Mirror of Simulation in Denys Arcand's "Jesus of Montreal"
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THE MIRROR OF SIMULATION IN DENYS ARCAND ’ S JESUS OF MONTREAL By Robert J. Roy Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts In Literature Chair: / Jeffpey MjddenfsSs^ David L. Pike Dean 6f the College Date 0 2006 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1437772 Copyright 2006 by Roy, Robert J. All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 1437772 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © COPYRIGHT by Robert J. Roy 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE MIRROR OF SIMULATION IN DENYS ARC AND ’ S JESUS OF MONTREAL BY Robert J. Roy ABSTRACT This paper will argue that in the filmJesus of Montreal, Denys Arcand foregrounds the ways in which the Catholic Church and commercial culture exert control over their respective signs (the traditional retelling of the Jesus’ Passion and the actors/actresses who comprise the commercial sign, respectively), with emphasis on how this creates a mirroring effect within the text. I will argue that in doing this, Arcand offers a critique of the cultural landscape after the Quiet Revolution: that Montreal may be moving towards a kind of media-controlled culture and in effect trading one corrupt regime (Catholicism) for another (commercialism). ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................. ii Chapter THE MIRROR OF SIMULATION IN DENYS ARCAND’S JESUS OF MONTREAL.........................................................................................................1 FILM SUMMARY..........................................................................................................2 BAUDRILLARD AND SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE..................................................4 THE CHURCH’S CONTROL OF THE SIGN............................................................7 THE QUIET REVOLUTION AND THE DYING CHURCH................................16 THE MODERN ARTIST VERSUS THE COMMERCIAL CITY........................20 THE COMMERCIAL CITY AND THE LOGIC OF THE CODE........................26 HYPERREAL COMMERCIALISM IN JESUS OF MONTREAL........................ 29 THE COMMERCIAL CITY VERSUS ART AS ARTIFICIAL/REAL DIALECTIC......................................................................................................31 THE MIRROR OF SIMULATION: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE COMMERCIAL CITY...........................................................................35 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................40 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE MIRROR OF SIMULATION IN DENYS A R CA N D ’S JESUS OF MONTREAL Commentators on Denys Arcand’s film Jesus of Montreal (1989) have noted that the central conflicts that take place in the film primarily involve three distinct entities: the protagonist Daniel Coulombe (Lothar Bluteau) and his troupe, the church authorities, and the advertising or commercial industry.1 The analysis of this conflict typically unfolds along the following lines: on the one hand, you have Daniel versus the Catholic Church authorities, and on the other, there is Daniel verses commercialism or commercial culture in general. Simplifying critical arguments in this way does not do these analyses justice, of course. But generalizing the conflict of the film in this way does offer a strategic advantage in that it serves to abstract the (often slippery) forces that surround Daniel into generalizations - structures - so that the logic by which these structures operate can be made apparent. This paper, then, will foreground the relationship between these three players within the film, focusing on how they interact and (as I will argue) mirror each other in their attempts to keep and/or gain control of their characteristic signs: those signs being the Catholic Church’s control of the Jesus story and commercial culture’s control over the actors and actresses that appear in media generated objects. In highlighting these similarities, Arcand is offering a subversive 1 1 See Stone (59), Marshall (294), and Testa (107) for examples. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 critique of Quebecois culture by reversing a key political doctrine. In moving away from a church controlled political landscape after the Quiet Revolution - lauded by many on the left in Quebec as being a step in the right direction - Montreal may be moving towards a kind of media-controlled culture and in effect simply be trading one corrupted regime for another. FILM SUMMARY Jesus o f Montreal begins with a stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. After the play ends one of the actors, Pascal Berger greets his friend, Daniel Coulombe, who says that in his next acting role, he will play the part of Jesus. We soon learn that Daniel has been contracted by a priest, Father Leclerc, to modernize the very dated and poorly attended Passion play at a local Catholic shrine in Montreal. Daniel begins to gather a troupe of four actors from various professions around Montreal. First he draws Constance, an unemployed actress working in a soup kitchen, then Martin who has been dubbing foreign pornographic films into French. The third actor that Daniel draws is Mireille, a television commercial model, and finally Rene, who has been doing the voiceover for a documentary about the origins of the universe. Daniel begins going to the library in order to research the historical Jesus and later meets a “Deepthroat-esque” seminary professor who informs him of some of the modem scholarship being conducted on Jesus, yet warns Daniel of the church’s unaccepting stance towards such new discoveries. The troupe has a successful opening Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 night, but the clerics in charge of the play disapprove of the unorthodox production and demand revisions. Daniel then accompanies Mireille to a beer commercial audition and, reacting against the abuse of Mireille during the auditions, he destroys some expensive television equipment. At the end of the troupe’s second performance, Daniel is arrested and put on trial. He refuses the help of a lawyer, Richard Cardinal (Yves Jacques), who offers him a lucrative career in the media spotlight. Soon after, the authorities at the shrine demand heavy revisions on Daniel’s new script and Leclerc finally orders the show to be canceled. The members of the troupe, however, perform the original play regardless of the consequences. During the play, a scuffle occurs during the crucifixion sequence and the cross is toppled, seriously injuring Daniel in the process. Daniel is then taken to the emergency room of a French hospital, but due to overcrowding he cannot be seen immediately. Because his injuries do not seem as serious as was thought, he and two of the women from the troupe leave the hospital and Daniel collapses in the metro station. He is rushed to a local Jewish hospital and soon afterwards is declared brain-dead. A doctor asks if he may use Daniel’s organs for transplants and the film follows two of the patients - a man whose life is saved by Daniel’s heart and a woman whose vision is restored with his transplanted eyes. The lawyer, Richard Cardinal asks the troupe if they would like to begin a commercial theater in Daniel’s memory and all say that they would, except Mireille who is upset by the proposal. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 BAUDRILLARD AND SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE Jesus of Montreal depicts a city in which simulacra - or, reproductions of objects or events - have come to dominate everyday life. The Catholic Church offers reproductions such as statues, the Stations of the Cross, and the traditional retelling of Christ’s death, which is dramatized in the Passion Play. There is the production of The Brothers Karamazov that prefaces the fdm and later the theater troupe offers their own reproduction of the Passion play. But perhaps the most pervasive of the simulacra that are represented in Jesus of Montreal can be seen in the media-generated