See, Seeing, Seen, Saw: a Phenomenology of Ultra-Violent Cinema Sarah Downes Loughborough University, Leicestershire (UK) E-Mail: [email protected]
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ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 8 (2014) 129–148 DOI: 10.2478/ausfm-2014-0030 See, Seeing, Seen, Saw: A Phenomenology of Ultra-Violent Cinema Sarah Downes Loughborough University, Leicestershire (UK) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Vivian Sobchack claims in Carnal Thoughts that human bodies are continually remade by the “technologies of photography, cinema, and the electronic media” (2004, 135). One such sphere of contemporary media that continuously redel nes the notion of the human body is horror cinema. The recent advent of so-called ‘gorenography,’ spearheaded by James Wan and Leigh Whannel’s Saw (2004), issues conceptual and philosophical challenges to the presentation and conceptualization of the phenomenal body. Following in the scope of frameworks advanced by both Sobchack and Jennifer Barker this paper aims to explore how the body of the Saw series is constructed and how it emulates both the conceptualized bodies of its viewers and the state of modern information m ow in a technological age. It will be argued that the Saw series not only recognises viewers’ enjoyment of its genre conventions but also acknowledges and manipulates their engagement with the l lm as a phenomenological object through which a sense of re-embodiment can be enacted. Keywords: Leigh Whannel: Saw (2004), phenomenology, “gorenography,” ultra-violent cinema. Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) is led into a police interview room. She sits at the table, her head and shoulders shaking, twitching, as her eyes m it restlessly. Despite the eye-line shot taken by the camera Amanda does not meet its gaze. A non-diegetic soundtrack looms in the background, quietly at l rst with a steady, monotone timbre. Chiaroscuro lighting emphasises the contours of Amanda’s face as the camera slowly zooms to a close-up and stark cheekbones draw one’s gaze to the angry bruising at the corners of her mouth. The shot cuts harshly, contrasting light and shade created by the chiaroscuro lighting is replaced by green-l ltered harsh light reminiscent of m ashbulb after-images. The camera performs a fast arc around a soft-focused scene punctuated by pools of green- tinted hard light. The disorientation created by this movement is halted starkly 130 Sarah Downes as the camera rests upon a close-up of Amanda, her eyes double framed by the screen and the mechanical apparatus that obscures the bottom half of her face; clearly unconscious. The few seconds of stillness allow the prominent features of the scene to be assessed: the framed eyes and the hard, dark metal surrounding them. As she arouses to consciousness the camera once again arcs around the restrained l gure but this time the arc is disrupted; dissected and reassembled out of order. Amanda rolls her burdened head counter to the camera movement as the velocity of the arc increases. The juxtaposition of the camera arc and Amanda’s lolling head create the illusion of frenzied movement, a dizzying effect. And then it stops. The scene is perfectly still as something off-screen catches Amanda’s attention. The shot/reverse-shot technique reveals a television set buzzing to life, the prol le of a ventriloquist’s dummy m ickering silently. Amanda turns to face the television; the dummy turns to face Amanda and the viewer now turns to watch this exchange very closely indeed. As the dummy explains Amanda’s predicament both scenes – Amanda on the cinema screen and the dummy on the television set – remain still and silent except for the movement of Amanda’s twitching head, the dummy’s mechanical chin and the ever-louder pulsing, non- diegetic soundtrack. The dummy l nishes his monologue, the television screen gives way to green-tinted static and Amanda slowly turns her head. She looks l rst directly into camera, combining for a split second the inter- and extra- diegetic gaze, and then further to her right to present the viewer with a perfect prol le of the apparatus she is wearing. Suddenly, and with much urgency, the low pulsing soundtrack makes way for industrial rock beats. The camera resumes its fast arc, the scene around which it revolves distorted by both soft focus and the digital simulation of under-cranking the camera, as Amanda struggles wildly. The disorderly movement of the camera and the speeding up of Amanda’s movement, together with the heavy soundtrack recreate the discomfort of the cinematic viewer as they are forcibly drawn into reciprocating the sense of panic which emanates from the screen before them. The kinetic energy created is once again immediately dissipated as all motion, Amanda’s, the camera’s, and the soundtrack’s, ceases. Amanda stands up, triggering the pin to the apparatus she wears and the sound of a ticking clock, echoed in the bright, wide eyes that are shown in extreme close up, l lls the screen. A few seconds of ticking and then panic resumes: the camera returns to its fast, disjointed arc, Amanda’s struggles are shown in double-time and the arc gets faster and faster. Finally, in a frenzy of circling the screen goes to whiteout and the shot cuts to the low-key lit police interview room as Amanda opens her eyes. See, Seeing, Seen, Saw: A Phenomenology of Ultra-Violent Cinema 131 By Halloween 2004 this shot sequence had begun to amass some of the infamy that now renders it one of the most iconic scenes in contemporary American cinema. The combination of low key lighting, lingering close ups of injuries, disorientating movement from both the camera and on screen characters and a peculiar stop-start rhythm all contribute to what was to become a del ning feature of James Wan and Leigh Whannel’s (2004) franchise.1 In this short sequence, with barely any physical movement or narrative development and counterpointed with a kinetic editing rhetoric, the l lm brings together elements of mise-en-scène and technical form in a way that encourages what Laura Marks refers to as ‘a bodily relationship between the viewer and the image’ (Marks 2002, 3) that brings the viewing body and phenomena viewed into direct contact. Rather than proposing identil cation with the contents of the l lm, through the traditional methods of identil cation with either camera or character, it is the form and presentation of the images themselves that takes precedence. At the heart of the Saw series lies a partial inversion of voyeuristic spectatorship that hinges upon the intensely sensory and embodied nature of contemporary cinematic techniques: viewers of these l lms do not just watch the destruction of human bodies but also the deconstruction of the traditional viewing position. Marks del nes haptic perception as a ‘combination of tactile, kinaesthetic, and proprioceptive’ stimuli that del ne our interaction with objects (Marks 2003, 2). Haptic images can, therefore, be considered as images that encourage multisensory 1 In this essay Saw (2004) and its six sequels, released at one yearly intervals to both the US and European markets the week before Halloween until Saw VII: The Final Chapter (2010), will be approached as a series rather than individual l lms. While Saw (2004) was the only release specil cally under the direction of James Wan and Leigh Whannel, being developed from their 2003 short l lm of the same name, they retain executive directorship of the franchise throughout. Additionally, following the success of the initial release producers Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg, and Oren Koules formed Twisted Pictures; the company was subsequently awarded a nine- l lm deal with Lionsgate, six of which were Saw sequels. Members of the production staff on the initial releases, including l lm editor Kevin Greutert and production designer David Hackl, would go on to direct the later installments of the series. As a result of the continuity in production and directorship, and the fact that Saw was the foundation for Twisted Pictures success, the aesthetic of the initial l lm adapts relatively little during the series. Arguably, elements of theatricality develop in the convolution of the some of the later plots but within each title there are numerous elements of content, theme, and appearance that tie them together as a series. One would l nd it difl cult, for example, to watch Saw IV (2007) without knowledge of Saw III (2006) and much of the impact of the l nal twist in Saw VII (2010) would be dissipated without having l rst seen Saw (2004). In this manner the series condemns itself to formulaic circularity and excludes those viewers who missed the l rst few releases yet it also ensures that its explorations of morality and death cannot be summarized in any single Saw l lm. 132 Sarah Downes engagement. Such images go beyond the realms of pure visibility to stimulate directly, or simulate indirectly, the experience of additional sense modalities. The combination of uninhibited motion and the cultural connotations of nauseating colour in Amanda’s trap sequence, for example, creates disorientation as it emulates the effects of gravity and velocity upon the viewers’ sense of balance. Such haptic images, via a combination of visual, aural, and proprioceptive stimuli, move the viewed body of Amanda Young and the often-overlooked bodily experience of the cinematic viewer into close proximity to one another. Amanda’s panic is embodied in the sickening arcing of the camera coupled with green-l ltered lighting and the oddly soft focused motion shots. The oddness of the focus is of course derived from the routine deployment of soft focus in romantic and nostalgic scenarios. Usually connoting a heightened positive emotional response the technique is used, in this example, to dull the dominant sense of sight thus encouraging viewers to engage through other sense modalities in order to gain a clearer picture of the onscreen events.