guarantees the triumph of ideology, tank, and the television set which, This lacking formal dimension is and Haynes’ deft formal traversal of when turned on, blares American mimicked in the New Age gnosticism the space between deliberation and hit parade programmes and fixates which regulates the lives of the patients an aphanistic emptiness coincides everyone’s attention – although we and urges them to ‘find themselves’ seamlessly with the film’s equally have no conception of the physical and ‘learn to love’ their illnesses. duplicitous narrative content. space of their home. When Georg Each patient is encouraged to In this sense, it appears that (the father) and Anna (the mother) designate for himself an empty space one’s assumption of an aphanized decide to kill themselves and their – necessarily spiritual but possibly obliteration of self-conception is not young daughter Eva, we are given no physical – in which he can retreat to an adequate means of evacuating that indication of motivation, but suspect escape the overwhelming ‘toxicity’ self-defeating ‘knowledge’ of his own that it involves a desperate retaliation of the world and be alone (with his potential to Act. Aphanisis is therefore against their azoic bourgeois existence. illness). However, as Carol herself not to be opposed to knowledge as However, the standout feature of this seeks out ever ‘safer’ spaces, we such, since the erasure is itself a film is its drawn-out conclusion – less realize that there truly is something ‘forewarned’ knowledge, an effective for the family’s ugly suicide-by-poison sinister at work here; because these depreciation of revolutionary potential than for the total destruction which spaces have been emptied in advance, in favour of an insistent return to an precedes it. Totaling at approximately because they are intended as spaces ideological dimension. seventeen minutes of footage, this in which the patient is entirely alone extended sequence mimics the visual and unburdened by the troubles of the Everything but the Kitchen Sink: The style of its monotonous forebears by world – ultimately because and not Family Aphanized consisting almost entirely of tightly- despite of these reasons – the ‘safe’ framed medium shots of hands as spaces to which the patients flee from et is it nonetheless possible they methodically and efficiently pollutants and toxins are ultimately not to conceive of this ironic destroy everything in sight: tearing ideology-free zones. The result is not Yknowledge and ‘agency’ and shredding piles of clothing, cutting the subject’s aphanized fading in the against the background of a subject photographs in two, snapping records, face of his illness (the New Age variant who has undergone aphanisis and is smashing furniture and appliances, and presented to the patients involves an now acting ‘from an empty place?’ A flushing money down the toilet. ‘emptying’ of the self which opens the particularly explicit representation of What fascinates about this space for a redemptive new beginning), aphanisis as the antecedent-guarator sequence is its explicit presentation but rather an excess of symbolization, of, or condition of possibility for, of a shared self-erasure, an aphanisis a total bombardment of the subject an Act’s performance occurs in the which ‘infects’ an entire family unit with the very symbolic coordinates conclusion to Michael Haneke’s 1989 as a necessary precondition of their he is attempting to escape. In other film The Seventh Continent. This film, suicide. This aphanisis is necessary words, because these safe spaces which superficially occupies a place precisely in the sense that the family position themselves as hospitable to in the postmodern ‘traumatic tedium’ unit assumes the authentic (political) some redemptive Act (in which the canon12, details the calm, orderly, and position of an absolute absence in
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 their Act – a Schellingian ‘ex nihilo’ is being/has been eradicated, and so shifting linguistic boundaries of a which extends to even the acting agent on), while the money has no personal given social set and its opponents of – and ‘opens a space’ for the Act’s significance. In other words, while most ‘immutable’ state-imposed control, performance through an antecedent of the wrecked items can be ascribed philosopher Giorgio Agamben sets erasure.13 Regardless of whether some signification and can effectively forth the argument that the ‘active one elects to read either the family’s aid in pathologizing the family’s absence’ of any identity in a subject eventual suicide or the smashing of aphanisis and Act (i.e., the spectator’s is precisely that which cannot be their house and accouterments as self-deception that everything was endured by the State: “What the State
“the family’s orderly attack on their earthly possessions aims precisely at this intent, but actually achieves it...in advance of the Act: nothing can succeed the family after it finally self-destructs, and they leave no legacy of their humanity – only a zero-point.”
the film’s ‘authentic’ Act, it is self- destroyed for a reason – the clock cannot tolerate in any way… is that erasure’s double-scansion of fading was a gift from Granny, etc), the the singularities form a community and figuration which ultimately object-money itself ‘means’ nothing without affirming an identity, that guarantees meaning ‘over the family’s to the family, and its destruction humans co-belong without any dead bodies’14: that is, between the cannot be justified as retaliatory in the representable condition of belonging” Act’s impulses of impossibility conventional sense. If indeed one of (1993, 86). Differentiating identity (a and politicization, self-erasure’s the objectives of the authentic Act is to social bond which ensures belonging) appearance heralds the subject’s enjoin in the subject an “accept[ance] from singularity as such (which, for performance from “Another Space and endorse[ment] of his own ‘second Agamben, needs not constitute an which can no longer be dismissed as death’, to ‘erase himself totally from identity), Agamben makes two claims a fantasmatic supplement to social the picture’” and to “obliterate the dead which are relevant to a discussion of reality” (2000b, 158). Furthermore, totally from historical memory” (379), the Act qua its agent: primarily, he this sequence of aphanistic destruction then the family’s orderly attack on their insists that “a being radically devoid of evinces the guarantee of permanence earthly possessions aims precisely any representable identity” is nothing and irreversibility endemic to at this intent, but actually achieves it less than a enemy of the State (ibid), every authentic Act by efficiently (with characteristically dispassionate someone who essentially remains accomplishing the total dissolution of efficiency) in advance of the Act: radically impervious to symbolic symbolic consistency and instituting nothing can succeed the family after reduction and, by extension, the a zero-point, a second death, in it finally self-destructs, and they leave oppression of the State. Concurrently, advance. The destruction of the no legacy of their humanity – only a the sphere of contemporary family photographs and the money zero-point. politics designates for Agamben a are particularly effective in this aim revolutionary undoing which “empties of preemptive obliteration, since the The Global Act traditions and beliefs, ideologies and photographs are loaded symbolic and religions, identities and communities” imaginary supports, the destruction In the conclusion of The Coming (83). of which is portentous (the family Community, a text which explores the While this formulation may strike
12 Which is also inhabited by directors such as Bruno Dumont (2003’s Twentynine Palms and 1999’s Humanity), Catherine Breillat (2001’s Fat Girl, 1999’s Romance), and films such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) and Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002). These films typically call attention to the spectator’s perverse investment in (and desire for) the intrusion of brutality into otherwise monotonous routine. In all of the aforementioned films - including The Seventh Continent - extreme but comparatively fleeting moments of violence puncture an otherwise reified, complacent surface (usually at the end of the film) and aim to confront the spectator’s tedious tolerance with an unsettling sense of relief. 13 Additionally, the aphanistic destruction distinguishes Haneke’s film significantly from ‘similar’ postmodern fare such as Twentynine Palms or Fat Girl. Although the family’s smashing-spree is initially a cathartic release from tightly-wound routine, its grueling temporal duration of 17 minutes (coupled with its insistently tight medium-shot aesthetic) eventually begins to take its toll. Unlike the brief but ‘orgasmic’ and relieving violence of Breillat and Dumont’s films, the family’s outburst in The Seventh Continent is as controlled and regulated as their daily lives, and the spectator is eventually left with the realization that things have gone - appropriately in the context of the Act - “from Bad to Worse” (Slavoj Žižek. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso, 1999a. pp. 377). 14 This turn of phrase is borrowed from Žižek’s The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Centre for the Humanities, 2000c. pp. 9. Hollywood and Liberalism 59 one as somewhat nihilistic in its goaded into rebelling against the Miller. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. apparent enjoinment of the reader symbolic order. This, I believe, is the London: W.W. Norton and Company, to thwart the State by dissolving his same position which would inspire the 1988. own symbolic consistency (however assertion that we ‘need’ the Act today Laplanche, Jean and J.B. Pontalis. ‘illusory’ it may be), this nihilism is – more than every (i.e., in our current age The Language of Psycho-analysis. in a sense – constitutive of Agamben’s of totalitarian ‘anti-terrorist’ measures, Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New very project to approximate a political fear-mongering, the complacency and York: Norton, 1974. language (experimentum linguae) with alienation of cyberspace, etc). Rather, Maslin, Janet. “Shed a Tear for which we can finally ‘reveal nothing’ acknowledging from an ethico-political Stella, Still Noble but Senseless.” The or “reveal the nothingness of all perspective that we ‘need’ the Act in New York Times. Sunday February 11, things” (82). For Agamben, what truly our current global climate is contingent 1990. http://movies2.nytimes.com/ ‘counts’ in contemporary politics is a on our realization that the Act has mem/movies/review.html?_r=1&title1= self-consciousness in speech which, in always been necessary, but never at any STELLA%20DALLAS%20(MOVIE)& “bringing language to language” (ibid. point has it been ‘more necessary’ than title2=&reviewer=Janet%20Maslin&pd 83), takes nihilism to its endpoint or ever before. ate=&v_id=&oref=login “carries it to completion”, but crucially Rasmussin, Eric Dean. “Liberation does so “without allowing what reveals Works Cited: Hurts: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek.” to remain veiled in the nothingness Lacan.com. September 29, 2003. http:// that reveals” (Ibid). Agamben’s Beckman, Karen. Vanishing www.lacan.com/zizekillinois.html position is not explicitly Lacanian, Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism. Sajé, N. “Artful Artlessness: and he does not index the Act in any Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Reading the Coquette in ‘Roderick concrete way, but his statements Butler, Judith and Ernesto Laclau Hudson.’” The Henry James Review. in this global linguistic context and Slavoj Žižek. Contingency, 18:2 (Spring 1997): 161-172. certainly recall the Act’s propensity Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Žižek, Slavoj. For They Know for retroactive transformation Dialogues on the Left. London: Verso, Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a (as is evinced by Medea’s cry in 2000a. Political Factor. London: Verso, 1991a. Pasolini’s film). It is particularly Derrida, Jacques. The Politics of -----. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Agamben’s encouragement to pursue Friendship. Trans. George Collins. Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New this ‘nihilism’ or global variant of London: Verso, 1997. York: Routledge, 1992. “Nothing is possible anymore!” to Durand, Regis. “On Aphanisis: A -----. The Indivisible Remainder: its end which is striking since – like Note on the Dramaturgy of the Subject An Essay on Schelling and Related the Act – this experimentum linguae in Narrative Analysis.” MLN. Vol. 98, Matters. London: Verso, 1996. only reveals its potentiality in that No. 5 (December 1983): 860-870. -----. The Plague of Fantasies. moment of ‘ending’, or, more precisely, Evans, Dylan. An Introductory London: Verso, 1997. in that moment where it retroactively Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. -----. The Ticklish Subject: The ‘becomes’ something else/new entirely. East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge, 2003. Absent Centre of Political Ontology. The notion of the Act as a Harari, Roberto. Lacan’s London: Verso, 1999a. harbinger of positive political change Four Fundamental Concepts of -----. The Žižek Reader. Eds. is certainly not a dazzling new Psychoanalysis: An Introduction. New Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright. epigram, especially since historical York: Other Press, 2004. London: Blackwell Publishing, 1999b. Acts of the past are always being Jones, Ernest. “The Early -----. “When the Party Commits revisited and (re)inscribed into Development of Female Sexuality.” Suicide.” New Left Review 238, political consciousness – but my The International Journal of Psycho- November/December 1999: 26-47 project throughout this paper has Analysis. Volume VIII, Part 4 (October -----. The Fragile Absolute: Why is aimed less at the identification of Acts 1927): 459-472. the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting than at the very background against Lacan, Jacques. The Language of For? London: Verso, 2000b. which we are always recreating the the Self: The Function of Language -----. The Art of the Ridiculous conditions of an Act’s appearance. in Psychoanalysis. Trans. Anthony Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost In this respect, I have not set forth Wilden. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Highway. Seattle: Walter Chapin a model of ‘how to successfully Press, 1968. Simpson Centre for the Humanities, commit an Act’ or how to become a -----. Seminar XI: The Four 2000c. meaningfully radical global citizen Fundamental Concepts of -----. Did Somebody Say via the Act, but have rather proposed Psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Totalitarianism: Five Interventions a structural horizon of agency which Miller. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: in the (Mis)use of a Notion. London: acknowledges the subject in his W.W. Norton and Company, 1981. Verso, 2002. capacity to Act, while also accounting -----. Seminar VII: The Ethics of -----. “The Antinomies of Tolerant for his subjection to this Act. What Psychoanalysis. Trans. Dennis Porter. Reason: A Blood-Dimmed Tide is I would like to caution against in London: W.W. Norton and Company, Loosed.” Lacan.com. 2005. http://www. this sense is an overly effusive, 1986. lacan.com/zizantinomies.htm sentimentally humanist approach -----. Seminar II: The Ego in -----. The Parallax View. to the Act’s agent which posits him Freud’s Theory and in the Technique Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. as an imperiled iconoclast who is of Psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 (Zombie) Revolution at the Gates: The Dead, The “Multitude” and George A. Romero
R. Colin Tait
I. Introduction transformed in the contemporary cultural milieu from an But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow… active process specifically designed to incite change to the – The Beatles, ‘Revolution’ contemporary imperative to actively consume, a process that Your revolution is over Mr. Lebowski. Condolences – the bums lost! is itself ultimately passive. – The Big Lebowski Faced with the seemingly infinite options of revolutionary activities condoned by the market, how can the contemporary evolution is not exactly what it used to be. subject possibly be expected to choose one over another? Historically an activity where the sleeping giant of Does he/she, for instance, join the Green Revolution or Rexploited workers/nations/people awoke to address the Pepsi Revolution? Does he/she discuss the Cultural the brutal inequities of a specific system of oppression (be Revolution or play “Dance Dance Revolution Extreme”? The they bourgeoisie, colonizers or nations), the term, sadly, time-honoured symbols of revolution offer no comfort for has become devalued and is now most often used to sell us this individual, though it is true that the iconic image of Che something, or to tell us how much more the product that Guevara actively adorns the T-Shirts, hats and jean jackets we ought to buy has improved (with its revolutionary new of the latest generation in a dazzling display that likely have process of air-freshening/space-saving/cutting things). Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and of course, Karl Marx, While the terms ‘revolution’ and ‘revolutionary’ still imply screaming to us from beyond their graves: their prophetic participation, the nature of this participation has been utterly words echoing in our over-stimulated ears.
Hollywood and Liberalism 61 The same phenomenon occurs with the figures (and film, and David Fincher’s Fight Club, both in 1999) assert images) of Bob Marley and Che Guevara – whose postered that the presence of ‘revolutionary’ material can now be countenances grace the walls of many a dorm room in found within the site of the contemporary Blockbuster. university campuses – and whose iconic presence determines Among the loudest of these voices is Slavoj Žižek, who the pretense of an ideological position for the consumer, lifts a line directly from The Matrix for the title of his book without them having to do anything besides purchase on the September 11th attacks: “Welcome to the Desert of these symbols that effectively ‘stand for’ their respective the Real.” In addition to his contention that The Matrix is ideological stances (i.e. revolution, Rastafarianism, the a film worthy of analysis under the rubric of ‘revolution,’ decriminalization of marijuana to name but a few). Žižek presents Fight Club as an even clearer example of a
“Rather than feeding a genuine desire to overthrow the system, what these films offer instead is an entry point into the ‘revolutionary market...’”
The adoption of a particular ‘stance’ has its equivalent in film that offers viewers the subversive pleasure of presenting cinema, where images and concepts that seemingly ‘stand revolutionary material within the site of a Hollywood and for’ something are more likely assuming a popular (and through a model of product consumption to boot.2 Here, the non-threatening) position, or are merely ‘posing’ rather than theorist attributes positive ‘revolutionary’ qualities to the making an actual statement. We must consider the relative film (which questions the possibility of the contemporary harmlessness and diffusion of the ‘political’ content of all of subject dislodging himself from the Capitalist system) this ‘revolutionary material’ within the contemporary space in addition to qualities that actively enable the viewer to of the market. imagine what Žižek formulates as the “Leninist break.” Though the issue of passive reception has largely fallen For Žižek the fundamental problem with the contemporary out of fashion in contemporary film theory, nevertheless political debate lies in the discursive schism of “ethics” and there remain compelling reasons to investigate movies that “politics.” He characterizes this issue as the “deadlock” purport to depict revolutionary activity while at the same between the Left and Right which permeates the sphere time reinscribing the status quo. Often enough a term like of modern political theory. Furthermore, he accuses the the “Freedom Revolution”1 most often means the opposite Left of flooding this sphere with demands that are totally of what it implies; namely, tax cuts for the already wealthy unrealizable, including “full employment” and the absolute at the expense of social programs to aid the lower classes. return to the “welfare state.” These requests, in his view, It is imperative that we trace how this diffusion of political will always and “by definition fall short of the unconditional (and, in particular, ‘revolutionary’) content travels meta- ethical demand” (Žižek 2001, 1). Instead, what these pleas linguistically and comes to inform what is perhaps our most represent is the desire by Leftists to advocate “grand projects democratic of cultural institutions: the site of contemporary of solidarity, freedom,” while “ducking out” when it is time Hollywood film. This phenomenon (the now Orwellian to pay the cheque (3). commonplace of words meaning their exact opposite or the What the Leninist break accomplishes is not only the “newspeak” of 1984) is no stranger to Hollywood which, possibility to realign the system but also that it it must be stated, plays a central role in this diffusion (and emptying out) of cultural meaning; if it is not responsible for …aims neither at nostalgically reenacting the “good old revolutionary it entirely. times,” not the opportunistic-pragmatic adjustment of the old program to “new conditions,” but at repeating, in the present world-wide conditions, xamining Hollywood’s ‘revolutionary’ films has The Leninist gesture of initiating a political project that would undermine recently found new utility in the writings of certain the totality of the global liberal-capitalist world order and furthermore, a project that would unabashedly assert itself as acting on behalf of truth, E(Left) cultural critics, whose analyses of particular as intervening in the present global situation from the standpoint of its movies (including the Wachowski Brothers’ original Matrix repressed truth (4).
1 This phrase was used by Republican majority leader Dick Armey in 1995, and reflects the growing use of what was previously viewed as the language of the Left not only to bring Conservative movements to power to The United States, but internationally as well. See Paul Krugman, “A Failed Revolution”, Op-Ed, New York Times, December 29, 2006. 2 Here Žižek states that “[t]he thing to do…is not aggressively to protect the safety of our [Capitalist] Sphere, but to shake ourselves out of the fantasy of the Sphere – how?” His answer comes in the form of Fight Club, a film that he not only calls “an extraordinary achievement for Hollywood,” but one which “tackles this deadlock head-on” (Žižek, 2002, 250).
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Central to Žižek’s thesis is the idea he imperative question, the political climate from which they that this break must replay not only the therefore, not only involves emerge. moment that the revolutionary struggle Tlocating the depiction of the The problem is not that Žižek’s attaches itself to “a collectivity” but “real” revolutionary impulse within theoretical impulse – to test the also the period before it attaches to a the site of contemporary film (if it possibility of revolution within film proper institution (ibid.). However, instead of depicting what Žižek characterizes as the appetite for ‘revolutionary material’ within Fight “In this sense neither Fight Club Club and The Matrix, this content only serves as a staging ground for nor The Matrix can be considered exploiting and maintaining what is very clearly a market. Rather than feeding revolutionary films because they only a genuine desire to overthrow the system, what these films offer instead depict the problems of an ‘oppressed’ is an entry point into the ‘revolutionary market’ – a demographic which is white minority who are saved and historically occupied by males aged 16-24 – in short, the precise audience redeemed by a violent white saviour.” that Hollywood executives have historically always actively sought out3. This market thus resembles exists), but also the construction of a – is misguided, rather, he simply Hollywood’s initial marketing towards template – and perhaps a generic model finds inadequate films to prove these (and invention of) the male “teen-age” – for this depiction. Consequently, assertions: films that ultimately demographic, where films featuring this essay will test earlier modes of counter his thoughts via their obvious bikers, hoods and “rebels without ‘revolution’ (such as those proposed by commodification and easy consumption causes” merely find their equivalents Žižek) critiquing them while offering by audiences. These issues extend today as computer hackers, really fast its own solution to the important issues to the problematic missing central drivers or people who beat each other that Žižek raises, namely, what a feature of these films; namely that up in basements. In short, the common revolutionary film might look like. the representation of the people or, as denominator linking these films is the I propose that that we look to stated by Gilles Deleuze, the “[p]eople basic fact that their protagonists, from the resurgence of the zombie film who are missing.”4 In this sense neither Neo to Tyler Durdan all rely entirely in order to view how “revolutionary Fight Club nor The Matrix can be on the cinematic template (and thus the consciousness” is worked out within considered revolutionary films because generic incarnation) of the ‘rebel.’ contemporary movie culture. I will they only depict the problems of an In this strict sense these movies modify early theories of the Horror ‘oppressed’ white minority who are embody the opposite of what Žižek film (such as those of Robin Wood and saved and redeemed by a violent white argues houses their subversive Barry Keith Grant) with contemporary saviour. It is impossible to credibly potential; instead of changing the Marxist theory – including Fredric posit the idea of revolution without cultural moment that he describes as Jameson’s reading of class and allegory at least considering the presence of being characterized by the desires in films he dubs “political” along these oppressed workers or those for “coffee without caffeine”, “war with Michael Hardt and Antonio with genuine grievances against without war”, and “revolution without Negri’s writings on what they term the system. We should add that the any blood”, the films merely reinforce “The Multitude” – to reconsider this representation of these demographics, the status quo (Žižek 2006, 309). This increasingly popular form. Finally, I in the form of African, Asian, First sanitized version of revolution, which will attempt to re-situate the zombie Nations and Mexican Americans Žižek paradoxically argues elsewhere, film and its resurgence as a ‘political among many others – barely scratch ultimately ends up resembling the eruption’ of subgeneric material, and the surface of Hollywood film, despite desire of the contemporary Left: assert that this specific form (as with their obvious presence in American the liberal dream of “decaffeinated other subgenres, such as heist and society. In this sense the missing revolution” fuelled by the desire for “a the conspiracy films) only emerges underclass of proletarians (Marx’s revolution which will not smell” or “in within a very specific set of historical lumpenproletariat) or even “workers,” the terms of the French Revolution, a circumstances: circumstances which essential to the history of revolutionary 1789 without 1793” (ibid.). not only relate to, but that also embody politics, are entirely absent, and as
3 While there are many informed studies on this subject, John Belton’s American Cinema/American Culture. New York: Rutgers University Press, 2005, pp. 304-325, provides an excellent overview on the development of this demographic. 4 “This acknowledgement of a people who are missing is not a renunciation of political cinema, but on the contrary the new basis on which it is founded, in the third world and for minorities” (Deleuze, 209).
Hollywood and Liberalism 63 such, Žižek’s assertions lack a suitable taunting birds, and the stoned “club else besides the local pub on a date), cinematic example to apply his theories girl” – all resemble their incarnations and reconcile with his stepfather and to. before they became zombies. In short, his mother while at the same time I maintain that the Zombie films the zombie world that the film presents figuring out a way to include his best stage and test this political material, is no different than the world that friend (lazy slob Ed) into his adult and furthermore, that their existence existed before the infection. life. What the film’s strange outbreak on the margins of Hollywood as a This phenomenon is similar of zombies provides Shaun with is the subgenre allow for them to transmit to Žižek’s “thought experiment” opportunity to step up and solve the material that is not possible to within regarding Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 domestic issues which plague him.This is exemplified by the ‘to do list’ that he writes himself on the fridge after a drunken binge. These immediate “What the film’s strange outbreak goals include: “[sic.] Go Round Mums” “Get Liz Back” and “Sort Life of zombies provides Shaun with is the Out!” Up until this point in the film, everyone that Shaun encounters has opportunity to step up and solve the looked like a zombie, but not been one (as demonstrated by the scene domestic issues which plague him.” where he takes a bus ride full of sickly people earlier in the day). It is on this particular morning, when he decides the larger context of mainstream film The Birds, where the presence to take action to straighten out his life, Hollywood cinema. This phenomenon or absence of the attacking birds that a zombie outbreak occurs and can be seen within the resurgence of merely serves as a pretense for what Shaun has no choice but to reconcile the Zombie film which offers a vision was already occurring within the these issues by confronting them (and of what Žižek would describe as the film: namely, the domestic drama the zombies) head-on. revolution (with blood!). Furthermore, between socialite Melanie Daniels Shaun of the Dead’s narrative what these films offer is precisely the (Tippi Hedren), dashing lawyer (and provides Shaun with the opportunity essential, messy detail that all of his love interest) Rod (Mitch Brenner), to solve the most important of his examples lack – the construction, and and his mother (Jessica Tandy). What domestic relationships (coming to more importantly the representation occurs throughout this film, in Žižek’s terms with his stepfather, and his of ‘the masses’ – which is not only view, is that the birds do not simply buddy Ed) by way of their individual essential to the consideration of attack because they are strangely transformations into zombies. These a “revolutionary film,” but to the motivated, but rather, that they serve to narrative events allow Phillip to conception of revolution itself. emphasize what essentially constitutes tell Shaun he is proud of him – in The Zombie film offers us a meaty the domestic drama of the film. In this addition to allowing Shaun a violent solution to this problem, as the recent regard literalisation of Oedipal drama in series of films taken together provide …the birds, far from functioning as a “symbol” which he kills his step father – and the viewer both the representation whose “signification” can be detected, on the further enables Ed to occupy the same of revolution within the space of contrary block, mask, by their massive presence, the film’s “signification,” their function being role he inhabited before. In the latter contemporary popular discourse to make us forget, during their vertiginous and case, Ed’s transformation actually (particularly in George A. Romero’s dazzling attacks, with what, in the end, we legitimizes Shaun’s friendship with latest offering Land of the Dead, are dealing: the triangle of a mother, her son, him, and his laziness and video game 2005), but do so in such a way that and the woman he loves. If the “spontaneous” playing is henceforth justified by the they become legitimately political spectator had been supposed to perceive the film’s “signification” easily, then the birds fact that instead of being living and documents in ways that The Matrix and should quite simply have been left out (Žižek lazy he is now a member of the “living Fight Club are not. 1991, 106). dead.” What this brief consideration The affinity between the two forms illuminates is that the logic that II. The Little Red (Zombie) Book (The Birds and the Zombie film) should Žižek applies to The Birds is equally be obvious as Shaun of the Dead pertinent to the personal dramas of the n the opening sequence of Shaun essentially enacts a parallel plot to zombie genre. I will now attempt to of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) Hitchcock’s film. apply Žižek’s thought experiment to Iseveral scenes depict the average Here, a 28-year old electronics other zombie films – including 28 Days citizens of London as they begin their salesman (Shaun, played by Simon Later (Danny Boyle, 2002) and Land morning commute. The homeless, Pegg) must find a way to fix the of the Dead – as they are all excellent the sick and people listening to their errant threads of his personal life examples of how this phenomenon walkmans are all seemingly in a that he has ignored for most of his manifests itself throughout these films. trance-like state. This scene is utilized adulthood. These issues encapsulate Having dealt with the “domestic” for comic effect later, as the “infected” his domestic sphere: he must deal with inflections of the genre (Žižek’s that protagonist Shaun encounters his overbearing roommate, negotiate issue of ‘failed signification’ or – the homeless man he regularly gives the relationship with his girlfriend Liz the way in which zombies stand as change to, the weird guy in the park (who insists on being taken somewhere oblique markers of inherent domestic
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 drama) I would now like to turn my sensible people rather than as mere fusion made possible by the shared structures attention to the genre’s depiction of stereotypes. of a common ideology. It becomes easy, if this is granted, to offer a simple definition of horror politics. Here, I will argue, following Robin Wood’s early theories of films: they are our collective nightmares. The the assertions of Robin Wood, that the horror genre are useful here, as he conditions under which a dream becomes a the Horror genre deals with the claims that the horror film essentially nightmare are that the repressed wish is, from representation of “repressed material” presents the nightmarish versions of the point of view of consciousness, so terrible in general, and that the Zombie film issues that are “repressed” within that it must be repudiated as loathsome, and that it is so strong and powerful as to constitute a deals with the “repression” of racial the “normality” of a society. Central serious threat (70).
To return to the opportunity that “It needs to be stated at the outset representing racial politics provides, Night of the Living Dead takes this that the zombie movie, as a subgenre of issue a step further as the film’s protagonist Ben (Duane Jones) the horror mode, was always a staging somehow manages to live through the “night” by locking himself in a ground for political issues, if it was not basement to survive the onslaught. When morning finally arrives, and inherently political to begin with.” local militiamen arrive to kill off the zombies, Ben is mistaken for one and politics in particular. As proof I will to this discussion is the depiction of is subsequently not only shot, but briefly consider the genre’s modern “the Other.” For Wood, “Otherness thrown on a fire with a meat hook by history, ranging from its appearance represents that which bourgeois the rowdy crowd. This final sequence in the late Sixties, through George A. ideology cannot recognize or accept of the film – rendered by a series of Romero’s subsequent films in the 70s, but must deal with…” and what takes still photographs that resemble existing 5 80s and 90s. Finally, I will return to place either through a psychological documents of lynching – even exploits my discussion of the genre’s recent process of “repression” or “oppression” the medium that these events are revival and discuss its ramifications in (66). Wood’s categories of Otherness usually captured by (photography) and terms of contemporary ‘revolutionary include other people, women, children, the pyre is indistinguishable from the politics.’ cultures in addition to “the proletariat” imagery of a KKK rally. It needs to be stated at the outset and “Ethnic groups within the The application of Wood’s and that the zombie movie, as a subgenre of culture” (66-67 – italics in original). Žižek’s theories to this horrific image is the horror mode, was always a staging This representation of Otherness is extremely revelatory, as the previously ground for political issues, if it was not limited to the depiction of the hidden (repressed) commonplace 6 not inherently political to begin with. “monster” within the horror genre, but of racism within the context of Night of the Living Dead (George is a cinematic tradition which dates the domestic sphere is revealed by A. Romero, 1968) has long been back to the “Yellow Peril” films about the ‘phenomenal’ expression of considered one of the most overtly Fu Manchu in the 1910s and 20s, to zombies. In this precise sense, the political films of its era regarding the the “Indian” in Westerns, and to the manifestation of zombies demonstrates issue of racism and must be seen as portrayal of enemy combatants in War Wood’s “return of the repressed” and 7 tilling the broken ground of Norman films. systematized “oppression” plus Žižek’s Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night These political issues urge us to “failed symbolization”: a process (the (1967), and Stanley Kramer’s Guess view the horror film as a mediation unfurling of the narrative) that reveals Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967). of these societal fears. Wood’s both the basic American domestic Because these films present an active characterization of the popular nature situation (and by combining these two and capable black protagonist, they of the horror film provides a rational elements, ‘domestically political’) circa must be viewed as films that advance explanation for the ongoing appeal of 1968. What becomes clear (as in the the nascent cause of the Civil Rights the genre. Here, the author states: instance of Shaun of the Dead) is that Movement. Most importantly, they the world without zombies and the are inherently political insofar as they Popular films, then, respond to interpretation as at once the personal dreams of their makers world with zombies are inherently the actually present other races (Sidney and the collective dreams of their audiences, the same. Poitier as a doctor and a sheriff) as
5 Though other Zombie films have existed before and after this limited examination of them, I have chosen Romero’s work strictly because of its distinct political overtones and also his huge influence on the genre: as the filmmaker has made a new Dead film in the last four decades, thus making him an ideal case study in this regard. 6 Wood, among other writers also considers Night of the Living Dead among the first forms of protest to the Vietnam War. See Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond, for more evidence of this material. 7 In this respect, I am tempted to characterize Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001) as an honourary Zombie film: a category which would also include Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959) and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) in terms of the besieged (Wood’s term) nature of the protagonists as they barricaide themselves against the continued onslaught of “Others.” 8 It should also be noted that this disturbing material is excised from Zack Snyder’s remake Dawn of the Dead, 2004.
Hollywood and Liberalism 65 t is clear that the ‘domestically 102). Romero’s continued work on a “cure” to the outbreak. It is also political’ issue of race stands at the the Dead films accentuates this shift in this film that Romero adds to the Ifore of Romero’s next film Dawn in “humanity” from the side of the genre’s ongoing development with the of the Dead (1978) which begins with protagonists to the side of the Other. introduction of “Bub”: a zombie who a dramatic S.W.A.T. team raid of a In short, by witnessing the survivors’ not only undergoes training by the housing project. While critics have “inhuman” responses to the invasion scientists but also dehumanization at largely ignored this disturbing opening (by torturing and performing cruel the hands of the military. As with the previous film, where the zombies were impulsively drawn to the shopping mall, returning to a “...by witnessing the survivors’ place they felt ‘comfortable’ while living, Wood cautions our reading this “inhuman” responses to the invasion... phenomenon as “humanity” outright, but instead “[t]he implications of this the viewer ends up actively rooting for definition” (as human) “need to be carefully pondered, as it is obviously their ultimate destruction at the hands both true and false. The zombies are human insofar as they are “reduced to of the monsters.” their residual ‘instincts.’” Further, they don’t communicate “except in terms of an automatic ‘herd’ instinct, following the leader to their next food supply” sequence – in favour of reading experiments on the zombies) the viewer (289). A central aspect of Day tests the film’s shopping mall setting as ends up actively rooting for their Wood’s theory directly, as Dr. Logan, Romero’s critique of Capital8 – it is ultimate destruction at the hands of the chief scientist in the bunker, restores nevertheless a crucial marker of the monsters. This is demonstrated by the a semblance of Bub’s living memories zombie films inherent politics. Rather 28 Days Later’s jarring ending, where through a series of punishments than presenting us with the random the imprisoned zombie is set free to and rewards (ibid.). These impulses rural populace of the outskirts of wreak havoc on his human captors. include remembering how to shave and Pittsburgh, what is so disturbing about The work of Romero’s first three appreciating music. When Bub is freed, this sequence is the transformation the Dead films serve as an pretense to he also remembers how to carry an M- poor residents of this urban housing demonstrate the inherent inhumanity 16 rifle (as he was once a soldier) and project. While other characters have of the survivors, as the zombies are not shoots the main villain in this film (the the benefit of mobility in the film, it is only killed throughout these films, but military commander Captain Rhodes.) clear that the misfortune of living in in certain disturbing scenes, horribly What this ongoing discussion of this poor setting dooms the project’s mistreated as well. This heinous the zombies’ “humanity” presumably residents to a violent, unfortunate conduct, which usually takes place demonstrates is the degree to which death.9 While the rest of the film within the auspices of large groups (the the representation of the monster essentially follows a band of characters posse of the first film, the biker gang of as “Other” changes over the course attempt to fortify themselves in a the second, the scientists and military of Romero’s work, and moreover, shopping mall, I think that the racial of the third) is precisely what prompts how this depiction not only comes (and class) composition of the zombies Dawn’s protagonist Francine to exclaim to positively inform the political in this case, prefigured as they are “we’re them and they’re us…” discussion of racial representation but in this film as poor, is crucial for the This shift in narrative agency and its absence in contemporary popular consideration of the genre as political. audience sympathy is also part of the culture. Where for Wood this “herd” Wood has commented on the implicit movement within the series’ mentality basically accounts for the shifting portrayal of zombies between third film, Day of the Dead (1985). zombies’ patterns of consumption, Romero’s two films, and this is This movie, which Wood characterizes the introduction of Michael Hardt marked by the transition of sympathies as “[i]f not quite about the end of the and Antonio Negri’s concept of the (which was alluded to in Night, but world, it is clearly about the end of “Multitude” can bring to light the never made explicit) from the band of ours,” (Wood, 294) takes place in a action of this new conception (and survivors to the zombies themselves. bunker under further deteriorating newly-inflected politicization) of Here, “the zombies of both films circumstances – where we are told that their behaviour. These instincts are not burdened with those actively the zombie population outnumbers thus resemble the “network attack” negative connotations” and, in no the human population “400,000 to 1” which counter Wood’s “mindless way resemble what he dubs “the evil – and where military and scientists consumption,” and instead incarnate” of other horror films (Wood, band together in order to formulate
9 Here, the “progressive” depiction of blacks in the first film is replaced by their (in Wood’s terms) “monstrous” depiction. The content of this sequence also oddly resembles the reports of the 1969 police raid of the Black Panthers, in which one of the group’s leadership, Fred Hampton, was killed amongst the building’s other residents.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 is described as a swarm because it appears much to do with the representation of purpose, but with a slight modification. formless. Since the network has no center that disparate races, classes and genders In both instances the scale of the dictates order, those who can only think in within these films than it does to do critical target has changed in addition terms of traditional models may assume it has no organization whatsoever – they see mere with the conception of the poor. What I to its mode of representation. By spontaneity and anarchy. The network attack have characterized as the revolutionary combining actual media footage appears as something like a swarm of birds or action of the zombies also corresponds of recent anti-globalization (and insects in a horror film, a multitude of mindless to the common denominator of all of antiwar) protests with staged assailants, unknown, uncertain, unseen and these issues. Once again, Hardt and footage of a zombie takeover, the unexpected. If one looks inside a network, however, one can see that it is indeed organized, Negri’s words provide us with a fair connections between global politics rational, and creative. It has swarm intelligence (Hardt and Negri, 91 – italics in original). The utility of this passage should “the mobilization of zombies resembles be self-evident and can be said to synthesize the issues that Romero’s the mobilization of the lower classes: a films have presented us with thus far. In other words, the zombies (as concept that I maintain is essential to ‘swarm’ in this case) are rational insofar as they possess the ability to the cinematic depiction of revolution.” look for openings, utilize crude skills, and eventually overwhelm via their inherently cooperative nature. In the zombie film, this continued evolution guideline, as their views relate not so and representation of alternative includes the depiction of positive much to the “suburban underclass” of voices becomes immediately apparent. black protagonists who are killed by Fight Club but to the proper conception One further characteristic should be mobs (Night), the representation of an of a revolutionary consciousness. Here, noted, as both films emulate recent institutional force taking out what is “[t]he only non-localizable ‘common coverage of the Middle East as well, essentially a poor black housing project name’ of pure difference in all eras which serves as a clear indication that (Dawn), and finally to the absolute re- is that of the poor” (Hardt and Negri, the magnitude of the films’ political humanization of the zombie by way 2000, 156 – italics in original). Further, resonance has changed to address of their increasingly potent mental “[t]he poor is destitute, excluded, the particular concerns of its era. faculties (Day).10 repressed, exploited – and yet living! Following my earlier assertions about So far, I have attempted to It is the common denominator of life, Shaun of the Dead it should be clear elaborate the particular manner in the foundation of the multitude” (ibid.). that the world as depicted within these which the representation of the lower At this point the link between the poor films (with their outbreaks of zombies) classes is politicized within the site as the “excluded…yet living” and the and the world in which we live are of popular film. The mobilization of “living dead” is more than apparent, no different from each other. The these disparate classes should be seen as is the correspondence between the modification that takes place is from as an alternative to the revolutionary “multitude” and its constitutive unit, the domestically political (Shaun of (Leninist) politics that Žižek insists the zombie. the Dead), to the nationally political exists within the sites of The Matrix (Day of the Dead), to internationally/ and Fight Club. The key assumption III. You Do Not Talk About Lenin… globally political (28 Days Later, here lies in the assertion that we accept Dawn of the Dead). Romero’s oeuvre as political reactions aving traced the history of the Though we can attempt a to the contemporary cultural milieu zombie film it is now possible “political” reading of both films, we particularly as they deal with issues of Hto see how these political must be careful in doing so. I propose class and race. Here, the mobilization issues – including considerations of one final theoretical model that will of zombies resembles the mobilization otherness, representation of diverse aid my consideration of the genre as of the lower classes: a concept that I races in addition to personal issues inherently political. While we should maintain is essential to the cinematic – inform the recent resurgence of keep in mind Fredric Jameson’s depiction of revolution. the genre. The opening sequences of assertion that political content in I want to be clear to maintain that both 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Hollywood film is immediately co- this discussion of racial politics has as Dead foreground the genre’s political opted and digested within the system
10 I should mention that though Romero does not specifically make a film in the 90s, scholar Barry Keith Grant considers the remake of Night of the Living Dead as one of the director’s own works. His criteria includes the fact that the script is based on Romero’s original and that it is directed by Tom Savani, who worked as Romero’s make-up and special-effects supervisor on the original film. This remake makes the class antagonism of the first film even more explicit, with the introduction of new political inflections and “class (stereo)types”. These include the overall-wearing “yokel” Uncle Rege, and his nephew and his girlfriend (Tom and Judy Rose) who are transformed from two all-American kids in the first film to “bumpkins” as well. Finally, and most importantly, the Coopers (the people who hide out in the basement) are even more obnoxious and Harry is even greedier (and it should be stated, more stereotypically Jewish) than in the first film. In short, what the first film does extremely well – in terms of the representation of the various class antagonisms within the overall structure of the film’s plot – the 1990 film depicts these issues in an extremely over-the-top (and it should be stated, terrible) fashion.
Hollywood and Liberalism 67 that produces it, we should also and rally against institutions – usually shift in the scale of the genre. 28 Days remind ourselves that this is precisely the military, police, and industries Later’s moment of conception, coming the missing component in Žižek’s – of oppression instead. Since our after the September 11th attacks, but analyses of Fight Club and The Matrix. conception of class consciousness preceding the invasion of Iraq, also Nevertheless, Jameson states (in a has essentially been ruptured via the speaks to the ongoing manifestation manner resembling Wood’s reasoning homogenization of culture, we need of authoritarian British culture (as of the horror film as a nightmare) that alternate means to see that these issues demonstrated by the preceding footage
“In other words, the ‘stars’ of the zombie film are literally overrun by the ‘extras’: a phenomenon which is emblematic not only of revolutionary consciousness, but essentially resembles the reality of the global situation in cinematic form.”
films, as works of mass culture, deal still exist, which is precisely what mass of protests and the brutal response with a society’s unconscious life. This culture can aid us in finding (26-27). of riot police) in mainstream film particular formulation accounts for Jameson’s solution to this problem in addition to dealing with rhetoric ‘class consciousness’ which has all resides within the very structure of of disease (as exemplified by the but disappeared within the Capitalist the Hollywood star system, which SARS outbreak of 2002-03). In these places greater emphasis on some instances, both 28 Days Later and the cultural sphere in general, and film actors and relegates others to the remake of Dawn of the Dead embody in particular. Jameson suggests that background. This conception can be Wood’s characterization of the horror certain structures within mass culture put to immediate use in our discussion film as a collective nightmare, but (particularly in genre films) must be as it relates to the internal possibility do so in such a way that it is not the read allegorically. The information that the form employs. Here, the formal zombies that we are afraid of, but that they contain need not be structure of the genre inherently the systems of containment that are interpreted outright, but should be read depicts the revolutionary (class) established in order to combat them.13 polysemeously instead (Jameson, 26). consciousness rather than having to 28 Days Later features one further Jameson defines this mode of analysis present these issues directly within transformation that is emblematic of in his reading of Jaws (Spielberg, 1977) their narratives.11 In other words, the the latest incarnation of the genre. where he urges us not to interpret the “stars” of the zombie film are literally This change takes place within the shark as representative of anything overrun by the “extras”: a phenomenon space of the narrative, where the in particular – it doesn’t stand for which is emblematic not only of protagonist, Jim (Cillian Murphy) must anything – but more importantly he revolutionary consciousness, but essentially inhabit the position of the views it as an object which allows the essentially resembles the reality of the zombie in order to free his friends characters in the film (of different global situation in cinematic form.12 from the military installation where social statuses) to rally together in In terms of this “global” reading, they are being held captive. The film order to defeat it. In Jamesonian terms, 28 Days Later attempts to mediate makes this transformation explicit, the zombies – as the various classes of the shift from local (and national) to as Jim, shirtless and pale, literally society – gain the opportunity to rise global issues (as exemplified by its rises from the pile of corpses that he up against their substandard conditions opening sequence) in addition to the laid in to escape from being shot and
11 “For the whole qualitative and dialectical relationship is mediated by the star system itself…[i]ndeed we reach each of the major actors in terms of their distance from the star system…” and “our reading of this particular narrative is not a direct passage from one character or actant to another, but passes through the mediation of our identification and decoding of the actors’ status as such” (Jameson, 1992, 52). 12 Here we should recall the situation of Day of the Dead where the number of zombies (400,000 to 1) is roughly equivalent to the actual world situation, where 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. In short, what the zombie genre’s latest “nightmare” depicts – as embodied by its new, “global” conception – is what occurs when the rest of the world’s population comes to collect the money they are “owed.” 13 It should also be noted that the Wachowski Brothers latest film, V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005) uses this material (a totalitarian government formed in the wake of a chemical attack) as its staging ground as well. Vendetta, when considered with Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006) and 28 Days Later begs for analysis of the cinematic phenomenon of global plague, its specific location in England and an uprising in each of their narratives, but this is the subject of an entirely different essay.
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 subsequently frees the zombie that raids of these small towns in order to the film’s representation of ethnicity, the military has been keeping on a get supplies. In terms of this scavenger gender and class, beg its inclusion leash to aid him. Finally, Jim explicitly imagery, the film resembles the for the ongoing evolution (and employs the “tactics” of the zombies works of George Miller and the post- complication) of the genre’s message. when he bites the esophagus out of one apocalyptic visions of his Mad Max It should also be clear that the issue of his captors. What this film presents, Trilogy. of class antagonism is present from therefore, is the possibility (and indeed The major modification that Land the beginning, as there are two sets of the necessity) of having to negotiate provides – in addition to the cultural under-classes (in short, the proletariat
“In this sense, the movement of the zombies in the movie resembles the slow gathering of masses in Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike...which is accented by a flimsy plot which provides a means to ally the audience’s sympathies with the zombies’ (and human poor’s) plight at the hands of their outlandishly rich oppressors.”
with the “Other” by either assuming capital that the film inherits by way and lumpenproletariat) in addition to their position or by walking a mile in of its genealogy – is the issue that the the reconstitution of a post-apocalyptic their (zombie) shoes. division of class within society has bourgeoisie. Finally, the portrayal once again become glaringly apparent. of evil uber-capitalist Mr. Kaufman here is one final film I will Here, the rich reside in a posh condo (Dennis Hopper) brings all these issues discuss which brings all of development called “Fiddler’s Green” into clear focus, as the masses within Tthis material – ranging from (complete with a functional shopping the film essentially have a target to rise Žižek’s Leninist break, to the depiction mall at ground level), while the rest of up against. of otherness within the horror film the human populace either work for This is predictably what occurs to the political consideration of the these figures to fulfill their needs, or within the film, as a daring raid by genre’s form/content to the shift in beg for scraps in the ever-expanding humans on the peaceful zombies of sympathy and finally to the assumption slums of the city. The film not only Uniontown (in what is described by of otherness – together, and this is the presents the ascension of a new human one of the humans as “a massacre”) latest zombie offering from George A. bourgeoisie (who literally rise to the prompts Big Daddy not only to become Romero, Land of the Dead. top of their luxurious tower) but also conscious of the “inhumanity” of the This film, which critic Manohla the excess of the human underclass. situation, but also to assemble the Dargis describes as an “allegory…of This formulation is further complicated residents and follow the humans to our contemporary landscape” is the by the encounter with an entirely new their stronghold. From here Big Daddy logical sequel to Romero’s other set of zombies, led by “Big Daddy”: a somehow wakes up the residents of the films, except that this time the black zombie who continues to work outlying towns, teaches them how to zombie population and their human at the gas station that he presumably wield weapons, and even frees other counterparts live in an uneasy balance. owned in his lifetime. These zombies, zombies that have previously been Here, the human population has the residents of “Uniontown,” who imprisoned by the humans for the taken refuge in the cities, whereas the seem doomed to perform the same purposes of target practice. zombies largely live in the outlying ritual duties that they did in their When the assembled zombie army towns. In order to continue their previous lives, namely they continue finally raids the luxury condo of the existence, the humans have developed to “work” as they did when they were rich, they begin to merge with the a system whereby they make daring alive.14 This aspect, combined with human population, effectively doubling
14 To follow this discussion up, it is also worth mentioning the recent Canadian zombie film, Fido (Andrew Currie, 2006). This movie, set in 1950s small-town America, depicts a world where the zombies have been tamed via control collars and sold by a major corporation, “ZomCon” to families as workers to perform their menial tasks. This role, it should be noted, certainly evokes issues of dehumanization through work at best and slavery at the worst. The plot also modifies Todd Haynes’ revision of the melodramatic mode in Far From Heaven (2002) further by substituting a zombie in place of (black actor) Dennis Haysbert’s portrayal of the love interest in the film. The usefulness in mentioning this movie is that it takes this discussion of representation a step farther, by replacing all visible minorities (or non-white “workers”) with zombies entirely.
15 Reflecting on the film’s revolutionary politics and Big Daddy’s leadership, Dargis states “I guess Che really does live, after all” (ibid.)
Hollywood and Liberalism 69 the size of their army by combining only choice of the responsible critic clear example of how revolutionary the army of zombie poor with an is to test these theses and to offer a consciousness can be depicted within army of human poor.15 In this sense, critique of them. My argument has thus the site of contemporary American the movement of the zombies in the taken place within the contested space film, as its narrative not only shows the movie resembles the slow gathering of contemporary capital, and it should coming together of disparate classes of masses in Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike be noted that rather than dismissing (the two separate bands of proletariat in (1925), which is accented by a flimsy Žižek’s theories outright, I have the film) but also how the protagonist plot which provides a means to ally actually sought to find more productive of the film (Cholo, Big Daddy) comes the audience’s sympathies with the examples in order to aid the theorist’s to assume the position of the Other zombies’ (and human poor’s) plight vision of revolutionary politics within within the space of the narrative, at the hands of their outlandishly rich the site of popular culture. yet still retains his revolutionary oppressors. Finally, it should be noted Here, inspired by Deleuze’s consciousness. that the film continues the movement statement regarding “a people who It is only now, having found a that I outlined in 28 Days Later by are missing,” I have attempted to suitable object of analysis, that I can forcing one of the film’s protagonists locate the depiction of a revolutionary follow Žižek’s logic of the Leninist into the position of the Other. In politics within a mainstream form. break. Moving on from here requires this case, it is the transformation of Contrary to Žižek’s thoughts that we the fact that it is only by depicting a Mexican-American, Cholo (played can locate the Leninist Break within racially distinctive and diverse set of by John Leguizamo, who is already the Hollywood films The Matrix classes that we can even approximate made somewhat of an outcast in the and Fight Club, I assert that this what Žižek calls for and perform the film due to his ethnicity) to the side of idea comes closer to fruition when break that will realign the system the zombie that marks this profound a diverse vision of a/the people is entirely. transition. After being both double- represented. In other words, rather crossed by Kaufman, and bitten by than presenting the contemporary Works Cited a zombie, Cholo somehow retains subject/consumer with a white enough of his consciousness to take revolutionary savior, the zombie film Dargis, Manohla, “Not Just Roaming, his revenge on Hopper’s character. The offers a display of absolute difference Zombies Rise Up,” The New York Times, June implied institutional racism previously 24, 2005. and leadership through the form of Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 2: The Time Image, exhibited by my reading of the earlier the network. This representation finds trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. zombie films is made explicit here, its expression within alternate forms London: Continuum, 1989. as (Capitalist) Hopper exclaims than Žižek names. Furthermore, I Grant, Barry Keith, “Taking Back the Night “fucking spic bastard” while shooting have sought to supplement his theories of the Living Dead” in The Dread of Difference: at Cholo. This is followed by a gesture Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: University by placing them alongside other of Texas Press, 1996. pp. 200-212. of solidarity between Big Daddy and theoretical models, including Hardt, Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri, Multitude: Leguizamo, as Big Daddy aids Cholo Negri and Jameson, in addition to the War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New in killing Hopper by burning him foundational work on the horror genre York: Penguin Press, 2004. alive. What is important here is that that Robin Wood provides. Finally, Jameson, Fredric, Signatures of the Visible. their racial differences (which have New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992. I have centered on a particular form pp. 9-34, 35-54. been foregrounded throughout the of film that adequately synthesizes Wood, Robin, Hollywood From Vietnam film) are eradicated in the face of their all of these concepts, as well as to Reagan…and Beyond. New York: Columbia commonalities as zombies and that ultimately depicting an allegory of the University Press, 2003. pp. 63-84, 85-11, 287- they find a common enemy (Kaufman, contemporary sphere of Capital. Such 294. as Jameson’s polysemous entity) to Žižek, Slavoj Looking Awry: An a vision of resistance, it should follow Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular rally against. – and which the zombie film represents Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. pp. 69- IV. Conclusion - Virtue and (Zombie) – would ultimately develop a schema 122. -----. “Why is Reality Always Multiple?” Terror that could illustrate how this movement could occur. It is here that the rationale in Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge, hat I have attempted is a for my revisitation of the genre should 1992. pp. 195-233. systemized approach to become clear, as I have demonstrated -----.“From Christ to Lenin…and Back” in the issue of revolution, how the zombie film (particularly in On Belief. London: Routledge, 2001. pp. 1-8. W -----.“Afterword: Lenin’s Choice”, in particularly within the site of popular George A. Romero’s hands) moves culture. It was my aim to thoroughly from local domestic issues (such as Revolution at the Gates. London: Verso, 2002. pp. 165-336. investigate the various assertions on those of racism) to national issues (the -----.“The Ambiguity of the Masochist the subject of revolution that Slavoj depiction of alternate races and classes Social Link”, in Perversion and the Social Žižek scatters throughout his oeuvre within the site of contemporary film) Relation. ed. Mary Ann Rothberg, Dennis and specifically those which deal with to global illustrations of protest (in 28 Foster. New York: Duke University Press: 2003. film. My rationale has been to negotiate Days Later). pp. 112-125. -----. “The Lunar Parallax: Towards a the sometimes disparate relationship Finally, I have discussed a Politics of Subtraction”, in The Parallax View. between what Žižek believes his particular film that brings all of Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. pp. 273-330. examples represent and how they these issues into clear focus: Land actually function. In this manner, the of the Dead. This film serves as a
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07 Book Reviews
Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: help books written by porn stars, such as that transgresses the boundaries of the Women and the Rist of Raunch Culture. Jenna Jameson, and “cardio-striptease” acceptable, and Levy takes a concerned programmes made popular by Oprah anthropological tone as she interviews Lindsay Steenberg Winfrey. lesbian women who identify themselves Levy, like her more academic as “bois”, junior high school girls who ollywood’s obsession with counterparts, has fallen into the trap confess explicit sexual experiences, and aggressive female sexuality is of idealising the 2nd wave feminism of drunken college women who happily Hlong standing and has produced the 1970s as the true site of authentic volunteer to show their breasts on “Girls some of the cinema’s most iconic feminism. She creates a utopian picture Gone Wild.” Levy frames herself as a characters, from Rita Hayworth’s femme of the late sixties as sex-positive, shocked tourist in these worlds, with the fatale in Gilda to band geek Michelle, revolutionary and populated by educated expectation that her reader will feel the in American Pie. From noir to frat pack, and uncompromising women who were same. In positioning herself above and the sexual enthusiasm and availability changing the world for the better. She separate from her subjects in this way, she of female characters has shifted in describes this period as “…the days suggests that these women are deviant articulation, even as it has remains when feminism was fun, women’s at worst, and tragically inappropriate at a central spectacle. Contemporary liberation was an adventure that involved best. This, in turn, compromises some post-feminist Hollywood celebrates a stakeouts and bloodless coups and of the very significant points she has to perceived sexual liberation that is, in fact, victory celebrations for the conquering make about the misogyny inherent in a stand in for sexualised performance. heroines” (85). Similarly, she uses female certain sub-cultural sexualities: they can In her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: appearance as a litmus test for feminist be sexist, conservative and also confuse Women and the Rist of Raunch Culture, expression, mournfully explaining the performing sex (and sexual identity) Ariel Levy takes her reader on an difference between a perceived fem- with enjoying it. Likewise, Levy draws anthropological journey into the seamy topia of the 70s and post-feminist raunch attention to the consumerist drives behind underbelly of postfeminist sexuality, culture: much of the sex industry. After all, she from mother-daughter stripper-cise to rightly observes, sex workers are not bacchanalian preteen blow-job parties. “Instead of hairy legs, we have waxed vaginas; enjoying themselves exclusively, but Along the way, Levy proposes the term the free-flying natural woman boobs of earning money. “Female Chauvinist Pig” to describe yore have been hoisted with push-up bras or In the case of the “bois,” she draws “women who make sex objects of other ‘enhanced’ into taut plastic orbs that stand perpetually at attention. What has moved attention to their “bros before hos” women and of [them]selves” (4), and into feminism’s place as the most pervasive (138) mantra in which they vilify more argues that “raunch culture” is the sex-as- phenomenon in American womanhood is traditionally feminine women even as playboy fascinated cultural context that an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of they sexually pursue them. While this makes this woman possible. principles” (87, emphasis mine). is a troubling catch phrase to live by, Levy is a contributing editor at New Levy’s superficial treatment of women York Magazine and her work has been This deeply ingrained nostalgia for a who identify themselves as bois, leaves published in The New York Times, The time when feminism was simple and no room for possible alternative sexual Washington Post and Vogue among virtuous is not only a misrepresentation expression or pleasure. Levy observes others. Her book’s attempt at an academic of this complicated and conflicted time in (in some detail it must be said) the treatment of female sexuality in American American social history, it is also framed sexual activities and stories recounted culture is compromised at times by her as an ideal against which all attempts at by the bois, labels them anti-feminist journalist style. For example, she offers feminism must necessarily fail. Therefore, and moves on. The same might be said descriptions of the personal appearance Levy’s is a particularly bleak outlook on of her treatment of very young women. of every woman she talks about: 70s contemporary culture, and an ever bleaker She journeys into their world, describes feminist, Susan Brownmiller “was a fine- outlook on the young women of today; their appearance, sexual habits and featured brunette” (46), CEO of Playboy, one that trades on the idea of a feminism urban legends; and then despairs over Christie Hefner “has good skin and a that existed only in the imagined past. Of their misguided sexual identity. There short French manicure” (38). Despite this, teen sexuality, and female sexuality in is an undercurrent of anxiety in these the main point of her piece is refreshingly particular she concludes: descriptions: loud, irresponsible lesbians atypical of the neo-liberal popular press: and hyper-sexualised teenagers are she argues that women are confusing “None of this can possibly be ‘ironic’ for something troubling and Levy positions teens because it’s their whole truth – there’s no sexual power with the performance and backdrop of idealism to temper these messages. them as threatening to healthy feminism. commodification of sexuality (i.e. being If there’s a way in which grown women are a stripper or a porn star has nothing to do appropriating raunch as a rebellion against the However limited and reductive some with enjoying sex and everything to do constraints of feminism, we can’t say the same of her case studies may be, I agree with with simulating and selling it). In order to for teens. They never had a feminism to rebel the cornerstones of Levy’s argument: support her argument she draws attention against” (169). the conflation of commodification and to the troubling contradictions central to simulation with female sexual liberation; cultural phenomena such as the “Girls This nostalgia is accompanied by a the sexualization of youth in media Gone Wild” video series, women’s self deep anxiety about female sexuality culture; and the glamorization of the sex
Hollywood and Liberalism 71 trade. Likewise, Levy’s conception of a the curious, “‘Megaslums’ arise when development, in order to speed raunch culture resonates in a solipsistic shantytown and squatter communities repayments of national debt (including postfeminist media culture that assumes merge in continuous belts of informal in the Congo, where the World Bank all women have the choice to become housing and poverty, usually on the knew Mobutu was funneling much of strippers, and the desire to “Make urban periphery” (26). Mexico City, the borrowed money directly into a Love Like a Porn Star.” A neo-liberal where as of 1992 an estimated 6.6 million personal Swiss bank account, with IMF Hollywood film industry feeds this people lived in 348 square kilometers demanding repayment from ordinary culture and is fed by it. Contemporary of informal housing, is number one Congolese). Davis pulls no punches in films such as the American Pie franchise, on the list. All those numbers do get pointing out the absurdity in the fact Sin City, The Devil Wears Prada and overwhelming, not because Davis’s that “it is taken as ‘normal’ that a poor The Wedding Crashers rejoice in writing is dry – far from it – but because country like Uganda spends twelve times representations of female sexuality as of their sheer largeness. The rapid as much per capita on debt relief each self-objectifying. Levy recognises how growth of cities, and the percentage of year as on healthcare in the midst of the unpopular it is to draw attention to these facts. Her recurring, and unanswered the new city-dwellers who live their HIV/AIDS crisis” (153). questions is: “why does the new whole lives as squatters or renters of One of the downsides to the feminism look so much like the old crowded tenement rooms – it is hard to privatization of public utilities is that so objectification?” wrap one’s head around. many in developing countries are unable All these numbers, all this to afford them. One of the book’s most quantification, is necessary: Davis is affecting sections deals with “Living Mike Davis, Planet of Slums counting people who generally are not in Shit”. “Constant intimacy with other counted. Not in censuses, not when cities people’s waste […] is one of the most Brenda Cromb are being planned, not when they are profound of social divides,” Davis tells forced out of their neighbourhoods due us (138). This is, of course, not merely n the March 2007 issue of Harper’s to development or “beautification” (often because of the smell. This kind of filth Magazine, columnist John Leonard literally), not when a city (like Soeul carries the kinds of diseases common to Idescribed Planet of Slums author or Beijing) is hosting the Olympics, Victorian London, and which one would Mike Davis as “the radical urbanologist not when the IMF and the World Bank think could be eradicated in the twenty- who knows everything, forgives nothing, are demanding debt repayments that first century. Post-colonial nations in and shows up periodically to terrify cut large swaths through the national Africa and South Asia are the worst the bourgeoisie, less like a MacArthur budgets of African states. (Davis off: the colonists never much bothered Fellow than a Chupacabra, the goat- entitles one chapter which outlines the with things like sanitation for the locals, sucking vampire of Latin American struggles of the informal worker “A so the new rulers took over already- folklore” (82). Leonard was talking Surplus Humanity?” The question mark, neglected systems. It is hard to be about Davis’ new book, a history of the it turns out, is rhetorical.) But Davis surprised when Davis – after outlining car bomb, but it is equally relevant to does more than count out misfortune: he the health and feminist issues associated his disquisition on global urban poverty: contextualizes it. with being obligated to defecate in public Davis is not out to make anyone feel Davis outlines, in jargon-free – turns to pay toilets. For instance, “[i]n better. language, the global geopolitical Ghana a user fee for public toilets was And with this subject matter, it is movements that have left so many introduced by the military government hard to imagine that he could. Though people living ten to a room with no in 1981; in the late 1990s toilets were the poor in the “Third World” or hope of getting out. Much (but not all privatized and are now described as a the “Global South” or “Developing – Davis notes the complicity of corrupt ‘gold mine’ of profitability” (141). This Countries” (any of those code words governments and the complacent middle “gold mine” charges families 10 percent that refer to “places that are not Europe, classes, not to mention short-sighted First of one day’s pay for toilet use. white North America and Japan”) are World “solutions”) of the blame is laid at It does not take much of a Freudian still often characterized as living in the door of the World Bank and the IMF, to guess why the very fact of millions rural backwaters, the reality is that especially the “Structural Adjustment of people literally living in excrement growing numbers – more than one Plans” managed by the latter starting in gets so little media attention. It is not billion worldwide – live in slums. This the mid-1980s. a sexy problem, but Davis’ unstinting is a staggering number and Davis is The 1980s – when the IMF and the exposition of already available data full of staggering statistics. The book’s World Bank used the leverage of debt shows the extent to which this is not a first chapter and a half are loaded with to restructure the economies of most of series of localized issues, but a global numbers and tables, numbers and tables the Third World – are the years when trend. Slums and their attendant miseries that make one wonder how things could slums became an implacable future not are the results of capitalist globalization, have gotten this bad. just for poor rural migrants, but also and Davis is none too optimistic about For instance, a table on page 28 lists for millions of traditional urbanites capitalist plans to make them disappear. the world’s “megaslums,” including displaced or immiserated by the violence Planet of Slums is not an optimistic fourteen neighbourhoods with one of “adjustment” (152). book, but it is not optimistic subject million or more residents. That there matter. are enough of them to necessitate the The SAPs, which called for coinage of the word “megaslum” ought privatization of public services and to be staggering enough on its own. For the abandonment of state-supported
CINEPHILE vol. 3, Number 1, Spring/Summer ‘07